Quote:President Donald Trump lashed out at two Republican senators recently over matters relating to Russia, according to a Politico report on Wednesday, showing the degree to which the unfolding Russia scandal is keeping the president occupied. First, in a late-July phone call with Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, Trump complained about a bipartisan bill that sanctioned Russia for interfering with the 2016 US election while making it tougher for Trump to lift the sanctions. The bill was overwhelmingly supported in Congress by both parties and was signed into law earlier this month.
"He was clearly frustrated," a source familiar with the call told Politico.

Then, on August 7, Trump called Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina to express his unhappiness with a bill that would limit Trump's ability to fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating the Trump campaign's potential ties to Russia's election interference. Trump said he didn't want the bill to pass, according to another Politico source familiar with the call. The two calls underscore Trump's increasing frustration with Congressional Republicans over their continued efforts to keep the Russia probe alive. Trump also lashed out at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in a profane phone call earlier this month relating to the sanctions bill.

Quote:One of Donald Trump's foreign-policy advisers reportedly sent an email to other campaign officials proposing a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a Washington Post report published on Monday. The Post reports internal campaign emails reveal that days after Trump selected his foreign-policy team, George Papadopoulos, a campaign volunteer with limited foreign-policy experience, sent an email with the subject: "Meeting with Russian Leadership - Including Putin." Papadopoulos allegedly attempted to initiate "a meeting between us and the Russian leadership to discuss US-Russia ties under President Trump," The Post reported.

Quote:When Trump allegedly asked Sessions this past spring whether it would be possible to drop the federal criminal investigation into Arpaio, Sessions told Trump such a move would be inappropriate, but that Trump could pardon Arpaio if he was convicted, The Post reported, citing three people familiar with the conversation. Trump ultimately granted the pardon on Friday evening, sparking fierce backlash from liberals and some conservatives. 

But some legal analysts also pointed out that Trump's decision to pardon Arpaio, and the actions he took preceding that, may serve as an important piece of evidence to special counsel Robert Mueller, who is reportedly investigating the president for obstruction of justice. Specifically, Trump's decision to pardon Arpaio is key to determining his intent when he had the February conversation with Comey about dropping the Russia investigation before ultimately firing Comey after he refused to do so, said Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor.

Quote:Members of the Trump Organization and investors nearly reached a deal to open a Trump Tower in Moscow during the 2016 election, according to a new report. Trump’s company and investors signed a letter of intent to open up a massive development as part of the Trump brand but dropped the deal in January 2016 after they failed to get the land and permits to launch the project, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

Felix Sater, a Russian-born developer, also encouraged Trump to visit Moscow to hear about the proposal and promised he could get Russian President Vladimir Putin to say “great things” about Trump, according to The Post. Developers first began discussing a deal in 2015, but it's unclear if Trump was aware of the negotiations.

Quote:A former associate of President Donald Trump boasted in emails to Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, that a proposed Moscow real-estate deal would "get Donald elected." Cohen then wrote an email to Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, asking for his "assistance" in the project. The emails were exchanged between November 2015-January 2016, months into Trump's presidential campaign.

Quote:A Republican lawmaker has put forth an amendment that would stop funding for the special counsel’s Russia investigation 180 days after it becomes law.  The amendment from Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) would also prevent special counsel Robert Mueller from probing “matters occurring before June 2015,” which is the month Trump announced his presidential bid. The amendment was submitted as part of the upcoming spending package the lower chamber is expected to weigh after the congressional recess.

Quote:A GOP lawmaker says a meeting is being set up with President Trump to share information from Wikileaks founder Julian Assange about the hack of the DNC during the 2016 presidential campaign. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) told Sean Hannity on Monday in remarks first reported by CNN that a "rendezvous" between himself and Trump was being set up by "other parties" interested in the meeting.

Quote:"We'll take the word of the U.S. intelligence community over Julian Assange and Putin's favorite Congressman," Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Adrienne Watson jeered.
"It would be extraordinarily remarkable" if WikiLeaks used Rohrabacher as a back-channel to Trump, said Ned Price, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council during the Obama administration.
"There is absolutely no conceivable or legitimate reason to have a back channel with WikiLeaks, and certainly not one extending to the president of the United States," Price told the Examiner. "If we want the perspective of Russia's intelligence services, we should allow the CIA to be the primary conduit."

Quote:When President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey back in May, his administration at first offered a laughably implausible pretext. The claim was that Comey’s ouster had nothing to do with the Russia investigation, and that Trump was merely accepting the Justice Department’s recommendation to fire Comey because he had been too tough on Hillary Clinton in the email investigation.

But that wasn’t the initial story. The New York Times’ Michael Schmidt and Maggie Haberman report that Trump and White House aide Stephen Miller first drafted a different letter recommending Comey’s firing — a letter that White House counsel Don McGahn blocked because he found it to be “problematic.” It’s not yet known what, exactly, the letter said or why the White House counsel found it to be so troublesome. But the Washington Post’s Rosalind Helderman, Carol Leonnig, and Ashley Parker report that it is several pages long and mentions “Trump’s frustration that Comey was unwilling to say publicly that Trump was not personally under investigation in the FBI’s inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.”

According to both outlets, the letter has been turned over to special counsel Robert Mueller — who is already reportedly investigating Trump for obstruction of justice. The letter could well provide evidence that the White House was deliberately trying to mislead the public about why Comey was fired, though whether that rises to the level of obstruction isn’t clear. But we learned long ago that the administration’s first explanation for the firing was a sham — from no less a person than President Trump himself. Only two days after the firing, Trump said in a nationally televised interview that he had made up his mind to get rid of Comey regardless of what his Justice Department recommended, and that the Russia investigation was on his mind when he made that decision.

Quote:News on Friday that special counsel Robert Mueller has obtained a letter drafted by President Donald Trump that details his reasons for firing then-FBI director James Comey has likely bolstered the progress of the Russia investigation, and may have landed another close Trump confidant in its crosshairs. Mueller was put in charge of the investigation — which is examining whether the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow during last year's presidential election — after Trump dismissed Comey in May. As part of his investigation, Mueller is also examining whether Trump obstructed justice when he fired the FBI director four months ago. 

The letter Mueller is reviewing was drafted by Trump along with policy adviser Stephen Miller, and legal experts say it is possibly the most critical piece of evidence in Mueller's obstruction-of-justice case since Comey's testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in June, because it can give prosecutors a direct window into Trump's thinking shortly before he fired Comey. The biggest challenge a prosecutor faces in an obstruction-of-justice case is proving corrupt intent, which is almost always difficult to establish. But Trump's letter could change the ballgame. 

"The best way to prove someone's intent is through their own words and actions," former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti told Business Insider in an interview Saturday. "Here, you have a letter that was written by Miller, at the direction of the president, that contains what the president's thoughts were at that time." Though the letter's full contents remain unclear, The Washington Post reported that it focused on what was perhaps Trump's greatest frustration with Comey: that the FBI director did not publicly announce, when he was leading the bureau's investigation, that Trump was not personally under investigation.

Quote:Longtime federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti, who first argued that McGahn's testimony could prove central to Mueller's obstruction case, told Business Insider that it is "very hard to believe that Trump's letter, which has been described as a 'rant,' was consistent with a careful analysis by Rod Rosenstein." Mariotti also noted that Cobb said Trump's letter was "quite" — rather than entirely — consistent with Rosenstein's memo, leaving room for a potential disconnect. Rosenstein's memo also does not mention Russia at all, as Trump's letter reportedly did.