The looming investigation into alleged collusion between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia has prompted the president’s lawyers to explore his powers to grand pardons to aides, family and even himself, the Washington Post reports.
President Trump’s administration has taken the extraordinary steps of looking for ways to undermine the team hired by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to investigate whether the Republican’s campaign team colluded with Russia to meddle in the 2016 election.
President Trump said it would be “a violation” for the Justice Department’s special counsel to delve into his personal finances.
The senior FBI official who oversaw the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation has been tapped to help manage the special counsel probe into Russia’s suspected meddling in the presidential election.
As special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of high-powered attorneys begin digging deeper into Russia’s suspected interference in the 2016 election, President Trump and his supporters are doing everything they can to smear and undermine one of the most important political investigations since Watergate.
The special investigation into alleged ties between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia may now include serious criminal allegations about a dormant real-estate development firm accused of running a criminal operation while it was partnering with the future president and the Kremlin.
The FBI has declined Freedom of Information Act requests from several media outlets asking for copies of the memos that fired FBI Director James Comey wrote following President Trump’s one-on-one meetings with the bureau boss before he was terminated.
A federal investigation is targeting ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn and one of his former business partners over payments they received by three Russian companies and a Netherlands-based company controlled by a Turkish businessman.
