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(CNN) - US President Donald Trump and other senior officials of his 2016 presidential campaign discussed privately on several occasions how to access the stolen Democratic emails that WikiLeaks had in 2016, according to recently published annotations from the Robert Mueller's special prosecutor's investigation interview.
CNN sued the Department of Justice to gain access to the interview notes of Mueller's witnesses. His publication this weekend marks the first behind-the-scenes look available to the public about Mueller's work on his investigation in addition to the legal proceedings and the report itself. By order of a judge, the Department of Justice will continue to publish new pieces of those notes from Mueller's investigation monthly to CNN and Buzzfeed News, which also filed a lawsuit.
A recount of the events by Rick Gates, the Trump campaign advisor, who served alongside the campaign president, Paul Manafort, is the most complete detail revealed by the Department of Justice so far about the discussions within Trump's campaign to seek harmful information about his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. The documents were stolen by the Russians, as the American intelligence community has found.
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"[Rick] Gates recalled a moment on the campaign plane when candidate Trump said: 'receive the emails.' [Michael] Flynn said he could use his intelligence sources to get the emails, ”the Mueller team researchers wrote in a summary of Gates' interview in April 2018. Flynn was a foreign policy advisor on the campaign and became in Trump's first national security advisor.
"Flynn had as many contacts from Russia as anyone else in the campaign and was in the best position to ask for emails if they were there," the researchers added about Gates' interview.
Gates described in an interview with Mueller researchers in 2018 how several advisors close to Trump, Trump's relatives and Trump himself studied how to obtain the stolen documents and fueled the effort, according to the investigators' documents.
“Gates said Donald Trump Jr. would ask where the emails were in family gatherings. Michael Flynn, [Jared] Kushner, [Paul] Manafort, [edited] [Corey] Lewandowski, Jeff Sessions and Sam Clovis also expressed interest in getting the emails. Gates said the priority approaches of Trump's campaign to the opposition campaign were emails and Clinton's contributions to the Clinton Foundation. Flynn, [edited] [Jeff] Sessions, Kushner and [Donald] Trump Jr. focused on opposition issues, ”Gates told investigators, according to the interview summary.
Earlier, Mueller wrote in his report on Russian interference in the 2016 elections that Trump's campaign showed interest in the leaked documents that WikiLeaks had in his possession in the summer and fall of 2016. But many of the details were edited in the Mueller's report, leaving gaps in history. The documents delivered to CNN somehow complete the narrative.
The documents, received by CNN this Saturday, include 274 pages of Mueller team interview notes, emails and other documents related to Gates' cooperation, former campaign official Steve Bannon and Trump's former staff, Michael Cohen. Both Cohen and Gates pleaded guilty to criminal charges by Mueller. Bannon was not charged with any crime.
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Bannon told the special prosecutor's office how Trump was interested in finding the 33,000 missing Hillary Clinton emails that she had said had been deleted from her private server, according to the documents. Neither Bannon nor Gates said if they knew that the Russians had stolen the Democratic documents, but they believed that foreigners had committed the attacks.
Trump had publicly asked Russia to find the missing emails when he spoke at a campaign rally in 2016.
Fox News presenter Sean Hannity also makes several appearances in the interview notes, explaining how involved the television presenter had become in Trump's political operation in 2016.
"During the campaign [Rick] Gates said that Trump and [campaign president Paul] Manafort spoke frequently with Sean Hannity at their offices," investigators at the special prosecutor's office said, Gates told them in April 2018.
According to published documents Manafort also sent an email to Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and three other people days before the 2016 presidential election, saying Manafort had informed Hannity.
Hannity was previously appointed in federal court during a Cohen proceeding as one of Cohen's three legal clients. He also sent text messages to Manafort after Manafort's arrest in October 2017.
Much of the interview notes are still edited by the Department of Justice.
Donald Trump Robert Mueller
