Special counsel Robert Mueller is examining President Donald Trump's multitude of tweets aimed at his attorney general and former FBI director to determine if they rise to the level of obstruction of justice, The New York Times is reporting.
Further, Mueller wants the tweets to be part of his discussion with the president, if and when the pair agree to a sitdown, the Times reports.
At issue is whether the dozens of Trump's tweets were meant to intimidate and/or pressure Attorney General Jeff Sessions and ex-FBI chief James Comey into killing the Russia investigation, the Times reports.
Publicly, Trump's lawyers dismiss any connection between Trump's tweets and obstruction as nonsense.
"If you’re going to obstruct justice, you do it quietly and secretly, not in public," Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani told the Times.
However, Mueller's special counsel has informed Trump's legal team that they're examining the tweets under a big umbrella of obstruction of justice and that they want to ask the president about them, the Times reports. Privately, that has Trump's attorneys spooked, according to the Times.
"There's rarely evidence that someone sits down and says, 'I intend to commit a crime,' so any type of investigation hangs on using additional evidence to build a narrative arc that hangs together," former federal prosecutor Samuel Buell told the Times.
"That’s why a prosecutor wants more pieces of evidence. You need to lock down the argument," Buell told the Times.
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