Trump Pressed Top Republicans to End Senate Russia Inquiry
WASHINGTON
— President Trump over the summer repeatedly urged senior Senate
Republicans, including the chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, to end the panel’s investigation into Russia’s interference
in the 2016 election, according to a half dozen lawmakers and aides. Mr.
Trump’s requests were a highly unusual intervention from a president
into a legislative inquiry involving his family and close aides.
Senator
Richard Burr of North Carolina, the intelligence committee chairman,
said in an interview this week that Mr. Trump told him that he was eager
to see an investigation that has overshadowed much of the first year of
his presidency come to an end.
“It
was something along the lines of, ‘I hope you can conclude this as
quickly as possible,’” Mr. Burr said. He said he replied to Mr. Trump
that “when we have exhausted everybody we need to talk to, we will
finish.”
In
addition, according to lawmakers and aides, Mr. Trump told Senator
Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, and Senator Roy
Blunt, Republican of Missouri and a member of the intelligence
committee, to end the investigation swiftly.
Senator
Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who is a former chairwoman of
the intelligence committee, said in an interview this week that Mr.
Trump’s requests were “inappropriate” and represented a breach of the
separation of powers.
“It
is pressure that should never be brought to bear by an official when
the legislative branch is in the process of an investigation,” Ms.
Feinstein said.
Raj
Shah, a White House spokesman, said on Thursday that the president had
not acted improperly. Mr. Trump, he said, “at no point has attempted to
apply undue influence on committee members’’ and believes “there is no
evidence of collusion and these investigations must come to a fair and
appropriate completion.’’
Mr.
Trump’s requests of lawmakers to end the Senate investigation came
during a period in the summer when the president was particularly
consumed with Russia and openly raging at his own attorney general, Jeff
Sessions, for recusing himself from any inquiries into Russian meddling
in the election. Mr. Trump often vented to his own aides and even
declared his innocence to virtual strangers he came across on his New
Jersey golf course.
In
this same period, the president complained frequently to Mr. McConnell
about not doing enough to bring the investigation to an end, a
Republican official close to the leader said.
Republicans
played down Mr. Trump’s appeals, describing them as the actions of a
political newcomer unfamiliar with what is appropriate presidential
conduct.
Mr.
Burr said he did not feel pressured by the president’s appeal,
portraying it as the action of someone who has “never been in
government.” But he acknowledged other members of his committee have had
similar discussions with Mr. Trump. “Everybody has promptly shared any
conversations that they’ve had,” Mr. Burr said.
One
of them was Mr. Blunt, who was flying on Air Force One with Mr. Trump
to Springfield, Mo., in August when he found himself being lobbied by
the president “to wrap up this investigation,” according to a Republican
official familiar with the conversation.
Mr. Blunt was not bothered by Mr. Trump’s comments, the official said, because he did not see them bearing a “sinister motive.’’
But
Mr. Burr and Mr. Blunt have both taken steps to limit their interaction
with Mr. Trump this year, not wanting to create the perception of
coziness as they conduct a highly sensitive investigation into contacts
between the president’s campaign and Moscow last year.
Robert
S. Mueller III, the Justice Department’s special counsel who is leading
a separate investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, is
also examining whether Mr. Trump tried to obstruct justice when he
fired James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director who was running a federal
inquiry into the matter.
Mr.
Trump also called other lawmakers over the summer with requests that
they push Mr. Burr to finish the inquiry, according to a Republican
senator who requested anonymity to discuss his contact with the
president.
This
senator, who was alarmed upon hearing word of the president’s pleas,
said Mr. Trump’s request to the other senators was clear: They should
urge Mr. Burr to bring the Russia investigation to a close. The senator
declined to reveal which colleagues Mr. Trump had contacted with the
request.
Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers feared he would move to fire Mr. Mueller, an option that the president pointedly left open in an Oval Office interview with The New York Times in July.
During
this time, Mr. Trump made several calls to senators without senior
staff present, according to one West Wing official. According to
senators and other Republicans familiar with the conversations, Mr.
Trump would begin the talks on a different topic but eventually drift
toward the Russia investigation.
In
conversations with Mr. McConnell and Senator Bob Corker, the Tennessee
Republican who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
Mr. Trump voiced sharp anger that congressional Republicans were not
helping lift the cloud of suspicion over Russia, the senators told
political allies. The Times reported in August that the president had complained to Mr. McConnell that he was failing to shield Mr. Trump from an ongoing Senate inquiry.
The
earlier call with Mr. Burr, however, was perhaps the most invasive,
given Mr. Burr’s role directly supervising the Senate’s investigation of
Mr. Trump.
Mr.
Burr told other senators that Mr. Trump had stressed that it was time
to “move on” from the Russia issue, using that language repeatedly,
according to people who spoke with Mr. Burr over the summer. One
Republican close to Mr. Burr, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said
that Mr. Trump had been “very forceful.”
Asked
why Mr. Trump is so irritated with the investigation, Mr. Burr said:
“In his world it hampers his ability to project the strength he needs to
convey on foreign policy.”
A Quick Look at the Ties Between Trump Officials and Russia
At least eight people met or corresponded with Russian
officials or business people during the 2016 presidential campaign and
transition.
Mr.
Burr said Mr. Trump was not fully aware of the impropriety of his
request because the president still has the mind-set of a businessman
rather than a politician. “Businessmen are paid to skip things that they
think they can skip and get away with,” he said.
This past summer, Mr. Trump also contacted Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who in August introduced a bipartisan bill limiting the president’s power to dismiss special prosecutors
— a measure widely seen as aimed at protecting Mr. Mueller from Mr.
Trump. In an interview this week, Mr. Tillis said the president “just
asked me where my head was” on the legislation and described the
exchange as “pleasant.” Mr. Trump did not press him on the Senate
investigation, said Mr. Tillis, who is not on the intelligence
committee.
Republicans
said Mr. Trump’s ire often went beyond the intelligence committee
investigation and spilled over a range of issues that touched on Russia
and his relationship with Congress.
Another
Republican senator said Mr. Trump had not urged him to help bring the
Russia inquiry to a halt. Instead, the senator said, the president
nudged him to begin an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s connection
with the intelligence-gathering firm Fusion GPS, which produced a
dossier of allegations about Mr. Trump’s ties to Moscow.
Mr.
McConnell — who over the summer was quickly notified of Mr. Trump’s
calls to his Senate colleagues — told multiple associates that Mr. Trump
appeared unable to distinguish traditional policy concerns about Russia
from more specific questions about Russian interference in the
presidential race.
The
Senate leader told associates that Mr. Trump did not seem to recognize
that the Republican Party traditionally took a suspicious view of
Russia, or that lawmakers could favor punishing Russia without
questioning Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016. The president had reluctantly
signed a bill imposing sanctions on Moscow
on Aug. 2, using an extraordinary written statement to lash out against
what he viewed as a usurping of executive authority from a Congress
that “could not even negotiate a health care bill after seven years of
talking.”
Mr.
Trump, Mr. McConnell told associates, appeared inclined to treat
criticism of Russian meddling in the United States as giving credence to
unproven allegations that his campaign colluded with foreign actors.
In
that respect, Mr. Trump’s private consternation mirrored some of his
public complaints about the Russia issue. He has continued to seethe
regularly, and openly, about the scrutiny of Russia’s political
activities, tweeting
just last weekend: “Since the first day I took office, all you hear is
the phony Democrat excuse for losing the election, Russia, Russia,
Russia.”
