Obstruction Inquiry Shows Trump’s Struggle to Keep Grip on Russia Investigation<br />The lawyer, Uttam Dhillon, was convinced that if Mr. Comey was fired, the Trump presidency could be imperiled,<br />because it would force the Justice Department to open an investigation into whether Mr. Trump was trying to derail the Russia investigation.<br />Legal experts said that of the two primary issues Mr. Mueller appears to be investigating — whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice while in office<br />and whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia — there is currently a larger body of public evidence tying the president to a possible crime of obstruction.<br />Mr. Comey had told Mr. Trump in private that he was not personally under investigation, yet Mr. Comey infuriated<br />Mr. Trump by refusing to answer a question about that at the hearing where he spoke publicly.<br />WASHINGTON — President Trump gave firm instructions in March to the White House’s top lawyer: stop the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, from recusing<br />himself in the Justice Department’s investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s associates had helped a Russian campaign to disrupt the 2016 election.<br />The president’s determination to fire Mr. Comey even led one White House lawyer to take the extraordinary<br />step of misleading Mr. Trump about whether he had the authority to remove him.<br />has also learned that four days before Mr. Comey was fired, one of Mr. Sessions’s aides asked a congressional staff<br />member whether he had damaging information about Mr. Comey, part of an apparent effort to undermine the F. B.I.<br />Sessions is one of several previously unreported episodes<br />that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has learned about as he investigates whether Mr. Trump obstructed the F. B.I.’s Russia inquiry.
