Front Burner - Why the Mueller report doesn't exonerate Trump for obstruction

Episode Date: April 19, 2019

The Mueller Report identified a series of episodes involving Trump that the special counsel considered potential obstructions of justice. But Robert Mueller chose to not charge Trump with a crime. CBC's Washington correspondent Keith Boag walks us through the long-anticipated report.

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Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. So ever since the U.S. Attorney General William Barr released a four-page summary of an almost 450-page report into whether or not the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, there's been this one big question hanging in the air. Would the Fulmaller report tell the same story that the Attorney General did? We cannot simply rely on what may be a hasty, partisan interpretation of the facts. Do you really believe that Bob Barr would give us a summary and not be supported by the report? Give me a break. He was hired by Trump. Trump wasn't going to hire anybody that wasn't going to take care of him.

Well, today we know a lot more about that. Because on Thursday, the partially redacted report was released. And in a news conference before it dropped, William Barr was clear. In his opinion, the Trump campaign did not collude with Russia, nor did Donald Trump obstruct the Mueller investigation. Special counsel found no collusion, no evidence of the Trump campaign collusion. Yet, as he said from the beginning, there was in fact no collusion. After finding no underlying collusion, the evidence developed by the special

counsel is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense. Now, here's the thing. The Mueller report does lay out 10 possible episodes of obstruction of justice. Today, I'm talking to Keith Bogue from Washington, because I really want to understand how this report can detail these 10 separate opportunities for obstruction of justice, yet make no calls on an actual charge of obstruction. That's coming up on FrontBurner. Keith, we talked a few weeks ago when we had just four pages. So it's so nice to have you here to talk about something when we have, you know, more in front of us, something more substantial. Yeah, four pages was too few and 400 and some is too many.

It's so true. Not possible to read it all today. But, you know, I know you've taken a really close look at the report. And what I want to talk to you first is this idea of collusion or conspiracy. So Barr summarized that Mueller found nothing that proved coordination or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. operatives who perpetrated these schemes did not have the cooperation of President Trump or the Trump campaign or the knowing assistance of any other American for that matter. That is something that all Americans can and should be grateful to have confirmed. Donald Trump has said there's no collusion. There never was, by the way, and there never will be. William Barr said at the press

conference multiple times that there was no collusion. No collusion. No underlying collusion. No collusion. And this is something we've talked about on this podcast before with you, that collusion isn't an actual crime. But are there any new details in the full report that we read today or the redacted report that we read today that contradict that for you? That there's either no conspiracy or that there's no collusion? Well, I mean, certainly, Mueller found that there was no conspiracy and no coordination and that those things would have constituted criminal acts. He deals with the

word collusion and treats it as kind of a colloquialism and says it's not something that we would investigate. So the idea that he didn't find collusion really means that he didn't find collusion to a criminal level that would constitute conspiracy coordination. But there's a lot of detail in here, a lot of detail about contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia and things that we didn't know before. And ultimately, what Mueller has decided is that, yes, Russia did try to interfere in the 2016 election. There were two prongs to that attack on the election. One was the hacking of computers in the DNC and the release of embarrassing emails in the Clinton campaign.

And the other was a fairly extensive disinformation campaign. On top of that, the intent of that interference was to help the Trump campaign. The Trump campaign knew about those attempts, expected that they would help them, and yet said nothing about them, and in some cases concealed evidence that might have been helpful to an investigation, and in other particular instances,

even lied about what they knew the Russians were doing publicly. Republican strategist and Trump confidant Roger Stone joins us. And to be absolutely clear, I never discussed the WikiLeaks disclosures regarding Hillary or John Podesta, which I also had no advanced knowledge of, with candidate Donald Trump before, during or after the election. Michael Flynn, you joined Donald Trump in these intelligence briefings. You didn't learn from any of these briefings that it was Russia? Those issues did not come up, and that's the extent of what I can talk about. The president, or the now president, the candidate Trump at the time,

said the whole thing was a hoax, that there was no evidence that Russia was behind the email hacks. Maybe it was. I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds. Privately, he knew Russia was behind the email attacks, and his campaign was reaching out to try to see if they could find out more about what the Russians had and whether they could somehow learn about how they were being released through WikiLeaks and what the timing of it was. There was a lot more they knew about Russia's interference in the election that they were

owning up to. Is there an example of that that you saw today in the report that you hadn't seen before? There was a lot of detail about the Trump-Moscow Tower deal. Something else that Trump said wasn't happening. He had no dealings with Russia. But during the campaign, not only did he have dealings with Russia, he had an extensive, through his organization, an extensive number of contacts and a letter of intent to build Trump Tower Moscow. And in the Mueller report, we see some of the details of that letter intent that

outlined, you know, the conditions of the deal, the amount of money in percentage terms that the Trump organization could make. And in the process of that, we also learned that someone who described herself as the wife of Vladimir Putin's political strategist had reached out to Ivanka Trump and said, my husband is this big deal who does the political fixing for Vladimir Putin. You should look him up. He's really close to Putin. He knows what he's doing. And we are offering help to your campaign. That's new information. Ivanka Trump passed that email along to Michael Cohen. She didn't act on it. Cohen accidentally Googled the wrong person and thought he was dealing with a weightlifter. But there's some very entertaining details in this report, I will say. That's one of them. Yeah. There's an instance of something that we did not know about until the report today that shows a clear connection between Russians connected to Putin wanting to reach out and help the Trump campaign and telling them that they were ready to give assistance.

Right. And is there any evidence that anyone in the Trump campaign ever tells anybody else about this, like the authorities, for example? No, there's no evidence of that at all. And then, you know, the one instance that we've known publicly about before was the Trump Tower meeting where Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner met with a Russian lawyer who ties with the Kremlin. A music promoter exchanged notes with Donald Trump Jr. promising the meeting would involve information that would, quote, incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia. Donald Jr. replied, if it's what you say, I love it. When that story is about to break, Donald Trump Jr. wants to release the emails about what actually happened. His father, Donald Trump, says, no, don't do that.

Donald Trump Jr. draws up a statement. Donald Trump Sr. looks at the statement, edits it to make it less incriminating. The way it was handled was to conceal some information, namely that Donald Trump Jr. held this meeting and agreed to go to it because someone had promised him incriminating information about Hillary Clinton. Those are all things that are in the report that are confirmed now, that were reported by the media. And I should add, by the way, Jamie, because we should get this in here somehow. When you read this report, one of the things you realize

is that the media reporting on this for the last 18 months has been pretty good. Right, it's sort of a vindication to the New York Times or the Washington Post. There's a lot of confirmation, particularly when we get to talking about obstruction of justice. There's a lot of confirmation of stories

that first appeared in the media that President Trump said were fake news. Donald Trump is denying reports that he had directed his White House counsel to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller last June. Fake news, folks. Fake news. The president turned the conversation to whether Mr. Comey would pledge his loyalty to him. The White House has said that the account provided in the New York Times is not correct. Trump's national security advisor, Michael Flynn, and the Russian ambassador to the United States, Mr. Kislyak,

had a series of communications around the same time that the Obama administration was rolling out a package of punitive measures to punish Russia. Those conversations had nothing whatsoever to do with those sanctions. I want to ask you about why none of this constitutes conspiracy or coordinations with the Russians. Because there are all these examples of the Russians reaching out to the campaign and examples of the campaign kind of being in the know that this incriminating information about Hillary Clinton is coming out, her emails are coming out. So is the idea here is that in order to be charged with a crime, the crime of conspiracy or coordination, And simply understanding the other party's interests and behaving in a rational way to further your own interests cannot be considered a conspiracy.

Okay. But it's fair to say that this is incredibly abnormal behavior. The behavior that's described here is incredibly abnormal. And even Fox News today, even Fox News has been describing it as immoral and indefensible as behavior, even if it does not rise to the level of a crime. The behavior of the president is immoral, deceptive, and repellent.

Oh, that's interesting, because the president was tweeting this morning that people should watch Fox News. I suspect that the president was pretty pleased with the performance of Bill Barr today. The attorney general seemed almost to be acting as the counselor for the defense, for the counselor for the president. We'll be back in a whole new way, where stories are brought to life by powerful performances from renowned actors and narrators. With the free Audible app, you can listen anytime, anywhere, whether you're at home, in the car, or out on a jog. The first 30 days of the Audible membership are free, including a free book.

Go to www.audible.ca to learn more. So now I want to spend some time on obstruction, because this is where a lot of the controversy is, whether or not Donald Trump tried to impede or undermine Mueller's investigation into conspiracy. And William Barr says there was insufficient evidence to charge the president with obstruction. says there was insufficient evidence to charge the president with obstruction. There is substantial evidence to show that the president was frustrated and angered by his sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks. Nonetheless, the White House fully cooperated with the special counsel's investigation. Barr also said that Mueller did not draw a conclusion one way or the other on whether there was obstruction.

So now that you've looked through this report, is that your interpretation of what Mueller is saying here? No. Okay. Let me tell you what the report looks like. Let me tell you what the report looks like. I mean, obviously, it's very thick and a lot of pages, but there are in the obstruction section 10 different instances of different kinds of things that the president did that Mueller said he would have to consider if he were to make a finding, a determination, a prosecutorial determination about obstruction. And in those are included many of the things that have been reported in the media. It includes the firing of James Comey, the FBI director.

When I decided to just do it, I said to myself, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story. It's an excuse. It includes his attempts to have the special counsel Robert Mueller fired. I haven't given it any thought. I mean, I've been reading about it from you people. You say, oh, I'm going to dismiss him. No, I'm not. It includes attempts to have Jeff Sessions, the attorney general at the time who had recused himself,

unrecuse himself so that he could take control of the Mueller investigation. He should not have recused himself almost immediately after he took office. It includes attempts to get intelligence community leaders to say publicly that the president wasn't under investigation. That was something that had been reported. But we have press reports of not once but twice that the president of the United States asked you to either downplay the Russia investigation or to directly intervene. The intelligence community leaders refused to comment on.

Confidential conversations between the president and myself, I don't believe it's appropriate for me to address that in a public session. But according to Mueller, it's all true. So all of these things in there are outlining the details of specific things that Trump did that could be part of a finding that he had committed an obstruction of justice. His explanation for not doing that is different from what William Barr has said. So why is it? Why did Mueller decide that he's not going to charge him with obstruction? It has a lot to do with the Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted.

But it's not as simple as saying, as Mueller's saying, that because I couldn't prosecute him, what's the point? It's not either, as Barr kind of led people to believe, that he couldn't make up his mind. We don't go through this process just to collect information and throw it out to the public. We collect this information. just to collect information and throw it out to the public. We collect this information.

We use that compulsory process for the purpose of making that decision. And because the special counsel did not make that decision, we felt the department had to. Right. That's the impression that I had when I read Barr's four-page summary a couple of weeks ago. That just all of this effort, all of these months of investigation, Robert Mueller just – he can't really decide. No, he's thinking very – the truth is he's thinking very deeply about this. And his thinking is this. If I make a normal prosecutorial decision knowing that the president cannot be indicted, cannot be charged, then I must also know that because he cannot be charged, because he cannot be indicted, cannot be charged, then I must also know that because he cannot be charged,

because he cannot be indicted, there will not be a trial. And a trial really is the only public forum for an accused to defend himself and to clear his name. Therefore, it would be unfair for me to say that the president has committed a crime knowing that he would not have access to the form of a trial to clear his name. Therefore, I cannot make a prosecutorial decision that he committed a crime, but nor can I say that he didn't because of all of this evidence. So then what was the purpose of all of this then?

The purpose of this was, first of all, to investigate what happened in 2016, but also, and Mueller is clear about this, in investigating obstruction of all, to investigate what happened in 2016, but also, and Mueller is clear about this, in investigating obstruction of justice, he wanted to make sure that he collected the evidence and it was preserved, and while people's memories were still fresh about incidents, in case, of course, Congress wants to take it up, perhaps for impeachment,

but also, and he's explicit about this, because someone may not want to prosecute Donald Trump when he's not the president anymore. And he's got to make sure that the evidence has been preserved if that decision is made. You mentioned that Congress might want to pick this up. What do you mean by that? Well, obviously, Congress has a decision to make about what to do with all of this information, and it will want to investigate more. I have formally requested that Special Counsel Mueller testify before the House Judiciary Committee as soon as possible, particularly about obstruction, to impeach President Trump than there ever was to impeach President Clinton. And as we all know,

the Republicans in Congress at that time took that evidence and impeached the president. He wasn't convicted at trial in the Senate, but he was impeached. The chair recognized Mr. Graham. I have told you the best I can, there's no doubt these are high crimes. In my opinion, The best I can, there's no doubt these are high crimes. In my opinion, I have lost no sleep worrying about the fact that Bill Clinton may have to be removed from office because of his conduct. I have lost tons of sleep thinking he may get away with what he did. And so that's a decision. It's a political decision. It's a difficult one. It's a risky one, but it's a decision that Democrats are going to have to take seriously and consider as they go through this report like the next thing that could happen here is that Congress could

pick this up and could possibly start impeachment hearings based on a lot of the evidence in this report. Do you think that that's likely? I don't have a crystal ball, but I think it's pretty obvious that they will have to consider it. But impeachment is such a political question, and the ramifications of it are uncertain. And there's no doubt that investigations, congressional investigations will continue. Democrats in Congress will get their hands on an unredacted copy of the report and that might lead them to a different kind of decision than they would have otherwise made. But I think the thing to understand always about impeachment is that it is a political process. And it's very risky to proceed with an impeachment unless you know you

have the country behind you, because these are elected officials, and they will be responsible to the voters ultimately about a decision over impeachment. This was a crucial matter in 1974, as Congress considered impeachment then. And as more details came out about what Richard Nixon had done to obstruct justice, it became clear that the country would be behind Congress if it decided to impeach. Mr. Thornton. Aye. Ms. Holtzman. Aye. Mr. Owens. Aye.

The other example, Clinton. Right. The other example, Clinton. It was always clear that the public was not behind the Republicans when they decided to impeach Bill Clinton. And they paid a price for it in the midterm elections. And this could be a lesson for the Democrats. Those two things are the lessons that will guide them. And they both say the same thing, which is you proceed with impeachment only if the country is behind you, only if you have the popular support. And if you don't, then don't do it. You know, I can't help but think of this one quote from the report. It's this scene when Donald Trump finds out that the special counsel has been hired, that Robert Mueller has been hired. And he gets really angry and he says this is the worst thing that's ever happened to him, that this will be the end of his presidency. This is all quoted in the report. And while there was no decision on criminality in this report, it is still very possible that this report ends

his presidency. I think that's quite possible. It may end at the ballot box, but I think it's very hard for him to defend himself against the behavior that's described in the report simply by saying no criminality is found. Criminality, the law, is the lowest possible standard of acceptable behavior. The lowest possible. Ethical standards apply. Normal common decency. Acting on behalf of the best interests in the country. All of those things are higher standards. And there's evidence in the report that he did not meet those standards. He met only the lowest. He didn't break the law. Keith, thank you so much for coming by today. Thanks for asking me, Jamie.

As you'd expect, there's a ton of reaction coming out of Washington on Thursday. White House aide Kellyanne Conway responded to the report. She says it's evidence that Donald Trump did nothing wrong here. Honestly, it's time to move on. Total exoneration. The president's in a great mood. On the other side, Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi says the report undercuts what William Barr said about obstruction and demanded that Robert Mueller testify before Congress. And just one more thing before we go today. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn how the podcast comes together,

follow at CBC Podcasts on Instagram. In our stories, we've documented how the entire team at FrontBurner works together to bring you breaking news stories like this one. Plus, you'll get to see behind-the-scenes footage from team at FrontBurner works together to bring you breaking news stories like this one. Plus, you'll get to see behind-the-scenes footage from inside the FrontBurner studio and our D.C. Bureau. That's all for today. FrontBurner comes to you from CBC News and CBC Podcasts. The show was produced by Chris Berube, Imogen Burchard, Elaine Chao, and Shannon Higgins. Associate producer is Matt Alma, with help from Hannah Alberga.

Special thanks this week to Sylvia Thompson and Patrick Ferguson, who got on an e-bike to track down a bunch of notes that Keith Bowe had made. And so we're very grateful. Derek Vanderwyk does our sound design, with help this week from Austin Pomeroy. The executive producer of Frontburner is Nick McKay-Blocos. And I'm your host, Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening and see you Monday. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.

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