If the President didn't obstruct justice, they would've said so!
Uploaded by BrentD15 May 03, 2019 at 12:25PM EDT
mueller report obstruction of justice donald trump russiagate
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![Page 382: "Under [the Office of Legal Counsel's] analysis, Congress can permissibly criminalize certain obstructive conduct by the President, such as suborning perjury, intimidating witnesses, or fabricating evidence, because those prohibitions raise no separation-of-powers questions. The Constitution does not authorize the President to engage in such conduct, and those actions would transgress the President's duty to 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed."](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/488/792/d8f.jpg "Separation of Powers")
![a. Outreach from the Russian Government At approximately 3 a.m. on election night, Trump Campaign press secretary Hope Hicks received a telephone call on her personal cell phone from a person who sounded foreign but was calling from a number with a DC area code.964 Although Hicks had a hard time understanding the person, she could make out the words "Putin call."965 Hicks told the caller to send her an email.966 The following morning, on November 9,2016, Sergey Kuznetsov, an official at the Russian Embassy to the United States, emailed Hicks from his Gmail address with the subject line, Message from Putin."967 Attached to the email was a message from Putin, in both English and Russian, which Kuznetsov asked Hicks to convey to the President-Elect.968 In the message, Putin offered his congratulations to Trump for his electoral victory, stating he "look[ed] forward to 969 working with [Trump] on leading Russian-American relations out of crisis." Hicks forwarded the email to Kushner, asking, "Can you look into this? Don't want to get duped but don't want to blow off Putin!"970 Kushner stated in Congressional testimony that he](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/488/789/5d9.jpg "Trump and Putin communications")
![Barbara Ledeen and Peter Smith were among the people contacted by Flynn. Ledeen, a long-time Senate staffer who had previously sought the Clinton emails, provided updates to Flynn about her efforts throughout the summer of 2016.266 Smith, an investment advisor who was active in Republican politics, also attempted to locate and obtain the deleted Clinton emails.267 Ledeen began her efforts to obtain the Clinton emails before Flynn's request, as early as December 2015.268 On December 3, 2015, she emailed Smith a proposal to obtain the emails, stating, "Here is the proposal I briefly mentioned to you. The person I described to you would be happy to talk with you either in person or over the phone. The person can get the emails which 1 Were classified and 2. Were purloined by our enemies. That would demonstrate what needs to be demonstrated."259 Attached to the email was a 25-page proposal stating that the "Clinton email server was, in all likelihood, breached long ago," and that the Chinese, Russian, and Iranian intelligence services could "re-assemble the server's email content."270 The proposal called for a three-phase approach. The first two phases consisted of open-source analysis. The third phase consisted of checking with certain intelligence sources "that have access through liaison work with various foreign services" to determine if any of those services had gotten to the server. The proposal noted, "Even if a single email was recovered and the providence [sic] of that email was a foreign service, it would be catastrophic to the Clinton campaign[.]" Smith forwarded the email to two colleagues and](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/488/786/b43.jpg "Michael Flynn, Barbara Ledeen, and Peter Smith")
