Opinion: As new questions on Trump’s corruption emerge, his lawless threats escalate
President Trump answers questions as he leaves the White House Friday. By Greg Sargent Greg Sargent Opinion writer covering national politics Email Bio Follow Opinion writer April 26 at 10:09 AM As the political world continues to digest the Mueller report, we are entering into a new and especially dangerous phase of the tortured, twisting Russia scandal.
This is creating an increasingly unstable situation that may essentially force Democrats to choose between total confrontation and total capitulation. One of the worst Mueller revelations centered on Trump’s efforts to get then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate Clinton — thus turning law enforcement loose on his political opponents. Trump has greeted these revelations by converting the report — through a falsified reading of it as total exoneration — into justification for an even more emboldened push into lawlessness, now that he has a more pliant attorney general in William P. Barr.
Former prosecutors tell The Post that this is one of the clearest cases of obstruction. Indeed, Mueller concluded there is “substantial evidence” that Trump did this out of corrupt intent, to “prevent further investigative scrutiny” of his and his campaign’s conduct. There’s another reason this episode is important: By trying to limit the investigation to just future electoral interference, Trump was trying to impede a full accounting of the Russian attack on our political system, separate from whether his campaign criminally conspired with it. That itself is extraordinarily serious misconduct.
But Trump is aggressively trying to block this scrutiny. He is likely to exert executive privilege to try to block McGahn’s testimony, which House Democrats have subpoenaed. Congress will likely hear from Barr, but it’s still unclear whether they’ll get the full, unredacted Mueller report. As former prosecutor Renato Mariotti notes, this could hamstring Democrats’ ability to ask questions in hearings that will elicit illuminating answers.
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