Special counsel Robert Mueller found President Trump’s written answers submitted to his office to be “inadequate” and weighed issuing a subpoena to compel the president’s testimony, according to the newly released report on his investigation.
The special counsel’s office attempted for more than a year, starting in December 2017, to interview Trump as part of its probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether the president obstructed justice.
But Trump’s attorneys resisted these efforts by Mueller and his team of prosecutors and instead submitted written responses to questions in late November 2018. The following month, the special counsel’s office told the president’s lawyers “of the insufficiency of those responses in several respects,” according to Mueller’s 448-page report.
Trump stated more than 30 times in his answers that he “does not ‘recall’ or ‘remember’ or have an ‘incomplete recollection’” of details sought by the special counsel, Mueller said. Other answers provided by the president were “incomplete or imprecise.”
The special counsel’s office told Trump’s lawyers the written responses “demonstrate the inadequacy of the written format, as we have had no opportunity to ask follow-up questions that would ensure complete answers and potentially refresh your client’s recollection or clarify the extent or nature of his lack of recollection,” according to the report.
Mueller and his team again sought to interview Trump in person on specific topics, though the president rebuffed the request.
The refusal by Trump to answer questions from the special counsel in person led Mueller to consider whether to issue a subpoena compelling his testimony, a move that likely would have teed up a protracted legal battle that may have ended up before the Supreme Court. In his report, Mueller said he and his team believed they had the “authority and legal justification” to subpoena Trump but opted not to do so.
“We viewed the answers to be inadequate,” Mueller wrote in his report. “But at that point, our investigation had made significant progress and had produced substantial evidence for our report. We thus weighed the costs of potentially lengthy constitutional litigation, with resulting delay in finishing our investigation, as against the anticipated benefits of our investigation and report.”
Mueller made public the list of written questions submitted to the president and his answers, which covered topics including the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower, Russia’s hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s computer networks and subsequent publication of emails by WikiLeaks, a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow, and contacts with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign and transition.
The special counsel spent 22 months investigating whether members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russia and ultimately concluded no coordination between the two — or any other American — occurred. Mueller and his team of prosecutors also examined whether Trump obstructed justice, and his report outlined 10 episodes involving the president that raised questions of whether that occurred.
The special counsel ultimately did not issue a determination as to whether Trump obstructed justice but instead laid out evidence on both sides of the debate.
Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, upon reviewing Mueller’s legal theories and the evidence collected by the special counsel, said there was not enough evidence to establish whether Trump committed wrongdoing.
Barr praised the White House’s cooperation with the special counsel earlier Thursday and said Trump “took no act that in fact deprived the special counsel of the documents and witnesses necessary to complete his investigation.”
