Mueller Said to Consider Delaying Obstruction Charges (Audio)

credible case of stution of justice. But even if Mueller has an obstruction case, Bloomberg News is now reporting that he may put any charges on hold as he finishes other key parts of his probe indo Russian election meddling. Kevin White Law, Bloomberg News Deputy Managing editor, stops in for more on this story in our Bloomberg studios in Washington and Kevin, this was a nice scoop by our team. What does it say, Well, that's exactly right. We do

know that. Um, you know, we're Muller's in the final stages of the obstruction part of his probe. He's got a couple of key outstanding interviews um that he's uh, that that he might want to pursue. We understand his negotiations with President Trump's lawyers, but interview with the president. Um, there's another witness to a number of key events that Mueller's studying who has yet to be interviewed as far as we know, and that's Donald Trump Jr. Uh. Those

are two high profile interviews. But sort of the sequencing of how you sort of hold those interviews and close out a portion of this probe um is very is a very complicated decision for him, given that there's other aspects of the probe that are going to take weeks

or months to to complete. And so there's a growing sense and growing belief that there's a chance Muller could even if he decides to essentially conduct the interviews and effectively wrap up the probe, he may essentially keep his findings withhold his findings for a while while he then turns its attention to other elements of the probe, and

and and and and goes from there. Bloomberg News is reporting that also during into this is that witnesses may become less cooperative in other parts of the probe, and the president might make a move if he if if that comes out about about obstruction to shut it down, well that's right. You have the problem where you um, if to the degree that Mueller makes charges, then that

potentially provokes one set of conflicts. If he effectively clears um anybody on this side of it, then that's suddenly they canna say, hey, it's time to wrap up, let's go. And and we know, we know for various reasons, he's got weeks and months of work on a number of different areas in the probe, so um he's got all of that hanging over his head, along with obviously the sort of more existential threat of the President deciding to try to find a way to to simply fire him

if he gets too close. So there are a number of of those calculations that facts or in. We do know. There are several key episodes that that Muller and his team are focusing on for just sort of trying to figure out whether there was indeed any effort to obst justice,

and those include a couple of key meetings. One was discussed the decision to fire uh FBI director James call me uh The other was a discussion aboard Air Force one over the UH response to reports about a meeting organized at Trump Tower that included Trump Junior and Jared Kushner, the president's son in law. So walk us through the timing on all of this, UH, keeping in mind that there's something happening, UH this November. What is it? Yeah, some kind of election. Yeah, I mean, we don't really

have a lot of of information on the timing. UM. Mueller doesn't have a deadline per se, other than maybe a political one. So he's made it clear through his methodical approach so far that he's going to take the investigation wherever he thinks it needs to go. But at the same time, I don't think he's looking for ways to to stretch it out. So UM, he's clearly feeling pressure to keep moving. We've seen a succession of indictments and plea deals, including an indictment of thirteen Russians for

social media activity during the election. We are expecting at some point there to be another set of indictments of another indictment of a set of Russians for hacking. We haven't seen that yet, We're we have reason to believe that that's in the works. UM. And so that's one of the next things we're looking for that could effectively

come at any time. And there's still other aspects of the probe that we've had a lot less visibility into, including questions of how deep, if at all, uh MALLA really is going into the finances of either the President Trump Org or Jared Kushner's company. So there's a lot of questions we still don't know. Even as we we we have some some new insight into some of the decision making and uh processes that are that are going

on right now. So Maller has to prove corrupt intent on Trump's part for the obstruction part of the case, if he intends to go after him for obstruction, and could he be putting the obstruction case on hold because he wants to talk to Trump and history and Trump's

attorneys have been fighting that tooth and nail. Well, you know, it's it's interesting the you know, as we understand it, Trump's legal team has actually been in negotiations since late last year UM negotiations that we're told have actually gone on relatively smoothly and constructively. But what's unclear though is where the which side the delays on UM there does seem to have been a flurry of activity, uh with with Mueller that uh as in otherwids, just his investigation continuing.

So you know, you saw Steve Bannon meet with Mueller a few weeks ago. You know, the President is going to be essentially the last or one of the last interviews that Mueller would want to have when it comes to an obstruction case. So he wants to interview absolutely everybody. And it feels like there's a couple more alley ways and side doors that that Mueller wanted to go down

before he gets that interview. There is a very good question though as to whether or not as to when that interview would actually happen, and if if there is a delay, Um, you know, a lot of he said, she said over over which side might be responsible for it. Also, I want to remember that there are these investigations going on on the hill. Uh. The House Intelligence Committee investigation has obviously kind of you know, broken down to a part into a partisan mass. But where does the Senate

Intelligence Committee investigation stand. Well, that's still basically the there's two investigations in the Senate. That's the truly sort of the most serious of them, the most bipartisan of them. That's ongoing. The Judiciary Panel is continuing to look at certain aspects with elements and glimpses of bipartisan work, But the Senate Intelligence Panel is where you are seeing a

much fuller effort to try to be bipartisan. Having said that, there are disputes over what public hearings might still be held before this thing is wrapped up, and that seems to be one of the biggest outstanding questions that they have as to whether or not that will have a bipartisan conclusion to it. But in the meantime, they are aiming to release an interim report on election security ahead

of the mid terms. Uh, that's something that we could tell that obviously Mueller was was interested in given the indictment of the social media uh, the Russians doing the social media attacks. The Senate Intelligence Committee also has a has a lot of interest in this topic. So that's a report we could see in the coming days or weeks. Kevin, it seems as if Mueller is going into different areas. Is that because we're just learning about those areas or

he is actually expanding the investigation. That's a very very good question, and and um, you know, I think it's probably a little bit of both. This is a this is investigations very complex, and because the Mueller team is basically as tight as basically any of these organisms as any probe like this has ever been, leaks are very selective and tend to come, um in some cases from from the witnesses, and some of those might be self serving or or or carrying out a grudge or whatever,

and others are legitimately real, real information. So sorting through what's real what's not is a challenge. Sorting through what's new and what's not as a challenge. Um, But they're du seemed to be some areas that have come to light in recent weeks or months that do seem to be genuinely new to the probe. And I think everyone's still trying to figure out exactly what this means and

how seriously Muller's taking these things. I mean, remember, i'd caution just because he asked to witness about a particular topic doesn't mean he's fully investigating that topic. These are hours and hours of interviews he's doing with each witness, For he seems like a serious guy. Well that's right, but he's gonna be asking a lot of questions, and some of the things are the ones he's gonna be targeting, and others are just gonna be testing the waters. And

it's very hard to start through all of that. From from the outside. Kevin Whitelaw Bloomberg News Deputy Managing Editors, Thank you, Foreign nations and US customers harmed by President Trump. Steel and aluminum terrorist face a slow legal fight challenging the tariffs, and the role of US courts in the global dispute is likely to be limited. Joining me is Matt Gold, adjunct Professor of law Fordham University and former

Deputy Assistant US Trade Representsitive. Matt, countries can complain to the World Trade Organization, but that is less like litigation and more like a dispute settlement process. Explain the process. If a foreign country claims against makes a claim against the US, there sure be glad to um the process. That's three basic stages. The first stage is what's known as consultations. It's like an opportunity to settle the case before your info litigation itself. The parties are required to

engage in consultations. But if consultations are going nowhere within a relatively short period of time, the countries that brought the case can call them to an end and move on to the next stage. UM. The next stage is a panel UM, a three member panel UH, which is

essentially litigating before three judge court. The panelists are experts, they're from countries that are not HUM, that don't have an interest in the dispute UM and that litigation can take one to two years UM or a little bit more or less depending on the complexity of the case. And the third stage is appealing the panel decision to the W two appellate Body, which for a major case like this is almost a certainty. So in the end, the w t O can tell a country to stop

violating the rules it. But does it have any real power or is it world perception at work? Oh? No, it has quite real power. It's the one international court that has real power to enforce international law, the law that imparts rights and obligations to government UM. The power it has is to authorize retaliation UM, to authorize the country UH if if other countries demonstrate, for example, the

United States has violated w t O rules. At the end of the process, the w t pelet body UM will first the appelate body rules that the US has violated the W two agreements and explains why and how it gives the United States a chance to bring itself into compliance. But then the fourth and last day each of the United States fails to change. What it's doing

is to authorize retaliation. And there's really a fourth procedure by which the countries that took us to court proposed to be a pallepody what kind of retaliation they want to engage in. It will be some kind of trade barriers against US goods or services going to their countries UH, and then the w A palipody will authorite specific UH

such trade barriers, specific retaliation. The EU has already threatened to retaliate against the US, might it do that before going to the w t O. Well, there's always a risk of that UM that would really send us into

a downward spiral. The whole point of the w A dispute resolution processes to give countries a legal mechanism for retaliation so that we don't run into you violated the treaty and in response, we're going to violate the treaty and everything goes into a downward spiral that collapses a global trading system UM instead the process. First of all, it gives the countries an opportunity to settle dispute. Second of all, it it's a process where takes a little bit of time, so one can can sort of have

cool heads. UM. It gives the country that's violating the rules a chance to get its own political act in order, because usually there's some kind of domestic political UH forces pushing the violation UM, and they have some time to to to fix that. But at the end of the day, if if the retaliation is authorized by the w t O, then the retaliation is not another violation UM. And that also sort of helps everything from going into an uncontrolled

downward spiral. So the Trump administration has already exempted Mexico and Canada from the tariffs. They may make more exceptions. How does that affect the US argument before the w t O that the tariffs are based on national security needs. The US never had a winning argument for the w t O UM. There's two different sets of law here. There's the U S law and there's the international law UM.

On the international level, in order for the United States to impose trade barriers that we would otherwise not be entitled to impose under our trade agreement obligations. If we're using national security as our reason, UM, we would have to have we'd have to either be in time of war or we'd have to be in an emergency. And international relations, which is generally understood to be the things that happened right before you're actually in the war UM.

But in any event, UM, we don't have either. We we we have nothing that could even be close to an emergency international relations. What we have our US government officials that can envisage an unlikely but theoretically possible future scenario where there would be a World War three UM.

Global ocean shipping would be disrupted. We would not be able to import steel or aluminum UH in meaningful quantities because they need to go by ocean freight, not air freight UH, and we wouldn't have sufficient capacity for our own domestic economy during that disruption. The fact that you can envisage a theoretical but unlikely future does not even come close to you currently right now having an emergency.

So there's no question that we don't qualify for that that national security exception, and that's in the General Agreement on Tires and trade the GAT Article one. And as a result, we are violating our normal bindings with respect to the duties that when there are customs duties that we're allowed to impose on these goods. So we never had an argument. Are our complete absence of argument? Uh to defend ourselves in w t O is a more complete absence of argument. But the big difference so that

it does make um is under US law. Even if the US were authorized under w t O rules to impose these barriers, and there still would be the question of whether there's Congress, We'll have to leave that. We'll pick We'll pick this up again, I'm sure, Matt, thanks so much. That's Matt Gold of Boredom Law School. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brolso this

is Bloomberg. Yeah, yeah,