US special counsel Robert Mueller’s team of investigators is seeking information from the White House related to Michael Flynn’s stint as national security adviser and about the response to a meeting with a Russian lawyer that was attended by US President Donald Trump’s oldest son, the Associated Press has learned.
Mueller’s office has requested a large batch of documents from the White House and is expected to interview at least a half-dozen current and former aides in the coming weeks. Lawyers for the White House are in the process of trying to cooperate with the document requests.
Although the full scope of the investigation is not clear, the information requests make evident at least some of the areas that Mueller and his team of prosecutors intend to look into and also reveal a strong interest in certain of Trump’s actions as president.
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A person familiar with the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation said investigators want information on, among other topics, a meeting in June last year at Trump Tower that Donald Trump Jr attended with a Russian lawyer, as well as on the administration’s response to it.
A statement provided to journalists in July, which the White House has said Trump had a hand in drafting, said the meeting was primarily to discuss a disbanded program that used to allow US adoptions of Russian children, but e-mails released days later by Trump Jr show that he arranged the encounter with the expectation of receiving damaging information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Investigators are also interested in White House actions involving Flynn, such as what officials knew about an FBI investigation into him and how they responded to word that his Russian contacts had been scrutinized.
Flynn was forced out as national security adviser in February after White House officials concluded he had misled them about his conversations with then-Russian ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak.
Former US deputy attorney general Sally Yates has said she warned White House counsel Don McGahn in January that that deception left Flynn and the White House in a compromised position, and that she expected McGahn to take action.
That conversation took place two days after FBI agents had interviewed Flynn, but Flynn was not asked to resign until several weeks later, following news reports that said he had discussed sanctions during the transition period with Kislyak.
Former FBI director James Comey has said that Flynn was facing an FBI criminal investigation “of his statements in connection with the Russian contacts and the contacts themselves. And so that was my assessment at the time.”
Comey has also said that Trump, in a private Oval Office encounter in February, told him that he hoped he would end the FBI investigation into Flynn. Trump has denied that.
Comey’s own firing in May is also under investigation for potential obstruction of justice, and US Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller as special counsel and oversees his work, has been questioned by investigators about the circumstances of that event, according to people familiar with the matter.
A spokesman for the special counsel’s office declined to comment.
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