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the White House into a corrupt fiefdom. According to one source, Mueller could hardly contain his disgust when last month Rudy Giuliani, the President's new lawyer—hired to make a case for the President on television and to push back against the Mueller team—airily dismissed the notion that a sitting president can be indicted. Adding insult to injury, Giuliani—who a White House source said has likely learned of aspects of the pending indictment—said Mueller agreed with that assessment. White House sources believe Giuliani was daring the Special Counsel to tip his hand. But Mueller, ever in character, contained his outrage and continued to hold his cards close, as his team finished preparing the obstruction case and refined the legal theories under which it would claim the right to haul the president into court. According to the proposed indictment, the President's scheme to obstruct the FBI's investigation into connections between the Trump campaign and Russian efforts to undermine the U.S. election began-on the 7th day of the Trump administration. Three days prior, on January 24, National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, lied to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian Ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. These were contacts, according to the indictment, directed by an unnamed but ranking member of the Presidential Transition team. In the view of several former DOJ lawyers who discussed the case with me, that unnamed person-could be Trump himself-From January 27th, when the President had the one-on-one dinner with FBI Director James Comey, through to the middle of April, the President-conducted a cat and mouse game with Comey, testing his loyalty and trying to establish his willingness to aide the President and protect Flynn. On May 9th, baldly admitting his dissatisfaction with Comey's unwillingness to play ball on Russia, the President fired the FBI director. Shortly thereafter, continuing his efforts to disrupt the investigation, the President turned his ire on the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, pressuring him to fall into line on the President's behalf, and on Robert Mueller, the newly appointed Special Counsel, pushing to fire him to block the investigation. The second episode addressed in the indictment took place on July 8, on Air Force one, where the President personally directed his son, Don, Jr., to lie about the reason for his meeting in Trump Tower, during the campaign, with representatives of the Russian government— a meeting about collaborating with the Russians to undermine Hillary HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_030260