“Lewandowski did not want to deliver the president’s message personally,” the report said, “so he asked senior White House official Rick Dearborn to deliver it to Sessions.”
Dearborn ultimately did not follow through with the task.
The report also said “substantial evidence indicates that the catalyst” for the decision to fire FBI Director James Comey was his “unwillingness to publicly state that the president was not personally under investigation.”
The report stated that while the areas the special counsel investigated “involved discrete acts, the overall pattern of the President’s conduct towards the investigations” shed light on the “nature” of his acts. The special counsel determined that the actions investigated are divided into “two phases,” which they said reflected “a possible shift in the President’s motives.”
TRUMP THOUGHT PRESIDENCY WAS OVER WHEN TOLD OF MUELLER'S APPOINTMENT: 'THIS IS THE END...I'M F---ED'
The first phase was related to the firing of Comey. “During that time, the President had been repeatedly told he was not personally under investigation. Soon after the firing of Comey and the appointment of the Special Counsel, however, the President became aware that his own conduct was being investigated in an obstruction-of-justice inquiry,” the report said, adding that “at that point, the president engaged in a second phase of conduct, involving public attacks on the investigation, non-public efforts to control it, and efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation.”
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