Renato Mariotti @renato_mariotti
THREAD: What does the news that Mueller has a draft of a Trump letter explaining why he wanted to fire Comey mean for the obstruction case?
1/ Today @nytimes reported that Mueller has an early draft of a letter that Stephen Miller wrote at Trump's urging.
2/ According to the @nytimes Miller drafted the letter at a Trump golf course while he and aides were discussing a rationale to fire Comey.
3/ At the same time, the @nytimes reports, Sessions and Rosenstein were working on a parallel effort to fire Comey.
4/ The @nytimes also noted that the White House Counsel blocked the Miller letter because he thought its contents were problematic.
5/ So what does mean? Because the White House Counsel rejected the letter, an obvious implication is that he believed its contents were
6/ problematic from a legal perspective. The White House Counsel is a lawyer, not a pollster, after all.
7/ We will probably never know what the White House Counsel said because of attorney-client privilege, but the fact that he reviewed the
8/ letter and blocked it is not privileged. The letter's contents can be used as evidence of the President's intent when he fired Comey,
9/ and its rejection by the White House Counsel suggests that he was on notice that his conduct was legally problematic.
10/ That could help Mueller prove that Trump had "corrupt" intent when firing Comey. You can expect Miller to be heavily questioned about
11/ the letter--the fact that Mueller has the letter suggests that executive privilege has been waived, and Mueller could probably overcome
12/ it in any event. Every participant in those conversations will be asked about what the President said and what he was told by others
15/ Also, as @rgoodlaw noted in the tweet below, Miller may have implicated himself through his actions.
Ryan Goodman
Ryan Goodman @rgoodlaw
Big implication from NYT scoop:
Stephen Miller perhaps implicated in conspiracy to obstruct justice
(DJT then an unindicted co-conspirator)
16/ If Miller agreed with Trump to obstruct justice, that's a crime called conspiracy and he's responsible for the acts of a co-conspirator.
17/ If he knew about obstruction and helped it succeed, that's also a crime--it's called aiding and abetting. So even if Mueller can't
18/ indict the President, there might still be an obstruction indictment given the involvement of others in the conduct.