One Detailed Account, Two Starkly Different Views

WASHINGTON — Strolling past red-uniformed guardsmen at Windsor Castle on a gloriously sunny Friday, the queen of England at his side, President Donald Trump was savoring the moment, broadcast live to his supporters back home.

Then television screens across the nations switched to reveal a second display of authority: Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general and the president’s legal Cassandra, with the latest news from the investigation that Trump calls “a witch hunt.” In terse terms, Rosenstein laid out the most detailed account yet of how the Russian government tried to influence the election that brought Trump to power.

After months of attacks by Trump and his allies on the investigation he leads, Rosenstein described a Russian influence operation that had to be blessed by the Kremlin, and named the perpetrators who carried it out. He did it just three days before Trump is due to meet in Helsinki with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. And he added what some saw as pointed messages to Trump, who he said has “got to make some very important decisions for our country.”

The dramatically different images illustrated, perhaps more starkly than ever before, the vast gulf between Trump’s view of the 14-month criminal inquiry into Russia’s influence on the 2016 election and that of the president’s own Justice Department. And even if it was not meant as such, the indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers announced by Rosenstein was seen by some of the president’s critics as a kind of revenge for the withering — and near constant — criticism the president has heaped on the investigation.

That criticism has taken many forms: the public humiliation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions; the belittling of investigators and prosecutors working for Robert Mueller, the special counsel appointed by Rosenstein; and the president’s private threats to fire Sessions, Rosenstein or both.

Matthew Miller, a spokesman for Eric H. Holder Jr. when he was President Barack Obama’s attorney general, said prosecutors could have waited to seek the indictment until after Trump came home, and that the decision to move for charges just before the meeting with Putin might not be purely coincidental.

“None of the people in the indictment are a flight risk,” he said. “It sent a strong signal to the White House that they hold some cards, but the Justice Department has some too.”

Rosenstein told reporters he had briefed the president about the indictment this week because “he needs to understand what evidence we have of foreign election interference.”

As long as Americans “are united in our commitment to the values enshrined in the Constitution,” he said, foreign adversaries who try to undermine them could not succeed.

A Justice Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Rosenstein told Trump about the coming charges Monday, the day before he left on the European trip that will end with his meeting with Putin.

But if the president understood what some saw as Rosenstein’s message to take heed, it was not clear from the statement issued Friday afternoon by the White House in response to Rosenstein’s announcement. It noted only that “today’s charges include no allegations of knowing involvement by anyone on the campaign and no allegations that the alleged hacking affected the election result.”

Just hours before Rosenstein announced the indictment, Trump again denounced the special counsel’s investigation, saying at a news conference that “we’re being hurt very badly by the, I would call it, the witch hunt” that is damaging “our relationship with Russia.” If it weren’t for the inquiry led by Mueller he said, he would have had a chance to have “a very good relationship with President Putin.”

Congressional Democrats immediately demanded that he cancel his meeting Monday with the Russian leader, asking anew why Trump has not forcefully condemned Putin for crimes the Justice Department alleges occurred over a period of many months.

The juxtaposition of the indictment with the president’s Windsor Castle photo op and coming meeting with Putin was so awkward that some of Trump’s allies suggested that Rosenstein deliberately timed the indictment to embarrass the president. One White House official said people in the West Wing had noted that the indictments obtained by Mueller often seem to coincide with the president’s travel or major events.

In its statement, the White House cherry-picked comments of Rosenstein’s that put the Trump campaign in the best light. For example, the indictment noted that one person — identified by two government officials as Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser to Trump — was in touch with both the hackers and senior members of the Trump campaign. But the White House pointed out that the indictment did not charge that any American citizen committed a crime. Nor was there any allegation that the Russians tipped the results of the election, the statement said.

Some former Justice Department officials said that if Rosenstein was guided by political considerations, prosecutors would have delayed seeking the indictment until after Trump’s trip just to protect Rosenstein’s job. Friday’s announcement shows that “the Mueller investigation is proceeding on its own timetable, in an independent way, not influenced by politics,” said David Kris, who formerly headed the department’s National Security Division and founded the consulting firm Culper Partners.

Still, Rosenstein seemed to deliberately steer clear of facts that might set the president on edge. He never mentioned the Clinton campaign, the primary target of the Russian interference, by name, saying only that the Russians “accessed email accounts of volunteers and employees of a U.S. presidential campaign, including the campaign chairman.” He did not mention that the hacking victims included political committees that served the Democrats, not the Republicans. Mueller was nowhere to be seen, but other Justice Department officials were at Rosenstein’s side, including John C. Demers, who leads the national security division, and Edward O’Callaghan, Rosenstein’s top deputy, who is helping oversee the special counsel’s inquiry.

Rosenstein asked that the threat of foreign interference be viewed through an apolitical lens. “It’s important for us to avoid thinking politically, as Republicans or Democrats, and instead to think patriotically as Americans,” he said.

He included a backhanded reference to Thursday’s contentious appearance at a congressional hearing by Peter Strzok, the FBI agent who Republicans claim tried to use the Russia inquiry to keep Trump out of office. “We don’t try cases on television or in congressional hearings,” Rosenstein said.

Miller, the former aide to Holder, said Rosenstein seemed to be highlighting Russia’s malfeasance while giving Trump some measure of comfort — including when he noted specifically that “people who are not charged with a crime also are presumed innocent.”

“You could understand why he might want to do that,” Miller said. “He clearly wants to the preserve the investigation for as long as possible.”