Special counsel Robert Mueller is the first name and the first face that comes to mind when the words “Russia investigation” are uttered, but the investigation would be impossible without his army of prosecutors and fact-finders. One of these prosecutors operating behind the scenes is receiving increasingly more attention due to his ubiquitous role in the questioning of President Donald Trump‘s advisers.
Goldstein made a name for himself working as a Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York (SDNY), an office that continues to grill Trump’s ex-lawyer Michael Cohen about potentially illegal business practices at the Trump Organization. The SDNY, of course, prosecuted Cohen in part for campaign finance violations (hush payments) that he said Trump “directed.”
Reported Monday that Goldstein has questioned former White House counsel Don McGahn, the aforementioned Cohen, Steve Bannon and even questioned Roger Stone before a grand jury. Along the way, it seems he gained the respect of Trump’s lawyers. John Dowd, who resigned from his post in March 2018, once argued that it was impossible for the president to obstruct justice and insisted on answering no questions in this area.
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Dowd acknowledged that Goldstein “knew the facts like I knew the facts.” Goldstein, a Barack Obama campaign donor who is the son of a Republican-appointed U.S. attorney, has been the one gathering facts about the circumstances of James Comey‘s firing from the FBI.
Some otherwise interesting nuggets in the Goldstein story were these three: His thoughts on investigating and prosecuting public corruption; his thoughts on why people lie; additional insight into how conscious Mueller is of appearances.
“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.”
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“And why do people lie?” Mr. Goldstein said in a closing argument against Sheldon Silver, the former Democratic speaker of the New York State Assembly, who had covered up illegal payments from a friend seeking favors and was found guilty on all counts. “Why do people hide things? Why do people keep secrets? Because they have something to hide.”
And finally, on Robert Mueller: Goldstein reportedly told a friend (identified in the story as Tim Lear) that Robert Mueller was not pleased about a certain photograph from months ago.
Remember this one of Mueller and Donald Trump Jr. at the airport? Mueller was reading the newspaper and Trump Jr. was on the phone.
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Oh my. Mueller and Trump Jr. both waiting at 35X, which @playbookplus aptly describes as America's worst gate. pic.twitter.com/1vNUzgUl6z — Josh Dorner (@JoshDorner) July 27, 2018
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.WASHINGTON — The routine was always the same. President Trump’s lawyers would drive to heavily secured offices near the National Mall, surrender their cellphones, head into a windowless conference room and resume tense negotiations over whether the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, would interview Mr. Trump.
But Mr. Mueller was not always there. Instead, the lawyers tangled with a team of prosecutors, including a little known but formidable adversary: Andrew D. Goldstein, 44, a former Time magazine reporter who is now a lead prosecutor for Mr. Mueller in the investigation into whether the president obstructed justice.
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Mr. Mueller is often portrayed as the omnipotent fact-gatherer, but it is Mr. Goldstein who has a much more involved, day-to-day role in one of the central lines of investigation.
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.
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Over the past two years, Mr. Trump has waged a regular assault on prosecutors and other law enforcement officials investigating him, particularly on Mr. Mueller’s team. But mounting a high-level criminal case on obstruction is rare and complex, and even more difficult when the subject is a sitting president.
Now that Mr. Mueller is expected to deliver his report in the coming weeks, Mr. Goldstein’s past as a prosecutor offers a glimpse into how he might be helping the special counsel make a final determination.
Over the past two years, President Trump has waged a regular assault on prosecutors and other law enforcement officials investigating him, particularly those on Mr. Mueller’s team.Credit... Sarah Silbiger/The New York Times
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Interviews with Mr. Goldstein’s colleagues and friends and an examination of his past work reveal someone profoundly at odds with the cowboylike image Mr. Trump has painted of Mr. Mueller’s team. He is one of the few in the group with a career outside the law — in addition to working for Time, Mr. Goldstein was a high school teacher — and is known for his nonconfrontational personality and cautious approach to prosecutions.
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.”
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From the beginning, the byzantine structure of the Mueller investigation split its dozen-plus prosecutors into silos and specialties: money laundering, hacking, national security and public corruption.
Starting in the summer of 2017, when Mr. Trump’s closest White House advisers were summoned to Mr. Mueller’s offices, they typically met the same calm stare and gravelly voice of the man his former high school students still call Mr. Goldstein.
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.
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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.
James L. Quarles III, a former Watergate prosecutor, along with Mr. Goldstein, leads the obstruction of justice portion of the special counsel’s investigation.Credit... Tom Brenner for The New York Times
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Defense lawyers who worked with Mr. Mueller also say that Mr. Goldstein — a donor to President Barack Obama’s campaigns — is the temperamental opposite of prosecutors on the team like Andrew Weissmann, known for a more hostile disposition. When tensions flared during witness interviews, lawyers would take Mr. Goldstein aside to soothe disputes.
That did not mean Mr. Goldstein’s work was seamless: 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.
Andrew M. Goldstein
Just before Mr. Mueller and some of his earliest hires brought Mr. Goldstein to Washington for job interviews, Mr. Goldstein and the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan faced a political investigation with familiar parallels to Mr. Mueller’s inquiry.
Mr. Goldstein was leading a team of prosecutors under Preet Bharara, then the United States attorney in Manhattan, who were investigating whether Mr. de Blasio had committed a series of corruption crimes: bribery, pay-to-play and campaign fraud.
Part of the investigation focused on the owner of a scented, rat-repelling trash bag company in Queens who had donated
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