Justice Department releases more Mueller documents to CNN and BuzzFeed
The Justice Department has released another 300 pages of notes from major witness interviews in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
The documents, include memos — called 302s by the FBI — from top administration and campaign witnesses Jared Kushner, Andrew McCabe, Sean Spicer, Reince Priebus, Rick Gates, Michael Cohen and Steve Bannon. This is the fifth time CNN has gotten documents like these from the Justice Department regarding the Mueller investigation, as part of a lawsuit in conjunction with BuzzFeed News.
So far, the previous releases have fleshed out details that Mueller summarized in his final report regarding the actions of President Donald Trump and his campaign. The memos have revealed, for instance, how top Trump campaign officials witnessed the President and other Trump campaign officials pushing for the release of stolen Democratic emails and supported a conspiracy theory that Ukraine hacked the Democrats in 2016.
The memos were typed up by agents or prosecutors after they questioned each witness. The Justice Department has kept many of the memos heavily redacted as they continue to release them this year.
Highly redacted Kushner memo reveals nothing
The Justice Department released, for the first time, notes from Mueller’s team of their interview with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. But the five-page document is almost completely redacted, revealing nothing more about Kushner’s role in the Russia scandal.
There are a few snippets of text visible in the memo.
“A few weeks after the election [REDACTED] Kushner, Flynn and Kislyak met together at Trump Tower,” an apparent reference to the December 2016 meeting between senior Trump aides and then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The rest of that section is fully redacted, even though several pages of the Mueller report delve into the details of the meeting.
Another snippet notes, “Kushner [REDACTED] vaguely remembers Flynn handling Russia on the issue.” The rest of the section is redacted, but it could refer to the efforts within the Trump transition team to reach out to diplomats from around the world, as they moved on from their unexpected election victory and prepared to take the reins of government in 2017.
Nothing else is revealed in the memo, which describes the interview Kushner did with Mueller’s team in November 2017. At the time, CNN reported that investigators primarily asked about former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to a lying charge weeks later. This was one of two voluntary interviews that Kushner, who now serves as a senior White House adviser, did with Mueller.
Kushner’s interview memo released Monday is almost entirely redacted under public records disclosure law that allows the government to keep secret attorney notes and executive branch deliberations. But that reasoning is in contrast to what the Justice Department previously said about Kushner’s interview notes. The department was ordered to process at least one of Kushner’s interview memos in January for public release, but it was held back then because a “member of the intelligence community” had to look at it.
The Kushner interview memo released Monday has no redactions for intelligence or ongoing investigation reasons, and is a different interview memo than the one from Kushner that had been expected and was not released in January.
FBI ‘bawling’ in hallways after Comey firing
The latest batch of documents includes memos from interviews with former FBI official James Rybicki, who was chief of staff to Jim Comey, and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. The memos reveal new details about McCabe’s experience on the day of Comey’s firing in May 2017.
The 20 pages of memos are almost entirely unredacted, a stunning contrast to the heavily censored memos from the FBI’s interviews with Trump’s top officials and close allies. Trump has repeatedly attacked Comey and McCabe, who is now a CNN contributor, as corrupt criminals who tried to overthrow his presidency.
McCabe told investigators that he was summonsed to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ office, and that when they met, Sessions told him, “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we’ve had to fire the director of the FBI.”
In an intense scene that wasn’t described in Mueller’s wide-ranging report, Sessions told McCabe that “they” wanted McCabe to be the acting director of the FBI, and “they” would “let him know” if McCabe would be named Comey’s permanent successor. Sessions instructed McCabe not to tell anyone, not even his wife. McCabe recalled that the phrase “oh my god” was going through his head, nonstop, as he returned to his office.
When McCabe finally connected on the phone with Comey, after the firing was announced by the White House, Comey was in good spirits. McCabe said Comey told him: “It’s all on you now. Don’t screw it up.”
McCabe told investigators that he saw FBI staff “bawling” in the hallways in the wake of Comey’s dismissal.
The Trump campaign didn’t expect to win
The Trump campaign had so little faith that they would win the 2016 presidential election that the director of Trump’s transition team, Bill Hagerty, booked a trip to the Bahamas for after the election, Steve Bannon told the FBI, according to the newly released interview notes.
Bannon, Trump’s former White House chief strategist, described a campaign and transition that was unprepared, disorganized and scrambling to staff the incoming presidency. He said he got along well with Kushner during the campaign — and said that’s why they won — but that their relationship had soured close to the start of the administration.
The 25 pages of interview notes cover a range of topics, with a concentration of questions asked about what he knew about then-national security adviser Michael Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador, his firing and Comey’s firing.
According to the notes, Rudy Giuliani wanted to be named secretary of state, but Bannon said he tried to convince the former New York City mayor to go for attorney general or secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
Bannon said he spent three hours trying to convince Giuliani to go for attorney general, but Giuliani said he didn’t have the energy for that role. Bannon believed Giuliani would have trouble being confirmed for State because of some of his companies and foreign contacts — the same issues that have been raised currently as he acts as Trump’s personal attorney.
Gates gave Mueller the goods
On January 29, 2018, the Mueller investigation got what it had been working for: a high-ranking Trump campaign cooperator who could attest to Paul Manafort’s Ukraine-related crimes and explain some of the most suspicious dynamics of the Trump campaign in 2016.
This all came in Rick Gates’ first interview with Mueller following his indictment, about a month before Gates pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate more. Gates, Manafort’s longtime deputy and a top campaign and inaugural leader, sat down with Mueller in secret and described everything from Ukrainian power brokers to offshore bank accounts to Trump family meetings, according to the 22-page memorandum of his hourslong interview released on Monday.
It was unclear to the outside world before Gates cut his plea what he could share with Mueller, but the interview memo released Monday shows he showed up to Mueller’s office for the first time with the goods.
Gates told Mueller at that time about the “Family Meeting” where Donald Trump Jr. announced to others that he was planning a meeting about dirt on Hillary Clinton — the now-infamous Trump Tower meeting of June 2016, where the Russian visitors shared nothing of substance, according to witnesses interviewed by Mueller.
Trump Jr.’s announcement to his family members and top campaign officials was a major revelation Mueller described in his final report last year.
Gates also gave Mueller the outline of how the campaign worked, especially for Manafort. In one case, he explained how Manafort and Kushner “made a deal to designate” Kushner and then-Sen. Jeff Sessions as the points of contact for requests by foreign officials to the campaign.
But Trump wasn’t that interested.
“Generally, Trump seemed to have no interest in meeting with foreign officials. Multiple requests came in for such meetings, but Trump said he thought they were a waste of time,” Gates told the Mueller team.
On the campaign, Manafort, who first joined to run the convention, clashed with prior campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. On Lewandowski’s departure, “Gates stated that Lewandowski’s ego was the problem and if Lewandowski had just sat back and let Manafort do his thing, he could have remained Campaign Manager,” Mueller’s team wrote.
Another 302 released Monday, of Manafort associate Tom Barrack from December 2017, probed many of the same topics Mueller asked Gates about two months later.
Gates on a mysterious Russian
Gates also shared with Mueller what he knew about one of the most mysterious characters of the investigation: Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian whom Mueller later indicted for attempting to pressure witnesses in Manafort’s case. Kilimnik has not come to the US to face his two obstruction charges.
For months after Gates’ plea, Mueller indicated he was investigating Kilimnik’s actions — even up until the investigation ended. The Russian who worked with Manafort had extensive ties to Russia and Ukraine, and his work in Ukrainian politics even into 2018 remains unexplained.
Gates, in that first meeting with Mueller, highlighted some of the most suspect details known about Kilimnik.
Kilimnik had been a linguist for Russian intelligence, Gates had heard — a detail that spilled into several of Mueller’s court filings that year as Gates continued to cooperate.
“Gates assumed Kilimnik was vetted by the Ukrainian government. Gates believed he was told this by Manafort and [redacted],” Mueller’s team noted.
Kilimnik was “well-connected in Russia and Ukraine and could obtain information easily,” Mueller’s team noted from the January 2018 Gates proffer. The Russian had nearly “unfettered access” to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his party. When Manafort worked for the Ukrainians, Kilimnik served as his translator in meetings with Yanukovych.
Finally, Gates noted that the Russian had texted him congratulations after Trump won the election, according to the Mueller memo.
Five sentences from Spicer
A 17-page memo from an October 2017 interview with Spicer was almost entirely redacted, with the exception of five sentences or partial sentences of information that Spicer provided investigators.
The interview covers the former White House press secretary’s knowledge of a number of Trump’s interactions with or views on former FBI Director James Comey, including the private dinner where Trump demanded Comey’s loyalty, Comey’s March 2017 congressional testimony and Comey’s firing.
An “Administrative note” at the top of the Spicer memo seems to indicate that, after an earlier interview, investigators felt compelled to remind Spicer not to lie.
“This interview followed a separate interview conducted on the same day by FBI Special Agents and Attorneys from the Special Counsel’s Office. During the separate interview, SA (REDACTED) informed Spicer of his duty only to provide truthful information,” the memo states.
This story has been updated with details of the documents.
