Michael Wolff's new book says Mueller was ready to indict Trump. Mueller's office says that’s not true.
Michael Wolff is at it again.
The author of Fire and Fury, a tell-all about the Trump White House which gathered quite a bit of its material from former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon, is releasing a sequel of sorts next week titled Siege: Trump Under Fire, which is sure to stir up trouble in Washington. But people are already questioning and, in some cases, outright denying its legitimacy.
The book's most striking detail, The Guardian reports, is the apparent revelation of a draft memo written by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team in the wake of their investigation into 2016 Russian election interference. In the memo, Mueller reportedly drew up a three-count obstruction of justice indictment against President Trump before reconsidering. Mueller has said his office did not have the authority to indict a sitting president. If true, Trump would have been charged with corruptly influencing, obstructing, or impeding a pending proceeding before a department or agency of the United States, witness tampering, and retaliating against a witness.
A spokesman for Mueller has already denied the report, telling The Guardian that the documents described "do not exist." Others are skeptical, as well.
Here are some questions I have about @guardian reporting:
- how did @guardian describe documents to Carr? (Carr’s denial was limited to the docs described)
- what documents did @guardian see?
- was document at issue in the form of an indictment or a memo or something else? https://t.co/elTDtdvn6q— Ross Garber (@rossgarber) May 28, 2019
Even if the memo did exist, Mueller never followed through on the indictments, so the outcome ultimately remains the same either way. Read more at The Guardian.