Jeff Chiu / AP
In this April 21, 2016 file photo, attorney and former FBI Director Robert Mueller, right, arrives for a court hearing at the Phillip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco. Mueller, the special counsel examining Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, has requested interviews with three officials in the latest indication he will investigate whether the president obstructed justice, a person briefed on the investigation said on June 14, 2017.
Thursday, June 15, 2017 | 2 a.m.
WASHINGTON — Robert Mueller III, the special counsel examining Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, has requested interviews with three high-ranking current or former intelligence officials, the latest indication that he will investigate whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice, a person briefed on the investigation said Wednesday.
Mueller wants to question Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence; Adm. Michael Rogers, the head of the National Security Agency; and Richard Ledgett, the former NSA deputy director.
None of the men were involved with Trump’s campaign. But recent news reports have raised questions about whether Trump requested their help in trying to get James Comey, then the FBI director, to end an investigation into the president’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Last week, Coats and Rogers declined to answer questions before Congress about the matter.
Mueller’s office has also asked the NSA for any documents or notes related to the agency’s interactions with the White House as part of the Russia investigation, according to an intelligence official.
The Washington Post first reported Wednesday that Mueller had requested the interviews with the intelligence officials.
It has been clear since Mueller was appointed last month that he was likely to scrutinize the president’s actions. Trump has said he is willing to be interviewed by Mueller’s agents, and Comey has said he was sure the special counsel would investigate the possibility of obstruction.
In recent days, it has been said that Trump considered firing Mueller but was talked out of it by aides. If the president is under investigation for obstruction, a move to fire Mueller would prove more complicated politically.
The FBI’s gathering information about the possibility of a crime does not necessarily mean prosecutors are building a case against the president. In the early stages of investigations, FBI agents typically want to gather all the facts. Agents then present those facts to prosecutors who decide whether they want to take the case.
Mueller’s requests are among his first publicly known acts since he took over the investigation last month, after it was publicly revealed that Comey had written a memo about how Trump asked him to halt the inquiry into his fired national security adviser, Flynn.
In testimony on Capitol Hill last week, Comey said Mueller had a copy of that memo and several others Comey had written about his interactions with Trump.
A spokeswoman for the White House referred all questions on the matter to Trump’s outside lawyer, Marc Kasowitz. A spokesman for Kasowitz said, “The FBI leak of information regarding the president is outrageous, inexcusable and illegal.”
The scrutiny of Trump’s actions is part of a ripple of unintended consequences that began when the president, frustrated by the cloud of investigations into Russian collusion, fired Comey last month.
“When I decided to just do it, I said to myself — I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story,'” Trump told NBC. He then said: “I might even lengthen out the investigation, but I have to do the right thing for the American people. He’s the wrong man for that position.”
The White House could try to assert executive privilege to keep the intelligence officials from discussing conversations between them and the president with Mueller. But that could set up a fight in court, where judges have generally held that criminal investigators can demand information that would normally be privileged.
In his memos, Comey said Trump had encouraged him to end an FBI investigation into Flynn, an effort that Comey called “very disturbing.” There is a broad federal inquiry underway into Flynn's actions. Among the issues being examined are whether he misled investigators about his ties to Russia and his failure to disclose that he was working as a foreign agent of Turkey from August to November 2016: the same time he was advising the Trump campaign.
The Justice Department appointed Mueller last month to investigate whether members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russian operatives to influence the outcome of last year’s presidential election. Mueller inherited the criminal investigations into Flynn and Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. He was also given the authority to investigate obstruction.
While Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, has not said what exactly prompted him to appoint Mueller, his decision came after The New York Times published details about an Oval Office meeting Comey had with the president in February. During the meeting, the president brought up Flynn and told Comey “I hope you can let this go,” according to the memo. Comey told the Senate that he viewed that as a clear directive from the president to drop the investigation.
A former senior official said Mueller’s investigation was looking at money laundering by Trump associates. The suspicion is that any cooperation with Russian officials would most likely have been in exchange for some kind of financial payoff and that there would have been an effort to hide the payments, probably by routing them through offshore banking centers.
