The WSJ has posted a transcript of their interview with Trump.
I think it shows how he plans (and may have planned, from the start) to defend against obstruction charges: by noting that Rod Rosenstein, in his letter supporting Comey’s firing, said stronger things against Comey than Trump did.
He returned to this idea three times in the interview. First, after WSJ first noted that Mueller may be looking at obstruction charges.
TRUMP: There has never been, in the history — in the history of an administration anybody that was more open than we were. You understand that?
WSJ: Yes.
TRUMP: We gave them everything. We didn’t go to court and say, “You can’t have this document, you can’t have” — and what we gave them showed — I never got a phone call from Russia. I didn’t have a tweet. I didn’t have a — I had nothing. I didn’t have an email. I didn’t have a meeting. I didn’t have — did I have one meeting with — about Russia? And…
WSJ: Well, Mueller’s also looking at some other areas, right? Like obstruction of justice…
TRUMP: Well allow — let me — (inaudible). So, they make up a crime, and the crime doesn’t exist. And then they say obstruction. And how could there be obstruction on firing Comey? When the man who’s in charge of it wrote a letter that was far stronger than anything I would have written. He was in charge — Deputy Rosenstein. He wrote a letter that’s far stronger than even what I say.
Again, after ranting a bit about how badly the Democrats once wanted Comey fired.
All you have to do is take a look, seriously – take a look at all these people, they all wanted him fired. And the FBI was a mess. When he announced the Hillary Clinton fiasco where she was guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty and then where they did the interview with no tape recorder, with no swearing in, with no this, with no that – you know the story.
But take a look at all of these people that became critics of my firing (ph), they all wanted him fired. And they wanted him fired until I said, “he’s fired.” But the deputy, Rosenstein, who is in charge, he wrote a letter that was possibly or probably stronger than anything I would have written or did write.
Then he returns to it just as WSJ tries to get him to shift to talking about infrastructure.
WSJ: (Inaudible) infrastructure (inaudible).
TRUMP: But just so you understand…
WSJ: Oh, sorry.
TRUMP: …The Deputy Attorney General, who’s in charge of the case, wanted – all you have to do is read his letter. So that’s – there’s no obstruction there.
But Rosenstein!!! He seems to be saying.
I’m interested in this, in general. But I’m also interested in how closely tied the notion that Democrats would celebrate a Comey firing is with the claim that because Rosenstein said meaner things about Comey, there couldn’t be obstruction.
I wonder whether this was the plan all along. And I wonder whether these two whackjob ideas came from the same person: Jared.