June 19, 2017

Is Donald Trump Under Investigation for Obstruction of Justice?

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Is President Trump under investigation for obstruction of justice? His attorney appeared on TV yesterday to say it ain’t so:

SEKULOW: I want to be very clear about this, the president is not and has not been under investigation.

DICKERSON: How do you know?

SEKULOW: Because we’ve received no notice of investigation….

DICKERSON: Is it your view, and just to educate viewers, that — that if you were under investigation, there would be an obligation for the special counsel to let you know? Couldn’t you be under investigation and they’ve just not let you know yet?

SEKULOW: Well, look, I — I can’t imagine the scenario where the president would — would not be aware of it.

This is the whole story in a nutshell: Trump has not been notified that he’s the target of an investigation. That’s it. That’s all that Jay Sekulow knows. He has no idea whether Trump is or isn’t under investigation by special prosecutor Robert Mueller.

Neither do I, for that matter. The Washington Post says he is, and their evidence seems pretty strong. At the same time, it could be that Mueller is merely interviewing some folks as a way of deciding whether he should widen his investigation to include Trump.

In any case, that’s it. Mueller is interviewing some people about Trump’s firing of James Comey, but Trump has not been notified that he’s under investigation. That’s all we know.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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