Michael Wolff's book leaves breadcrumbs for Mueller to investigate - By Jennifer Rubin

[DonViejo]

By Jennifer Rubin January 4 at 9:45 AM

Michael Wolff’s new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” should set off alarm bells for President Trump’s legal team. Two tidbits in particular point to areas of inquiry for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

Most important of Wolff’s reports is Trump’s drafting while on Air Force One of the statement concerning his son’s June 2016 meeting with Russian officials. The Post reported last summer:

Flying home from Germany on July 8 aboard Air Force One, Trump personally dictated a statement in which Trump Jr. said that he and the Russian lawyer had “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children” when they met in June 2016, according to multiple people with knowledge of the deliberations. The statement, issued to the New York Times as it prepared an article, emphasized that the subject of the meeting was “not a campaign issue at the time.”

The claims were later shown to be misleading.

Over the next three days, multiple accounts of the meeting were provided to the news media as public pressure mounted, with Trump Jr. ultimately acknowledging that he had accepted the meeting after receiving an email promising damaging information about Hillary Clinton as part of a Russian government effort to help his father’s campaign.

This is damning both because it involves an effort arguably to cover up the real purpose of the meeting and, more important, because Trump was personally involved. This would be one powerful element in an obstruction-of-justice charge, if one is forthcoming, and certainly in considering impeachment, which would look beyond the four-corners of criminal statutes to see if Trump abused his office (crafting a misleading statement from the White House) for nefarious purposes (concealing a possibly incriminating meeting).

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/01/04/michael-wolffs-book-leaves-breadcrumbs-for-mueller-to-investigate/?utm_term=.615c4f7fd26e

[uponit7771]

1. The lawyer spokesperson thing on AF1 should no doubt be a part of the investigation

[kentuck]

2. Indeed.