Robert Mueller gains a major leg-up over Donald Trump
Now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has indicated he wants to interview Donald Trump about the Russia scandal within the next couple weeks, it means Mueller is ready to take his big swing at Trump – at least when it comes to obstruction of justice. So it’s notable that Trump just publicly demonstrated that he doesn’t know what obstruction is. No, really. This gives Mueller a major leg-up heading into their interview.
Here’s what Trump recently said about his decision to fire FBI Director James Comey: “So, they make up a crime, and the crime doesn’t exist. And then they say obstruction. And how could there be obstruction on firing Comey? When the man who’s in charge of it wrote a letter that was far stronger than anything I would have written. He was in charge – Deputy Rosenstein. He wrote a letter that’s far stronger than even what I say.” (link). This means, in effect, that Trump believes he can’t have committed obstruction with regard to the Comey firing, no matter why he did it.
This means that Trump is likely to go into his Mueller interview and blab about everything. In his mind the Russia scandal is fake news to begin with, so he believes his actions can’t have constituted obstruction. He doesn’t understand that if you knowingly try to obstruct a criminal investigation into your actions, you’re committing a crime whether you think you’re innocent or guilty of the original crime.
It explains why Donald Trump went on television long ago and blabbed to Lester Holt that he fired Comey to try to make the Russia investigation go away. It also means Trump is going to give away everything, at least with regard to obstruction of justice, when he speaks to Robert Mueller. Trump doesn’t know what obstruction is, and he’s irrevocably convinced he didn’t commit it, so he’s going to give away the entire thing. No matter what his lawyers tell him in advance, he’ll sing like a canary about his obstruction once he’s in the room with Mueller.
