Robert Mueller’s Office Denies Michael Wolff Report About Draft Indictment

Michael Wolff, whose book Fire and Fury scandalized the Trump administration back in early 2018, is readying a sequel called Siege: Trump Under Fire. But the new book has already had one of its key assertions denied by the office of special counsel Robert Mueller.

Per The Guardian, Wolff alleges in the book that Mueller’s office prepared a three-count indictment of the president for obstruction of justice, but did not ultimately bring those charges. The draft indictment sat on Mueller’s desk for over a year, per Wolff’s book.

Mueller’s office has issued a statement denying that report.

“The documents that you’ve described do not exist,” the office’s spokesman, Peter Carr, told the newspaper after it published a story about Wolff’s book.

The Office of Special Counsel, which has mostly wrapped up its work following the release of the Mueller Report, mostly avoided public comments throughout its work, with the exception of the incident back January when the office disputed a Buzzfeed story that reported President Trump had directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress, per The Washington Post.

Wolff’s new book claims that documents were given to him by “sources close to” Mueller’s office. That office, however, was notable for not leaking documents to the media. It alleges that the three counts in the supposed indictment included influencing, obstructing, or impeding a pending proceeding before a department or agency of the United States; tampering with a witness, victim, or informant; and retaliating against a witness, victim, or informant.

The book also alleges an anti-Semitic comment by the president.

“The Jews always flip,” Trump is said to have proclaimed after Cohen, National Enquirer owner David Pecker, and former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg all agreed to cooperate with investigations into the president.

Wolff’s previous book, Fire and Fury, was written after he was given access to the White House over a period of several months. The book painted a picture of a West Wing torn apart by dysfunction and an unstable chief executive. While Trump and his allies pushed back hard against the book, subsequent reporting supposedly backed up many of its assertions.

In addition, former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, who was a major source for Fire and Fury, found himself essentially excommunicated from the Trump orbit as a result of his participation.

Wolff, perhaps inevitably, was not given similar access to the White House for the new book and had to depend on other forms of sourcing.