Schiff: Case that Trump obstructed justice is getting stronger

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Friday that reports that President Trump attempted to order Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the Russia investigation is evidence the White House attempted “to obstruct justice.”

“The allegations in the Times piece, if accurate, provide further potential evidence that the White House was engaged in an effort to obstruct justice,” Schiff told The Washington Post.

{mosads}The New York Times reported Thursday that Trump ordered White House counsel Don McGahn to prevent Sessions from recusing himself from the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

When McGahn failed, Trump was reportedly furious and told White House officials he needed Sessions to protect him.

The newspaper also reported that a Sessions aide sought damaging information on former FBI Director James Comey in the days before his firing as part of a purported effort to undermine Comey. Sessions also reportedly wanted negative stories about Comey published each day.

The Justice Department disputed The New York Times’s reporting in a statement, saying the request for damaging information on Comey “did not happen and would not happen.”

Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence Committee, said if true, the reports show that Sessions may have been “trying to set up some predicate for firing [Comey] without disclosing what the true reason was.”

“If this was part of an effort to conceal the real motive for firing Comey, that’s very pertinent to obstruction of justice,” Schiff told The Washington Post.

Schiff said The New York Times’s reporting makes it clear that Sessions should appear before the House Intelligence Committee for more questioning.

“It’s going to be important for us to get to the bottom of whether the … attorney general’s office was seeking to engage in a smear campaign against the director of the FBI to create a pretext for his firing,” Schiff told The Washington Post.

Sessions’s recusal led to Rosenstein appointing special counsel Robert Mueller to head the Russia investigation.

Mueller’s probe has produced four indictments of former Trump aides and officials, including former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.