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the White House into a corrupt fiefdom.
According to one source, Mueller could hardly contain his disgust
when last month Rudy Giuliani, the President's new lawyer—hired to
make a case for the President on television and to push back against the
Mueller team—airily dismissed the notion that a sitting president can
be indicted. Adding insult to injury, Giuliani—who a White House source
said has 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. But Mueller, ever
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 claim the right to haul the
president into court.
According to the proposed indictment, 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 began-on
the 7th day of the Trump administration. Three days prior, on January
24, National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, lied to the FBI about his
contacts with the Russian Ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. These were
contacts, according to the indictment, directed by an unnamed but
ranking member of the Presidential Transition team. In the view of
several former DOJ lawyers who discussed the case with me, that
unnamed person-could be Trump himself.-From January 27th, when the
President had the one-on-one dinner with FBI Director James Comey,
through to the middle of April, the President-conducted a cat and mouse
game with Comey, testing his loyalty and trying to establish his
willingness to aide the President and protect Flynn. On May 9th, baldly
admitting his dissatisfaction with Comey's unwillingness to play ball on
Russia, the President fired the FBI director. Shortly thereafter,
continuing his efforts to disrupt the investigation, the President turned
his ire on the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, pressuring him to fall into
line on the President's behalf, and on Robert Mueller, the newly
appointed Special Counsel, pushing to fire him to block the
investigation.
The second episode addressed in the indictment took place on
July 8, on Air Force one, where the President personally directed his
son, Don, Jr., to lie about the reason for his meeting in Trump Tower,
during the campaign, with representatives of the Russian government—
a meeting about collaborating with the Russians to undermine Hillary

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