The special counsel’s office is flatly denying author Michael Wolff’s claim in his new book that Robert Mueller drew up a draft indictment against President Trump for obstruction of justice.
Wolff claims in “Siege: Trump Under Fire,” which will be released next week, that prosecutors drew up an indictment with three obstruction charges against Trump. The document sat on Mueller’s desk for the better part of a year and was the subject of heated debate within the special counsel’s office, Wolff claims, according to The Guardian.
Wolff claims he obtained the documents from “sources close to the Office of the Special Counsel.”
If true, it would be the strongest evidence so far that Mueller seriously considered charging Trump with obstruction of justice. Prosecutors ultimately deferred a decision on the obstruction question to Attorney General William Barr, who declined to pursue a case against Trump.
But there’s a major problem with Wolff’s allegation.
“The documents that you have described do not exist,” Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsel, told The Guardian in a rare on-the-record statement.
This is not the first Wolff book to face problems with accuracy.
Wolff was forced to retract a claim in “Fire and Fury” that President Trump had an affair in office with an unnamed administration official. Wolff walked off the set of an interview with an Australian television station when pressed about the claim.
A Daily Caller analysis of “Fire and Fury” found numerous other errors. Several subjects of the book denied giving quotes that Wolff attributed to them.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair also vehemently denied Wolff’s claim that he told Jared Kushner that British intelligence had worked with the Obama administration to spy on the Trump campaign. Wolff claimed he witnessed a conversation between Kushner and Blair, and that Blair was angling for a job in the Trump administration.
Blair called the claim a “complete fabrication.”
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