Special Edition: The New York Times on Obstruction
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 January 2018
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This evening, the New York Times published a story with new details of significance to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation regarding the President and obstruction of justice. Michael Schmidt reports, among other news, that President Trump instructed White House Counsel Don McGahn to attempt to prevent Attorney General Jeff Sessions from recusing himself in the Justice Department’s Russia investigation. We put together a special edition podcast with Schmidt, and Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes, Susan Hennessey, Jack Goldsmith, and Bob Bauer to discuss what the story might mean for the future of the investigation. Warning: the audio is a recorded conference line and therefore somewhat rougher than usual.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.4 | Also check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:30.3 | I'm Benjamin Widis and this is the LawFair podcast, special edition the evening of Thursday, |
| 0:37.0 | January 4, 2018. |
| 0:40.2 | The New York Times this evening produced a surprising new story on obstruction of justice |
| 0:49.8 | and the investigation of it. |
| 0:52.1 | The lead reads President Trump gave firm instructions in March to White House top lawyer, stop |
| 0:59.2 | the attorney general Jeff Sessions from recusing himself in the Justice Department's investigation |
| 1:05.5 | into whether Mr. Trump's associates had helped a Russian campaign to disrupt the 2016 |
| 1:12.4 | election. |
| 1:13.6 | We put together an emergency podcast by recorded conference calls so forgive the audio quality. |
| 1:21.3 | I have on the line with me Mike Schmidt of the New York Times whose byline graces the |
| 1:27.6 | story Susan Hennessy, LawFair's executive editor Jack Goldsmith who needs no introduction |
| 1:36.7 | to this audience and Bob Bauer, a former White House counsel under President Obama. |
| 1:44.1 | Let's start with Mike. |
| 1:45.4 | So Mike this is quite a story and it covers a huge amount of ground. |
| 1:50.9 | Walk us through what you guys reported tonight. |
| 1:54.8 | Tonight we reported a series of things. |
| 1:57.6 | One that the president had instructed his top lawyer, Don again, to lobby Sessions, not |
... |
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