What Trump knew about alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election remains an open question despite the nearly two-year investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
While Trump has received early warnings ahead of indictments and detailed explanations behind the charges, criminal defendants typically get a bare-bones explanation.
One of the bedrock principles of the American legal system is that no one is above the law. When it comes to indicting a former US president, political factors must also be weighed.
A government filing on August 30, 2022, alleges that efforts were likely taken “to obstruct the government’s investigation” into classified documents held at Donald Trump’s Florida home.
Former President Donald Trump is facing mounting criminal evidence against him and his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Trump is also seeing GOP voters turning elsewhere.
President Trump has invoked executive privilege to stymie congressional investigators. Another president, Richard Nixon, did the same thing. It helped Nixon hold onto power – but only for a while.
Mueller’s report describes more than a dozen times Trump may have broken the law. Here’s how Congress will decide whether the president obstructed justice during federal probes into his presidency.
The full report on the special counsel’s Trump investigation has now been made public. As people, Congress and prosecutors nationwide dig into Mueller’s findings, here are three key issues to watch.
Legally, a person can obstruct justice even if he committed no other crime – though it is harder to prove. It all depends on the intent behind pressuring investigators, say, or firing an FBI director.
The president and attorney general can try to keep the findings of Mueller’s investigation secret. They’ll likely use both the secrecy of grand jury proceedings and executive privilege to do that.