Mueller is homing in on Trump's involvement in responding to Trump Jr.'s Russia meeting

The development is the latest indication that Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia is ramping up, and that he's not only homing in on Trump Jr.'s meeting with the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, but also on the president's involvement in the matter.

Trump Jr.'s initial statement responding to the story about his Russia meeting,published in July month after The New York Times first reported that the meeting took place, said that he and Veselnitskaya "primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children" and that the subject of conversation was "not a campaign issue at the time."

But that characterization evolved over the next few days, with Trump Jr. ultimatelypublishing his email correspondenceswith Goldstone, the British music publicist who organized the meeting. The email chain confirmed reports that Trump Jr. had agreed to the meeting after he was told Veselnitskaya was offering damaging information about then candidate Hillary Clinton. The meeting, Trump Jr. was told, was being arranged "as part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump," to which Trump Jr. replied, "I love it."

also included

Trump's lawyers initially said he was not involved and did not know about the meeting. A few weeks later, however,The Washington Post reportedthat Trump had "dictated" Trump Jr.'s initial misleading statement about it.

When news of the meeting broke, a group of Trump's advisers reportedly agreed that the White House should release a truthful statement that could not be repudiated if more details surfaced later.

But Trump overruled the advisers and "personally dictated" the statement that was eventually published, according to The Post. The statement was then crafted aboard Air Force One as Trump returned from the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.

The presidents actions are under scrutiny

Mueller's focus on Trump's role in crafting Trump Jr.'s statement about the meeting could suggest that the special counsel is looking into any "attempts to conceal what happened in that meeting," wrote former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti.

"It also shows that he's interested in attempts to conceal or shape testimony. The President's actions are under scrutiny," he said.

Indeed, NBC News reported last week that after Trump's involvement in drafting the initial statement emerged, prosecutors on Mueller's team were "keenly focused" on finding out what Trump knew about the meeting and whether he tried to conceal its purpose.

A source familiar with Mueller's thinking told NBC News that investigators are looking into whether Trump made a "knowingly false statement" when he crafted his son's response to the Times' story.

Mariotti notedthat one possibility behind the special counsel's scrutiny is that legally, "helping to conceal a conspiracy is an act in furtherance of a conspiracy."

"If you try to corruptly persuade a witness to testify falsely, that is a separate offense," he told Business Insider last week.

But "even if Trump is not charged with a crime as a result of the statement, it could be useful to Mueller's team to show Trump's conduct to a jury that may be considering other charges," a source told NBC News.

Establishing Trump's mindset when he dictated Trump Jr.'s statementcould be critical to proving intent in an obstruction of justice case, which Mueller's team is also reportedly investigating Trump for.

Obstruction of justice isbroadly defined— it involves any conduct in which a person willfully interferes with the administration of justice, and legal experts say Trump's decision to fire former FBI director James Comey, who was leading the bureau's investigation into the Trump campaign's Russia ties, could constitute obstruction of justice.

Trump's statements don't individually rise to the level of obstruction of justice, said Jens David Ohlin, an associate dean at Cornell Law School who's an expert on criminal law.

"The obstruction of justice would flow from the entire landscape of Trump's behavior: telling Comey to back off on the Flynn investigation, firing him when he wouldn't, and thenadmitting on national televisionthat he dismissed Comey because of the Russia investigation," Ohlin told Business Insider in an earlier interview.

He said that Trump's telling Russian officials in the Oval Office that Comey was "a real nut job" and that firing him had taken "great pressure" off of him added weight to the inference that Trump used his executive authority to fire Comey to stymie a federal investigation.