A report of more than 400 pages detailing the investigation led by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, revealed the scope of an ambitious Russian campaign to sabotage the 2016 presidential election and explored whether President Trump engaged in acts of obstruction to impede the investigation. The report, which the Justice Department redacted before releasing it to the public on Thursday, cast the president in an unflattering light but did not accuse him of criminal wrongdoing. It did not exonerate him, either. Here is what you need to know: Lack of evidence of ‘coordination’ with Russians The report explicitly stated that the investigation did not clear the president of obstructing justice. “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 report said. While Mr. Trump has tweeted that there was “no collusion,” collusion is not a legal concept. Mr. Mueller instead was looking for evidence of a criminal conspiracy or “coordination” between the Trump campaign and Russia in its election interference activities. Mr. Mueller decided there was not enough evidence to prove coordination.<doc-sep>Barr is still reviewing Muller’s report William Barr: Although my review is ongoing, I believe that it is in the public interest to describe the report and to summarize the principal conclusions reached by the Special Counsel and the results of his investigation. Barr immediately makes clear that his letter will only be a summary of the top-line conclusions from Robert Mueller’s 22-month investigation. At just four pages long, the letter makes no claim to outline the full substance of the special counsel’s findings, nor does it detail the evidence Mueller has amassed or the legal reasoning behind his decision making. Instead, we have the bare bones. Mueller had handed the full report to the attorney general less than 48 hours earlier, and Barr makes clear he is still reviewing its contents. On the size of the investigation In the report, the Special Counsel noted that, in completing his investigation, he employed 19 lawyers who were assisted by a team of approximately 40 FBI agents, intelligence analysts, forensic accountants, and other professional staff. The Special Counsel issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants, obtained more than 230 orders for communication records, issued almost 50 orders authorizing use of pen registers, made 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence, and interviewed approximately 500 witnesses. Here, the sheer size of the Mueller investigation is laid bare for the first time. Although the cost of the Russia investigation has been public for some time, along with the 37 public indictments issued by Mueller, the scale of the evidence he has amassed has not been known. Barr is clearly alluding to how comprehensive the special counsel’s investigation has been. While the length of Mueller’s final report is not known, it is likely to be based on hundreds of thousands of pages of evidence. Democrats have made clear they want access to as much of the report and its underlying evidence as possible. No new indictments The report does not recommend any further indictments, nor did the Special Counsel obtain any sealed indictments yet to be made public. This is the first of Barr’s major announcements: Mueller will issue no fresh charges as the investigation wraps up. This is clearly good news for members of Donald Trump’s inner circle, including his son Donald Trump Jr, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and, indeed, for Trump himself. There had been speculation that a number of sealed indictments in the same district court handling the Mueller prosecution could relate to further indictments from the special counsel. This is now clearly not the case. However, other criminal investigations involving the president and members of his inner circle are ongoing, most notably in the southern district of New York. Barr makes no comment on the status of these proceedings. On collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As the report states: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” This is undoubtedly a pivotal conclusion of the investigation. Following almost two years of investigation Barr says that Mueller has found no evidence to prove that any member of the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election. He quotes only a partial sentence from the report to substantiate this. Also of note here is Barr’s supplying a short definition of how Mueller defined collusion. Quoting directly from Mueller’s report in a short footnote, Barr says the special counsel counted collusion as an “agreement – tacit or express – between the Trump campaign and the Russian government on election interference”. This means that for any member of the campaign to be accused of colluding with Russia they would have had to have done so knowingly. Barr says that Mueller found two ways in which Russians interfered during 2016: a coordinated internet disinformation campaign and direct computer hacking. He provides no further details on the crimes themselves but further information on at least some of these actions has already been made public by Mueller through criminal indictments. On obstruction of justice The Special Counsel therefore did not draw a conclusion – one way or the other – as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction. Instead, for each of the relevant actions investigated, the report sets out evidence on both sides of the question and leaves unresolved what the Special Counsel views as “difficult issues” of law and fact concerning whether the President’s actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction. The Special Counsel states that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” Barr briskly moves on to the last major revelation from Mueller: the special counsel was unable to decide whether Donald Trump obstructed justice during the investigation. Barr once again hangs a partial sentence quoted from the report making clear that Mueller did not completely clear Trump of obstruction. But the scant details make it impossible to understand the legal reasoning behind Mueller’s decision nor all the evidence taken into account to make it. Conclusion on obstruction of justice After reviewing the Special Counsel’s final report on these issues; consulting with Department officials, including the Office of Legal Counsel; and applying the principles of federal prosecution that guide our charging decisions, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense. This revelation is likely to be the most controversial, at least until more of Mueller’s report is released. It was Barr and his deputy Rod Rosenstein, both appointed to their positions by Trump himself, that decided the president should face no prosecution over obstruction of justice.<doc-sep>The Mueller report, holding itself to the higher standard, concluded that it did not find proof beyond a reasonable doubt of criminal conspiracy with Russia. It also offered an explanation: Lies by individuals associated with the Trump campaign “materially impaired the investigation of Russian election interference.” Witnesses deleted emails and used applications with encryption or deletion functions, which also thwarted fact-finding. Part II of the report on obstruction explains why Part I may have fallen short of such a high burden. Mr. Barr had the analysis backward in his summary letter. The failure to prove an underlying crime does not mean there was no obstruction. The obstruction meant that it became impossible to know whether there was a conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt — and it impeded the Russian investigation. Mr. Barr then used that doubt to question whether there was the corrupt intent required by obstruction statutes. To the contrary, the preponderance of conspiracy evidence confirms the corrupt intent. The report’s core question of whether the Trump campaign “conspired” or “coordinated” with the Russian government is a difficult legal question for any prosecutor. Criminal campaign finance charges — as opposed to civil — require proof that “a violation must have been committed knowingly and willfully,” that the defendant knew he was breaking the law, which is notoriously hard to prove. The “reasonable doubt” problem rightly prevents indictments here, but a preponderance standard is sufficient for an interpretation for public debate based on more-likely-than-not facts. Even without knowing what is redacted, the report offers “substantial and credible information” of the Trump campaign conspiring or coordinating with the Russian government. Under federal criminal law, “conspiracy” does not require direct proof or explicit words of agreement. It can be proven by action and circumstantial evidence from which the agreement may be inferred. And on campaign “coordination,” the Mueller report made a significant omission or oversight on this question when it stated that “‘coordination’ does not have a settled definition in federal criminal law. We understood coordination to require an agreement — tacit or express.” As the election law expert Paul Seamus Ryan noted, Congress in its 2002 campaign finance law rejected that view: Federal law “shall not require agreement or formal collaboration to establish coordination.” The federal regulations followed this command: “Coordinated means made in cooperation, consultation or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of, a candidate,” with no need to show any kind of agreement. Expenditures for coordinated communications are considered in-kind contributions, and foreign contributions — public or private — are illegal. In fact, the Federal Election Commission is reviewing a complaint along these lines. The report states that Rick Gates, a campaign deputy, suspected that Mr. Manafort’s Russian associate, Konstantin Kilimnik, was a “spy,” a view that he shared with Mr. Manafort (and others). For months, Mr. Manafort informed Mr. Kilimnik about the campaign through internal polling data, even pointing out that Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota were target states. The Mueller report did not conclude their motives were criminal beyond a reasonable doubt, but by a preponderance in context, the motives were clearly campaign related and likely a coordination with Russia. Despite being heavily redacted, the report seems to add context to Roger Stone's indictment, implicitly suggesting that Mr. Trump may have directed officials to contact Roger Stone about WikiLeaks, and may have been in contact with Mr. Stone about WikiLeaks. It may not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they knew WikiLeaks was an extension of Russian hacking and a Russian campaign, but it is more likely than not a kind of indirect coordination with a foreign government prohibited by law. And Donald Trump Jr.’s continuing contacts with WikiLeaks in September and October 2016, long after the Trump Tower meeting and the July events made its connection to a Russian campaign clear, also were likely a coordination, even if not knowingly proven beyond a reasonable doubt.<doc-sep>Read: What Mueller leaves behind “As described by Barr, at least, Mueller’s report was very focused on criminal-law standards and processes,” said David Kris, a founder of Culper Partners, who served as the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s National Security Division under former President Barack Obama. “We won’t know for sure if that is the case, and if it is the case, why Mueller confined himself in that way, until we see the full report.” Kris noted, however, that “there is no question that a counterintelligence investigation would have a wider aperture than a strict criminal inquiry as applied here, and would be concerned, for example, with the motivations and any sub-criminal misconduct of the principal actors.” A counterintelligence probe, he added, would ask more than whether the evidence collected is sufficient to obtain a criminal conviction—it could provide necessary information to the public about why the president is making certain policy decisions. “The American people rightly should expect more from their public servants than merely avoiding criminal liability,” Kris said. A spokesman for the House Intelligence Committee said in a statement on Monday that in light of Barr’s memo “and our need to understand Special Counsel Mueller’s areas of inquiry and evidence his office uncovered, we are working in parallel with other Committees to bring in senior officials from the DOJ, FBI and SCO to ensure that our Committee is fully and currently informed about the SCO’s investigation, including all counterintelligence information.” Read: The House’s latest move could be a big threat to Trump’s presidency In May 2017, just after Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey, the FBI launched a full counterintelligence investigation into the president to determine whether he was acting as a Russian agent. “We were concerned, and we felt like we had credible, articulable facts to indicate that a threat to national security may exist,” former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe explained to me last month. It’s still not clear what became of that counterintelligence probe after Mueller was appointed, and Barr did not indicate in his four-page summary how far the special counsel pursued it. Read: Andrew McCabe couldn’t believe the things Trump said about Putin Jeremy Bash, who served as chief of staff at the Defense Department and the CIA under Obama, said he believes Mueller’s “core focus” was to determine whether or not federal criminal laws were violated. “If Mueller interpreted his mandate as a criminal one, the decision to pursue the investigation as such is something he will have to explain to Congress,” Bash said. Mueller’s mandate, given to him by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, empowered him to investigate not only any “coordination” between the campaign and Russia, but any “links” between them as well. Barr’s summary does not describe how Mueller investigated or came to explain the many interactions the campaign had with various Russians during the election.<doc-sep>
"Oh my God. This is terrible," Trump responded, according to notes written by Jody Hunt, then Attorney-General Jeff Sessions’ chief-of-staff. "This is the end of my presidency. I’m f---ed... This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me." US President Donald Trump thought the appointment of a special counsel would end his presidency. Credit:AP The probe would take "years and years" and he wouldn't be able to accomplish anything, Trump said. In his report, Mueller evaluated 11 separate episodes for possible obstruction of justice, including Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, directives to subordinates to fire Mueller and efforts to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the probe. Mueller found that Trump launched "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". "The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests," Mueller writes. Attorney-General William Barr speaks about the release of a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller's report. Credit:AP Mueller did not recommend that Trump be charged with obstruction of justice but emphasised that he was not clearing him of committing a crime. "The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment," Mueller’s report states. "At the same time, 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. "Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment." Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was told by Trump to deliver a message to Attorney-General Jeff Sessions. Credit:AP Mueller makes clear he was heavily influenced by Justice Department guidelines stating that a sitting president should not be indicted; he also states it would be a distracting burden for a president to face prosecution while in office. One of the most significant revelations in Mueller’s report is a June 2017 meeting between Trump and his former campaign chief Corey Lewandowski. According to the report, Trump dictated a message for Lewandowski to give to Sessions, who had recused himself from any involvement in the Russia probe. 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. Mueller report The message told the Attorney-General to publicly announce that the Mueller probe was "very unfair" to the President, that Trump had done nothing wrong, and that Sessions planned to meet with Mueller to "let [him] move forward with investigating election meddling for future elections". This would effectively have killed the Mueller probe by limiting his investigation to future election interference. Robert Mueller's full 448-page report is less flattering than Attorney-General William Barr's summary of it. Credit:AP Lewandowski did not deliver the President’s message and a White House official, Rick Dearborn, also felt too uncomfortable to do so. In a separate episode, Mueller describes Trump calling White House counsel Don McGahn at home in June 2017 and directing him to order Sessions to fire Mueller because of a supposed conflict of interest. McGahn did not carry out the direction. Mueller writes that, when the incident was later reported by The New York Times, Trump pressured McGahn to lie by denying that the meeting had occurred. Again, he refused to do so. White House counsel Don McGahn refused to order Sessions to fire Mueller or to lie about press coverage on the investigation. Credit:AP On the issue that sparked the probe in the first place - potential collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia - the report contains several unflattering details that indicate smoke but nothing that ultimately passed the threshold of evidence for a criminal case. For instance, the report reveals that then campaign manager Paul Manafort shared internal polling data with Russian intelligence operatives, and that Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, witnessed a conversation between Trump and his son, Donald Trump jnr, about the now-infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting in which Russian operatives had promised dirt on Hillary Clinton. Loading "From the tenor of the conversation, Cohen believed that Trump jnr had previously discussed the meeting with his father," the report states, a contrast to Trump's repeated claims he didn't know about the meeting.