What [Donald] Trump has done here is what every defense lawyer warns their client not to do, which is talk to witnesses,” Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general under President Barack Obama, told me Thursday morning. The night before, The New York Times had reported that Robert Mueller is aware of episodes in which Trump discussed the Russia investigation with two key witnesses, White House general counsel Donald McGahn and former chief of staff Reince Priebus. “It always looks suspicious, like you are coaching them, coordinating, inducing them—particularly if you are their boss and you wield a certain amount of power,” Katyal continued. “Obviously nobody wields more power than Donald Trump.”
The revelation incited a flurry of speculation in Washington’s legal community as to whether the president had inadvertently strengthened Mueller’s obstruction of justice case, yet again, or even engaged in witness tampering. “You’ve got the president looking much more like an ordinary criminal than somebody who is acting like the president of the United States,” Katyal lamented. But it also highlights the mounting tensions between Trump and McGahn, whose job as White House counsel has grown increasingly untenable as the Russia investigation has snowballed.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/03/donald-trump-robert-mueller-donald-mcgahn
And he just gave Mueller more support for an obstruction charge. He is an idiot.
The revelation incited a flurry of speculation in Washington’s legal community as to whether the president had inadvertently strengthened Mueller’s obstruction of justice case, yet again, or even engaged in witness tampering. “You’ve got the president looking much more like an ordinary criminal than somebody who is acting like the president of the United States,” Katyal lamented. But it also highlights the mounting tensions between Trump and McGahn, whose job as White House counsel has grown increasingly untenable as the Russia investigation has snowballed.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/03/donald-trump-robert-mueller-donald-mcgahn
And he just gave Mueller more support for an obstruction charge. He is an idiot.