Special Counsel Robert Mueller now has access to a letter drafted by President Donald Trump and a top political aide detailing the rationale behind firing former FBI Director James Comey, the New York Times reported Friday.
Trump wrote the letter in May with top political aide Stephen Miller, with the intention of sending the letter to Comey to explain his firing. White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II ultimately prevented the pair from sending the letter, administration officials told the TheNYT.
Deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein wrote a separate letter focusing on Comey’s involvement in the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server that was delivered to Comey one day after his dismissal May 9.
The original letter, recently given to Mueller by the Justice Department, clearly describes the rationale behind Comey’s dismissal. While it remains unclear to what degree the Russia investigation influenced Trump’s decision, top aides claim the president was unhappy with Comey’s refusal to publicly exonerate him, despite private assurances that he was not personally under investigation.
The White House officially maintained that Comey’s firing was unrelated to the Russia investigation, but Trump later contradicted this position during an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, in which he admitted he was considering “the Russia thing” when he fired Comey.
Comey admitted that it made him “wildly nauseous” to think that the Clinton email investigation may have influenced the election while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in May.
Rosenstein met with a White House lawyer at the Department of Justice two days after Comey’s testimony to express concerns about his handling of the Clinton email investigation. Rosenstein’s concerns ultimately served as the administration’s official justification for Comey’s dismissal.
Comey’s handling of the email investigation has come under further scrutiny as reports indicate that Comey began preparing to exonerate Clinton months before investigators had finished interviewing all key witnesses. The Senate Judiciary Committee recently obtained drafts of a statement detailing the rationale behind not filing charges against Clinton that were written roughly two months before the investigation was concluded.
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