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White House Watch: What Does Mueller Know?

By Michael Warren

Your must-read of the day comes from the New York Times, and it’s full of interesting details about special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. Michael Schmidt reports that Mueller has learned a lot of new information about the nature of Donald Trump’s decision-making in his first few months as president on several important issues related to the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

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Among the details the Times uncovers: Trump tried to stop the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, from recusing himself from the Russia investigation, which the former Alabama senator did in March; Don McGahn, the White House counsel, was tasked with asking Sessions not to recuse; an initial draft of a letter Trump intended to send FBI director James Comey “described the Russia investigation as ‘fabricated and politically motivated’”; an aide for Sessions asked a congressional staffer for damaging information about Comey just four days before the FBI director was fired; and Reince Priebus, the chief of staff, has told investigators that Trump discussed with him his call to Comey to urge the director to say the president was not under investigation.

Here is one of the most jarring anecdotes:

. . . Mr. Trump began to discuss openly with White House officials his desire to fire Mr. Comey. This unnerved some inside the White House counsel’s office, and even led one of Mr. McGahn’s deputies to mislead the president about his authority to fire the F.B.I. director. The lawyer, Uttam Dhillon, was convinced that if Mr. Comey was fired, the Trump presidency could be imperiled, because it would force the Justice Department to open an investigation into whether Mr. Trump was trying to derail the Russia investigation. Longstanding analysis of presidential power says that the president, as the head of the executive branch, does not need grounds to fire the F.B.I. director. Mr. Dhillon, a veteran Justice Department lawyer before joining the Trump White House, assigned a junior lawyer to examine this issue. That lawyer determined that the F.B.I. director was no different than any other employee in the executive branch, and that there was nothing prohibiting the president from firing him. But Mr. Dhillon, who had earlier told Mr. Trump that he needed cause to fire Mr. Comey, never corrected the record, withholding the conclusions of his research.

Again, according to the Times, this is all information Mueller has learned in the course of his investigation. The revelations suggest the special counsel is building, at the very least, an obstruction of justice case against President Trump, although the newspaper notes that experts are “divided” on whether the evidence available to the public justifies bringing such a case.

Nevertheless, the claims from Trump supporters that the special counsel investigation was dragging on and producing nothing have grown weaker in the past few months. Mueller has brought two indictments and secured two more guilty pleas, including from the former national security adviser Mike Flynn on a relatively minor charge. That suggests Flynn, who was with Team Trump from the campaign through the transition and into the White House, is cooperating with Mueller’s investigators. It’s long been clear the Russia probe was more than a “nothingburger” but with every passing month it’s beginning to look more serious, and more problematic, for the Trump presidency.

Infrastructure Watch—The Trump administration has said getting an infrastructure bill passed is a policy goal for 2018. But the topic didn’t come up at the White House Thursday when the president met with Republican senators to discuss the year’s legislative agenda. I asked White House legislative affairs director Marc Short what about an infrastructure package, which the administration says should total $1 trillion in federal, state, and local investment, did Trump bring up with the lawmakers.

“It wasn’t discussed,” Short replied.

Trump Tweet of the Day


Mark It Down—“I support President Trump and the platform upon which he was elected. My family and I have not communicated with Steve Bannon in many months and have provided no financial support to his political agenda, nor do we support his recent actions and statements.” —Rebekah Mercer, Republican donor and former backer of Breitbart, January 4, 2018

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders did a curious thing in her Thursday briefing. Jeff Mason of Reuters asked the first question, related to this week’s firestorm over Michael Wolff’s book on the Trump White House: “Did White House staff, including Steve [Bannon], have to sign nondisclosure agreements when they came to work at the White House?”

“There’s an ethics agreement,” Sanders said. “Beyond that, I can’t get into any additional details.”

Mason did not press her further, but her response was not a denial that White House staff had to sign NDAs. But signing such an agreement in a contract would be a strange thing for a public official, especially at the White House, to do. Simply put, there’s no way to enforce an agreement to protect proprietary information when the employee in question works for the public.

So it seems straightforward enough to dispel the idea out of hand. Of course White House staff did not have to sign nondisclosure agreements—the very idea is absurd. So why did Sanders not say so? I asked Sanders and the White House to clarify, but I did not receive a response.

2018 Watch—Do Democrats really have a chance to win Tennessee’s open Senate seat this November? My colleague David Byler says it’s not a guaranteed hold for Republicans (Bob Corker, their party’s incumbent, is retiring) but that the state has changed a lot since the leading Democratic candidate, Phil Bredesen, won his last governor’s race in 2006. Through a series of maps, Byler notes how Tennessee has gotten a lot more Republican over the last three cycles, from a 14-point margin for George W. Bush in 2004 to a 26-point margin for Donald Trump in 2016:

White voters are likely responsible for much of this movement. According to the New York Times Upshot’s estimates, white voters in Tennessee moved about 15 percentage points to the right between 2004 and 2012. County-level data suggests that between 2004 and 2016, areas with fewer college graduates, fewer black voters, and more residents who were born in-state were more likely to shift towards Republicans. The same county-level data shows that Trump tended to improve on Romney’s two-party vote share in areas where whites were less educated. These patterns should sound familiar. The Republican party has been gaining strength with white voters (especially in the South) for a long time, and non-college educated whites who voted for Obama and Trump played a huge role in 2016. The long-term trends have pulled the state right since Bredesen was last re-elected, which could create problems for him in 2018.

Video of the Day


The first hipster trend of 2018 is upon us and the New York Times is on it. Introducing, um, raw water?

“It has a vaguely mild sweetness, a nice smooth mouth feel, nothing that overwhelms the flavor profile,” said Kevin Freeman, a shift manager at the store. “Bottled water’s controversial. We’ve curtailed our water selection. But this is totally outside that whole realm.” Here on the West Coast and in other pockets around the country, many people are looking to get off the water grid. Start-ups like Live Water in Oregon and Tourmaline Spring in Maine have emerged in the last few years to deliver untreated water on demand. An Arizona company, Zero Mass Water, which installs systems allowing people to collect water directly from the atmosphere around their homes, began taking orders in November from across the United States. It has raised $24 million in venture capital.

Song of the Day—“I Got Mine” by the Black Keys

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