Meet Mueller's Lead Prosecutor on Obstruction Probe

News  |  Feb 25, 2019

As we continue to wait for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to complete his work, The New York Times is profiling Andrew Goldstein, the prosecutor leading Mueller's investigation into possible obstruction of justice. 

Mr. Goldstein, the lone prosecutor in Mr. Mueller’s office who came directly from a corruption unit at the Justice Department, has conducted every major interview of the president’s advisers. He questioned Donald F. McGahn II, Mr. Trump’s former White House counsel, and Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer and lawyer, for dozens of hours. He signed Mr. Cohen’s plea agreement. He conducted grand jury questioning of associates of Roger J. Stone Jr., the former adviser to Mr. Trump who was indicted last month.

And he was one of two prosecutors who relayed to the president’s lawyers dozens of questions about Mr. Trump’s behavior in office that Mr. Mueller wanted the president to answer under oath. The questions showed the Mueller team’s hand for the first time: extensive, detailed lines of inquiry that could imperil the presidency.

(...)

Before Mr. Mueller hired him, Mr. Goldstein, the son of a former Republican United States attorney, led the corruption unit in the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan as the office made a highly unusual call to announce that it had declined to charge Mayor Bill de Blasio with a variety of crimes. The decision revealed how restrained high-level prosecutors often are in major political investigations.

“Investigating and prosecuting public corruption offenses can only go so far,” Mr. Goldstein said in a rare speech around the time he joined the special counsel’s team in 2017. “We can only police the outer bounds of misconduct: the really bad stuff, or at least the stuff that we can prove.”

The Times explains Mueller has divided his inquiry into four separate subject areas – "money laundering, hacking, national security and public corruption" – and how Goldstein is handling his assignment. 

With James L. Quarles III, a former prosecutor in the Watergate investigation, Mr. Goldstein has led the office’s investigation into whether the president’s dismissal of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey — and Mr. Trump’s repeated assaults on the Justice Department — should be considered obstruction of justice.

He has tried to determine the president’s motives in Mr. Comey’s firing during dozens of hours questioning Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, and nearly seven hours with Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, in April.

As evidence built over two years, Mr. Goldstein functioned as a repository of conversations that Mr. Trump had with lawyers, advisers and top law enforcement officials from early 2017 on. Among Mr. Goldstein’s jewels, according to Mr. Trump’s lawyers: exhaustive notes taken by Annie Donaldson, Mr. McGahn’s former chief of staff, which detailed in real time Mr. Trump’s behavior in the West Wing.

(...)

While the president’s legal team was initially cooperative with Mr. Goldstein and his fellow investigators, delivering key witnesses and millions of documents, the mood changed when Mr. Trump brought on the longtime Washington lawyer Emmet T. Flood.

Mr. Flood promptly imposed restrictions on the West Wing’s participation, including limits to questions for the White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly.

Mr. Goldstein acknowledged to associates that Mr. Flood made his life more difficult.

(...)

Like Mr. Mueller, Mr. Goldstein wears starched white dress shirts to work and prizes secrecy. Mr. Goldstein told a friend, Tim Lear, that Mr. Mueller even complained to his prosecutors about being photographed near Donald Trump Jr. at an airport.

The investigation has been tiring, too. Mr. Goldstein, who used to attend early-morning SoulCycle classes in Manhattan before big trials, got into an accident biking to Mr. Mueller’s offices last year, when he was searching for ways to exercise while working so late.

Now that Mr. Mueller’s work could soon be public, Mr. Goldstein’s record, Mr. [Preet] Bharara said, is a reminder of what the investigation’s limits might be.

“You want to have people who have had experience not only bringing high-profile cases, but in walking away from them because it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “The fact that you have a person who’s comfortable saying there’s nothing here, even though there’s a lot of clamor for it, is exactly the kind of person you want.”

Full story: It’s Mueller’s Investigation. But Right Behind Him Is Andrew Goldstein. (NYT)