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NYT: Mueller Has Early Draft of Trump Letter Giving Reasons for Firing Comey

C

chadskin

Member
The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has obtained a letter that President Trump and a top political aide drafted in the days before Mr. Trump fired the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, which explains the president's rationale for why he planned to dismiss the director.

The May letter had been met with opposition from Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, who believed that some of its contents were problematic, according to interviews with a dozen administration officials and others briefed on the matter.

Mr. McGahn successfully blocked the president from sending Mr. Comey the letter, which Mr. Trump had composed with Stephen Miller, one of the president's top political advisers. A different letter, written by the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, and focused on Mr. Comey's handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server, was ultimately sent to the F.B.I. director on the day he was fired.

The contents of the original letter appears to provide the clearest rationale that Mr. Trump had for firing Mr. Comey. It is unclear how much of Mr. Trump's rationale focuses on the Russia investigation, although Mr. Trump told aides at the time he was angry that Mr. Comey refused to publicly say that Mr. Trump himself was not under investigation. Mr. Comey later said in testimony to Congress that the president was not under investigation.

Mr. Mueller is conducting a wide-ranging investigation into Russia and associates of Mr. Trump, including whether the president obstructed justice when he dismissed the F.B.I. director.

The Justice Department turned over a copy of the letter to Mr. Mueller in recent weeks.

Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer, declined to discuss the letter or its contents. ”To the extent the special prosecutor is interested in these matters, we will be fully transparent with him,'' he said.

Mr. Miller drafted the letter at the urging of Mr. Trump during a weekend in May, when Mr. Trump and his team were at the president's private golf club in Bedminster, N.J. During that same weekend, as Mr. Trump and a small group of aides were in Bedminster devising a rationale for Mr. Comey's dismissal, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Mr. Rosenstein were working on a parallel effort to fire Mr. Comey.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/us/politics/trump-comey-firing-letter.html

Update via WaPo:
The multi-page letter enumerated Trump's long-simmering complaints with Comey, according to people familiar with it, including Trump's frustration that Comey was unwilling to say publicly that Trump was not personally under investigation in the FBI's inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Trump drafted the letter with senior policy adviser Stephen Miller on an early-May weekend visit to his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., and then shared it with senior aides during an Oval Office meeting the day before the firing, according to people familiar with the discussions.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...c6cd8e-8f17-11e7-8df5-c2e5cf46c1e2_story.html

2nd update via WSJ:
Paraphrasing the letter, the administration official said Mr. Trump wanted this message sent: ”You've told me three times I'm not under investigation but you won't tell the world, and it's hampering the country."
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Mr. Trump sought to take action because he saw the lingering investigation as a weight on his presidency, underscored by conversations with some foreign leaders who would bring up the Russia probe, according to the administration official. The president wrote the four-page letter with the help of a senior White House aide, Stephen Miller.

”It was the president's ideas. Miller was the scrivener," the administration official said.
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Last month, with the White House's consent, the Justice Department turned over the draft letter to Mr. Mueller, two administration officials said. The New York Times on Friday first reported on the letter.
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Mr. Trump drafted the letter just days after Mr. Comey's testimony to Congress on May 3 defending his handling of the Clinton email investigation in 2016.

Mr. Trump was ”offended" by the testimony, and complained about an ”arrogance" shown by Mr. Comey that wasn't appropriate given his position, the administration official said.

”It makes me mildly nauseous to think we might have had some impact on the election" won by Mr. Trump last November, Mr. Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee in May. ”But honestly, it wouldn't change the decision."

The next day, a Thursday, Mr. Trump asked top aides about firing Mr. Comey, according to a person familiar with the conversation.

On Friday May 5, just before leaving for his Bedminster golf course, Mr. Trump dressed down two of his top aides—White House counsel Don McGahn and Steve Bannon, then his chief strategist—over Attorney General Jeff Sessions ' decision, two months earlier, to recuse himself from the Russian investigation.

White House reporters captured part of the argument on camera, including a video shot from outside the windows of the Oval Office that showed Mr. Bannon pointing and shouting.
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Aides said the Bedminister trip was mostly supposed to include time for golf and relaxation. The weather didn't cooperate, and Mr. Trump continued to be bothered by Mr. Comey's testimony. By Sunday, he was working up the letter with Mr. Miller and other aides.
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https://www.wsj.com/article_email/t...mey-out-1504303851-lMyQjAxMTA3MTA1MTcwNTE1Wj/
 
J

JustenP88

I earned 100 Gamerscore™ for collecting 300 widgets and thereby created Trump's America
Good to see Stephen Miller potentially compromised. Fuck him and his band.
 
M

Maridia

Member
I love the last line of the article: "Mr. Comey was fired on May 9."

Really drives home the absurdity of all that's happened in the last few months. Seems like years worth of news.
 
K

KojiKnight

Member
Either this white house is the most incompetent ever when it comes to using a shredder, or they've burnt out their shredders on other incriminating details and this is just the surface stuff. Either way, it's fun to watch... too bad my country is burning down in the background.
 
R

Randolph Freelander

Member
ElectricBlanketFire said:
"Let me tell you why I suck as a salesman..."
Click to expand...

acsv2Yl.gif
 
J

jelly

Member
How do you even find something like that. Are people covering their butts by holding onto more damning things to save themselves?
 
M

More_Badass

Member
"Look, Comey, it's all fake news. I'm tremendously innocent and have the biggest heart of any president in history, just the nicest guy

PS please don't look at my taxes or else"
 
K

kris.

Banned
Takamura-San said:
How long until the letter makes it to the media?
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Soon, hopefully. It was like a few hours after the we found out about the existence of the Steele dossier/Don Jr.'s emails that they both were made public one way or another. I wouldn't be surprised if the big 5pm drop today was the full letter lol
 
K

Karsticles

Member
jtb said:
How stupid do you have to be to draft a letter like this?
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Fox News is going all-in on Comey right now. They are saying that he drafted the letter saying Clinton would not be prosecuted for her emails before the investigation took place.
 
K

KoopaTheCasual

Junior Member
Holy shit.... I think that the original letter was too "problematic" to send is a huge fucking deal. It's probably just as incriminating as his "I fired him because of the Russia witchhunt" rationale on TV.

Dude is so fucked for Obstruction of Justice at this point. I think that much is clear. Now for the more interesting questions, when do we think the charges will be presented? Next fall? And if so, will Congress have the audacity to not motion for Impeachment when deemed necessary by a special prosecutor?
Nazgul_Hunter said:
I hope NYT has it and is just waiting for the White House to lie about it one more time before releasing it.
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Hoping/betting on this as well.
 
B

Bam Bam Baklava

Member
KoopaTheCasual said:
And if so, will Congress have the audacity to not motion for Impeachment when deemed necessary by a special prosecutor?

Hoping/betting on this as well.
Click to expand...

Graham and Grassley just released some trashy misleading letter about Comey yesterday to cover Trump's ass from these news releases. What do you think?
 
A

androvsky

Member
Drafted by Stephen "Our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned." Miller, oh I want to see that so bad.


I was going to add a disclaimer to the quote I remembered that it was in the context of setting immigration rules, but finding the full quote makes it even worse than I remembered.
 
D

Darryl M R

Member
We got Miller involved now. This is good.

Karsticles said:
Fox News is going all-in on Comey right now. They are saying that he drafted the letter saying Clinton would not be prosecuted for her emails before the investigation took place.
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I would love if Fox get dragged into this due to someone in management taking direct orders from Trump or the WH on what to cover and what stories to push.
 
G

Guevara

Member
"I thought he was my friend and wanted to take down Hillary, but he's NOT a friend and he's stupid and I hate him."
 
Hesemonni

Hesemonni

Banned
I'm actually surprised how much info we've gotten recently. I would've expected these guys to manage a really tight ship when it comes to leaking.
 
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