The release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation report last week was bound to inspire twists of logic and partisan fables. These are some of the problematic claims we found.
Fact or fiction: Did the White House fully cooperate with the Mueller investigation?
Partisan media and Trump himself keep claiming that the White House cooperated fully with the investigation. Here are a few examples that contradict that and show how, to the contrary, Trump tried to control the investigation’s outcome:
- Trump never actually agreed to an interview with investigators. He provided them with written responses to questions about Russia (also posed in writing), which didn’t allow for follow-up questions. Trump refused to answer questions related to the obstruction investigation, even in writing. According to the report, the Mueller team chose not to subpoena Trump to testify out of concerns the process would delay the investigation and because they felt they had enough evidence without his testimony.
- Trump attempted to have Mueller removed from his position multiple times. For instance, in 2017 the president asked former White House counsel Don McGahn to push Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to remove Mueller for alleged conflicts of interest. However, Trump knew at that point that his allegation against Mueller wasn’t true. A month earlier, Trump’s advisers had told him that the Department of Justice had already vetted Mueller and that he had no conflicts of interest.
- Trump met with McGahn in 2018 and asked the attorney why he’d told Mueller’s team about Trump’s instructions (that McGahn should encourage Rosenstein to remove Mueller due to phony conflicts of interest). Trump also asked McGahn why he had taken notes on conversations with the president. That incident suggests that Trump administration staffers couldn’t freely speak with investigators without later answering to the president.
Fact or fiction: Does the Mueller report exclude Trump’s side of the story?
That’s what Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, claimed on “Fox News Sunday” during an interview with anchor Chris Wallace.
At one point, Giuliani badgered Wallace for his questions, saying: “Chris, what you’re doing is, you’re taking the Mueller report, which is a prosecutor’s version of what happened, you’re giving it full credit, and you’re not giving me a chance to explain the other side, which is very, very strong and was left out by the prosecutor.
“I think that’s unfair in a case of this magnitude, not to tell the other side.”
In fact, Trump had an extended opportunity to be interviewed. Instead, he refused to answer any questions, even in writing, related to the obstruction investigation.
Giuliani bizarrely went on to argue that Trump didn’t testify “because they were going to trap him into perjury like they did with (former National Security Adviser Michael) Flynn.” For dramatic effect, Giuliani added, “You think I’m a fool? I could have been disbarred if I let him testify.”
Giuliani’s suggestion – that Trump would probably have been charged with lying under oath – makes for a wacky defense of his client.
Fact or fiction: Did the report say the obstruction case against Trump is “ambiguous” or that Trump never committed a crime?
I examined this more fully here, but the report never explicitly says that Trump didn’t commit an obstruction-of-justice crime. The report also never says directly or even suggests that a case against Trump would be ambiguous.
Instead, the report goes to extreme lengths to avoid saying directly that Trump may have committed a crime. It repeats several times that the evidence investigators found “presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred.” In other words, the evidence suggests the opposite, that criminal conduct did occur.
In a similar example, the report notes that “an argument that the conduct at issue in this investigation falls outside the scope of the obstruction laws lacks merit.” That implies the opposite is true – that Trump’s behavior constituted obstruction of justice.
Fact or fiction: Did “18 angry Democrats” write the Mueller report?
Trump reupped this false claim in this smug “by the numbers” video he posted on Saturday. The video, which refers to “18 angry Democrats,” ends with a photo of a pleased Trump raising a glass after the nonsensical phrases “0 collusion” and “0 obstruction” flash across the screen.
I’m not sure what zero collusions look like, but the political makeup of the investigation team has been an issue for the far-right for a long time. Partisan media still regularly claims that “Trump-hating, angry Democrats” wrote the report. Giuliani also said on Sunday that Mueller hired a biased staff.
This isn’t accurate since the person heading the investigation, Mueller himself, is a registered Republican and a former appointee of Republican presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. (Democratic presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama also appointed Mueller to positions in their administrations.)
Last year, PolitiFact used public records to confirm that the majority of the investigation’s attorney staff members – 13 out of 17 – were registered Democrats. Several others were registered to vote but hadn’t declared a party affiliation. PolitiFact noted that the probe included investigative and office support staff whose names weren’t publicized, leaving their political affiliations unknown.
Fact or fiction: Did the report say that Trump should be “thrown in jail?”
No, the report never says Trump should get jail time. The report never takes a position as to whether or not Trump should be prosecuted for obstruction of justice.
Note: American Mythology is a weekly series where we factcheck an entire piece or debunk a topic across multiple publications or platforms. You can learn more about our approach to factchecking here.
Contact Mollie Bryant at 405-990-0988 or bryant@bigiftrue.org. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
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