President Donald Trump’s legal team told investigators the president cannot illegally obstruct justice in the Russian probe because he has the authority to end the investigation, The New York Times reported Saturday.
Trump’s legal team sent a 20-page letter to special counsel Robert Mueller in January contending the president cannot illegally obstruct the probe into Russian election meddling because the Constitution empowers him to “terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon.”
The president and his team of lawyers, led by former Republican New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, are trying to keep Trump from being asked to answer questions about the probe in front of a grand jury. They fear Trump could expose himself to accusations of lying to the investigators. Legal analysts argue the team’s approach is novel and has never been tried by previous administrations.
“We don’t know what the law is on the intersection between the obstruction statutes and the president exercising his constitutional power to supervise an investigation in the Justice Department,” Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor, told The Times in an interview. “It’s an open question.”
Mueller has intimated in the past that he wants to interview Trump to determine if he had criminal intent to obstruct the investigation into his associates’ possible links to Russia’s election meddling. Mueller will have to decide whether to press ahead with a historic grand jury subpoena if Trump’s team denies him access to the president. – READ MORE
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