he is commited to not doing it - now , if any hint of trouble ill explain on the phone I had a long talk this
morning.
On Wed, Jun 13, 2018 at 10:24 AM, Karp, Brad S < > wrote:
Thanks. It's still quite challenging. Will speak shortly to Michael.
Brad S. Karp I Chairman
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP
1285 Avenue of the Americas New York NY 10019-6064
http://www.paulweiss.com
Bio: https://www.paulweiss.com/professionals/partners-and-counsel/Brad-S-Karp.aspx
my suggested edits
----------Forwarded message----------The Special Counsel's office, nearly leak-proof since its inception more than a year ago and seemingly
immune to the President's constant taunts, might appear to be operating in some parallel universe unmoved by
the every-day political turmoil. But in the course of conversations I've had recently, as a I research a new book
on President Trump and the forces arrayed against him, what has become clear is that Robert Mueller and his
office are preparing for a life or death confrontation with the President and the mother of all constitutional
crises.
My discussions have been with both White House advisors and people close to the investigation. No source
involved in this story would speak on the record.
The sources firmly believe that Special Counsel has ready an aggressive legal theory for the indictment of
the president for obstruction of Justice. In the last few weeks, as the President has indulged his pardon
authority, the Mueller team has also developed a legal strategy to oppose the ikely pardon of former National
Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, who had previously struck a plea bargain which could include his testimony
against the President.
Robert Mueller, according to one person familiar with the Special Counsel's thinking, could hardly contain
his disgust when Rudy Giuliani, the President's new lawyer—hired to makes a television case for the President
and to push back against the Mueller team—in May airily dismissed the notion that a president can be indicted.
Adding insult to injury, Giuliani—who a White House source said had likely learned of aspects of the pending
indictment—said Mueller agreed with that assessment. White House sources believe Giuliani was daring the
Special Counsel to tip his hand. Mueller, in character, contained his outrage and continued to hold his cards
close as his team finished preparing the obstruction case and refined the legal theories under which it would
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 030402claim the right to haul the president into court.
The Mueller team, according to sources both near the investigation and the White House, has prepared a
case, but it requires the approval of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who—with the recusal of
Attorney General Jeff Sessions from the Russia-related investigation—oversees the Mueller team. He would
need to set aside He could do this based on a finding that the former opinion was inaccurate re the president
being above the law. ttherby creating an inability to indict a sitting president. Indeed, Rosenstein, as recently
as April, publicly declared that the President was not a target. This may have been a form of fig leaf to soothe a
President who regularly demands aides assure him he is not being pursued: the President does not become a
formal target until Rosenstein agrees to designate him as one.
Any proposed indictment would confront Rosenstein with matters with which he has been intimately
involved. The case, according to my conversations , is fundamentally Trump versus the FBI, Justice
Department, and Mueller investigation itself. In many ways, it boils down to the word of former FBI Director
James Comey against the word of Donald Trump. Rosenstein, at the President's behest, drafted a memo
justifying the Comey firing for how the former FBI Director handled the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
But that justification, in an embarrassment for Rosenstein, was shortly brushed aside by the President when he
admitted that he fired Comey to disrupt the Russian investigation. What's more, the indictment is said to charge
that the firing of Andrew McCabe, the former Deputy Director of the FBI, who reported directly to Rosenstein
after the Comey dismissal, was an instance of illegal retaliation tampering or consipracy by the President
against a potential witness.
According to a source with knowledge of the strategy, it will be all the more controversial because if finds
the entire narrative of the case for obstruction in plain sight. Almost nothing about the case involves new
information. "This indictment could have been drafted without anyone being interviewed," said this source.
Rather it takes well covered public events and moves them to a set of circumstantial conclusions. There is no
smoking gun beyond the often flagrant, custom-breaking, events of the President's 16 months in office. Indeed,
much of the evidence is based on the President's public statements and tweets about those events.
This is, according to White House sources who have gotten wind of this approach, good news: the case then,
is just an issue of what motives you ascribe to the President's behavior—behavior that is, the President's
supporters believe it is easy to show, impulsive and not thought out. Hence no intent. For the Mueller team, it
is precisely that careless behavior and flagrant disregard for the rules that they aim to put on trial.
There is no certainty that the Special Counsel's office will ultimately pursue its plan to indict the President.
But, according to a source the worry is that the plan is "more advanced" than previosly believed. . The
investigation continues and new evidence or other factors might push both prosecutors and the grand jury in
another direction. Just passing its first anniversary, the Mueller investigation has conducted itself with
remarkable secrecy. Descriptions of a proposed indictment provide one of the few insights into its strategy and
its sense of the political peril in front of it.
It may be noteworthy that there appears now not to be plan for an indictment related to collusion, although,
legal experts say, that could come later.
The White House view is that without the underlying collusion charge, Mueller will be presenting a weak
and politically-motivated case. The Mueller view seems to be that the obstruction charges go to the heart of
exposing how Trump has abused his power and turned the White House into a corrupt fiefdom.
The President's scheme to obstruct the FBI's investigation into connections between the Trump campaign
and Russian efforts to undermine the U.S. election, according to Mueller began on the 7th day of the Trump
administration. Three days prior to this, on January 24, National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, lied to the
FBI about his contacts with the Russian Ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. These were contacts, directed by an
unnamed person.
That unnamed person, in the view of several lawyers who discussed the case with me, is very likely Trump
himself, and might imply that Trump encouraged Flynn to lie to the FBI, promising to protect him—using his
influence or pardon powers.
On January 27th, seven days after Donald Trump's inauguration, the President had the one-on-one dinner
with FBI
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