Mueller report details evidence for and against Trump obstruction of justice charge

WASHINGTON (Sinclair Broadcast Group) — A redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was released Thursday, providing answers to some—though almost certainly not all—of the questions that have hung over Washington for the last two years.

(If you are viewing on a mobile app, click here to view the full report.)

The Department of Justice delivered the report to Congress late Thursday morning and posted it to the department website.

“I’m committed to ensuring the greatest degree possible of transparency concerning the special counsel’s investigation in accordance with the law," Attorney General William Barr said at a news conference hours before the report was released.

Mueller delivered his team’s 448-page final report to the Justice Department last month, but the public has so far seen only about 100 words of it in a letter Barr sent to congressional leaders. According to Barr, the investigation did not establish any collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia to influence the election, and it did not produce sufficient evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of justice.

Listen to the full report:

“Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” the report stated.

Among the many contacts between Trump associates and Russians reviewed in the report is a meeting Donald Trump Jr., campaign chair Paul Manafort, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner held with a Russian national who claimed to have negative information about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in June 2016. Investigators considered pursuing campaign finance violation charges against Trump Jr. over the meeting but decided they could not prove campaign officials “willfully” violated the law.

Investigators also looked at negotiations that began in 2015 over a real estate project known as Trump Tower Moscow and continued at least through June 2016. Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen has admitted to lying to Congress about the extent of those talks.

The report confirms the counterintelligence probe of Trump’s campaign was launched in the summer of 2016 because of comments campaign adviser George Papadopoulos made to a foreign government representative about the Russian government supposedly being able to assist Trump through the anonymous release of information damaging to Clinton.

Investigators also probed Manafort’s contacts with Russian businessman Konstantin Kilimnik, who is believed to have ties to Russian intelligence. Manafort shared internal polling data with Kilimnik and the two discussed a “peace plan” that would have allowed Russia to take control of part of east Ukraine.

According to the report, then-candidate Trump repeatedly asked people affiliated with his campaign to locate emails deleted by Clinton after he publicly asked Russia to do so at a press conference in July 2016. The report notes Trump claimed his request to Russia was sarcastic, but Russian operatives did try to access Clinton’s server hours after his comments.

Michael Flynn told investigators he reached out to associates for help locating Clinton’s emails, including Republican operative Peter Smith, who committed suicide in May 2017. According to the report, security contractor Erik Prince—the brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos—helped finance an effort to find the emails by another associate of Flynn. Prince also participated in a January 2017 meeting in the Seychelles with a Putin associate about U.S.-Russia relations.

A footnote in the report indicates Mueller’s team also looked into rumors Russia had compromising tapes of Trump, which had been mentioned in a controversial dossier of intelligence produced by former British spy Christopher Steele. According to the report, a Russian businessman had communicated with Cohen about tapes of Trump supposedly held by people associated with the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, but he told investigators he later learned the tapes were fake.

Barr told reporters Mueller's report reviews 10 specific episodes involving the president and weighs whether they should be considered obstruction of justice. He added that he disagreed with some of the special counsel's legal reasoning, and he maintained the White House's cooperation with Mueller's team suggests the president had no intent to obstruct the probe.

“The president took no action that, in fact, deprived the special counsel of the documents and witnesses necessary to complete its investigation,” Barr said, though Trump's lawyers did oppose allowing Mueller to interview him directly, with the president instead providing only written responses to limited questions.

The report notes Trump refused to answer questions about alleged obstruction or events that occurred during the transition, and it describes many of his answers as incompete, imprecise, and inadequate. In his respones, included as an appendix to the report, Trump often claimed he was unable to recall specific conversations and moments Mueller's team asked about.

Still, investigators opted not to subpoena Trump because it could result in "a substantial delay" of the probe and because they felt they had sufficient evidence from other sources.

“While we believed we had the authority and legal justification to issue a grand jury subpoena to obtain the president’s testimony, we chose not to do so," the report states.

According to the report, Trump engaged in "public attacks on the investigation, non-public efforts to control it, and efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation." Though they did not make a prosecutorial judgment, investigators wrote, "If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state."

The events examined in the report include Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey, efforts to stop then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions from recusing from the Russia probe, demands that White House Counsel Don McGahn act to remove Mueller, false statements to the public about the campaign's contact with Russians, and conduct toward witnesses that appeared to discourage them from cooperating with prosecutors.

According to the report, Trump frequently expressed anger over the Russia investigation in the early months of his presidency, partly because he felt it was undermining the legitimacy of his election and his ability to do his job. It also makes clear Trump fired Comey due to his frustrations with the director's handling of the Russia probe, despite claims by the White House at the time that Trump was acting on a memo by Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein that focused on the Clinton email investigation.

“The president complained that the perception that he was under investigation was hurting his ability to conduct foreign relations, particularly with Russia," it states.

In assessing Trump's true motive for firing Comey and whether he was trying to derail the investigation, the report also suggests Trump may have feared a continued inquiry would reveal activities he thought were crimes or that were politically damaging.

“The evidence does indicate that a thorough FBI investigation would uncover facts about the campaign and the president personally that the president could have understood to be crimes or that would give rise to personal and political concerns,” it states.

The report reveals Trump was troubled by the special counsel's investigation from the start, quoting him telling one aide, “This is the end of my presidency. I’m f***ed” when Mueller was appointed.

Considering the president's conduct toward Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Michael Cohen, the report suggests Trump made public and private statements intended to discourage Manafort and Cohen from cooperating with the investigation, including raising the prospect of a presidential pardon for Manafort.

“The evidence supports the inference that the president intended Manafort to believe that he could receive a pardon, which would make cooperation with the government as a means of obtaining a lesser sentence unnecessary,” it states.

In many cases, the report observes the refusal of those around Trump to carry out his demands was the only thing that prevented him from influencing the investigation.

The report states Trump at one point directed McGahn to tell the acting attorney general to remove Mueller from the investigation based on supposed conflicts of interest Trump often raised that the Justice Department had determined were “meritless.” McGahn refused and threatened to resign, and he also later refused demands from Trump that he deny media reports that revealed Trump made the request.

Trump also repeatedly pressed Sessions to step in and curtail the investigation, once directing former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to deliver a message to Sessions urging him to publicly state the probe was "very unfair." Lewandowski never delivered the message. In private meetings with Sessions, according to the report, Trump told him he would be a "hero" if he unrecused and that Sessions should "take [a] look" at investigating 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Investigtors detailed their reasoning for not reaching a conclusion on obstruction of justice, saying the case raised "difficult issues" that would need to be resolved to make a judgment. Some of Trump's actions involved lawful use of his authority under the Constitution, and they determined only Congress can decide whether those acts were illegal. They also found no evidence he was involved in an underlying crime related to election interference, which led to additional consideration of his intent and other possible innocent motives for his conduct.

In addition, investigators accepted the Office of Legal Counsel's longstanding opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted. Given that criminal charges could not be filed, they felt it would be unfair to apply an approach to the evidence that could potentially result in a finding that the president committed a crime.

"While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him," the report states.

The report confirmed a lot of previous media reports about internal drama within Trump’s campaign and White House. It also revealed Trump and his aides misled the public at times, such as when Press Secretary Sarah Sanders claimed without any basis that “countless” FBI agents supported the firing of Comey.

Mueller's team submitted 14 referrals to the Justice Department for additional investigation. The subjects of those referrals included former Trump attorney Michael Cohen and former Obama White House attorney Gregory Craig, but the other 12 were redacted from the report.

In a statement after the report's release, Trump's attorneys declared it "a total victory for the president."

"The report underscores what we have argued from the very beginning - there was no collusion - there was no obstruction," they claimed.

Still, they dismissed the contents of the report as the product of a "biased, political attack" against Trump.

"The report itself is nothing more than an attempt to rehash old allegations, despite the fact that, as reiterated in the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General's recent report on the 2016 election 'neither the FBI nor Department prosecutors are permitted to insinuate or allege that an individual who has not been charged with a crime is nevertheless guilty of some wrongdoing,'" they said.

Trump’s allies interpreted Barr’s four-page letter as a vindication of his claims of innocence, but Democrats continued to press for the release of the full report. Barr told lawmakers last week he was working with Mueller to redact classified information, grand jury evidence, and other material that should not or legally cannot be made public.

The special counsel's office conducted hundreds of interviews and reviewed hundreds of thousands of documents during a 22-month investigation that resulted in the prosecution of several Trump campaign officials and his first national security adviser on charges unrelated to the campaign’s activities. Mueller, who was appointed in May 2017 after Trump fired Comey, also indicted more than two dozen Russian nationals and intelligence officers for hacking and spreading misinformation during the campaign.

According to Barr, it was necessary to share portions of the report with the White House because President Trump had a legitimate right to invoke executive privilege over certain material. However, the White House did not request any redactions.

A redacted copy of the report was also shared with President Trump’s lawyers this week, which Barr said was consistent with laws that allow persons named in reports to review them before publication.

“I believe the publicly released report will allow every American to understand the results of the special counsel’s investigation,” Barr said.

After the release of Barr’s initial letter last month, President Trump claimed “Complete and Total EXONERATION,” but the report provided a more nuanced assessment.

Although Trump initially said Mueller acted honorably and praised the report weeks ago, he has since renewed his attacks on Mueller’s prosecutors and the FBI officials who originated the counterintelligence probe, demanding someone “INVESTIGATE THE INVESTIGATORS!”

“PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!” Trump tweeted Thursday in advance of the report’s release.

Even before the report was made public, Democrats made clear the redacted document would not be sufficient to satisfy their demands for details about the investigation. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer issued a statement Thursday demanding Mueller testify before Congress.

"We believe the only way to begin restoring public trust in the handling of the special counsel's investigation is for special counsel Mueller himself to provide public testimony in the House and Senate as soon as possible," they said.

Some Democrats are already discussing plans to subpoena the full report from the Justice Department. Officials said Wednesday some members of Congress will be allowed to view a less-redacted version, but that is unlikely to settle the issue.

"With the Special Counsel's fact-gathering work concluded, it is now Congress' responsibility to assess the findings and evidence and proceed accordingly," House Democratic leaders said in a statement Wednesday.

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