The Mueller report is out

Special counsel Robert Mueller provides an extensive recounting of how President Trump and his aides handled the fallout of the June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Russians and senior campaign officials.

The report, citing interviews with former White House communications officials Hope Hicks and Josh Raffel, says Trump directed aides on multiple occasions not to publicly disclose emails setting up the meeting. Later, the report affirms that Trump himself dictated a misleading statement to the press, saying the meeting primarily discussed adoption. 

The report describes White House officials learning — sometimes with shock — about the meeting. For example, then-White House chief of staff Reince Priebus first learned about the meeting in late June 2017 from Fox News host Sean Hannity (the report does not say how Hannity learned of it). 

Hicks recalls being “shocked” by the emails setting up the meeting, concerned they looked “really bad.” Together with senior advisers Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Hicks discussed the emails with Trump, who told the group “he did not want to know about it” and refused to hear details of the matter. He said he was confident the emails would never leak.

When Trump learned the New York Times was working on a story about the Trump Tower meeting, Trump initially directed Hicks not to comment — which she said was odd, according to Mueller, “because he usually considered not responding to the press to be the ultimate sin.”

Later, when Hicks showed Trump a draft statement about the meeting attributed to his son, the President deemed it too revealing. He told Hicks "to say only that Trump Jr. took a brief meeting and it was about Russian adoption." 

Trump Jr. expressed concern about that statement, however, insisting the word “primarily” be inserted to suggest the meeting included other topics aside from just adoption.

In his report, Mueller describes finding at least three occasions when Trump directed Hicks or others not the publicly disclose information about the Trump Tower meeting. Ultimately, however, Mueller determines that Trump’s efforts were only directed at keeping information from the press.

He says they would only amount to obstructive action if there were attempts to withhold the information from congressional investigators or the special counsel’s office.

Robert Mueller never found any evidence that Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos told anyone on the campaign that he was tipped off about the Russians having emails that could damage Hillary Clinton.

Papadopoulos was told in April 2016 by a Kremlin-linked professor that the Russians had thousands of emails that were damaging to Clinton, according to court filings. That wasn’t publicly known at the time. It wasn’t until months later, when WikiLeaks and other Russian-backed websites, started releasing tens of thousands of embarrassing emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee. 

The report continued: "No documentary evidence, and nothing in the email accounts or other communications facilities reviewed by the office, shows that Papadopoulos shared this information with the campaign."

A quick note: We've just made it so the entirety of the Mueller report is searchable on CNN.com.

Special counsel Robert Mueller looked at potential crimes outside of conspiracy as he investigated collusion, including crimes under campaign finance law and regarding individuals potentially acting as illegal foreign agents for the Russian government.

"Among other things, the evidence was not sufficient to charge any campaign officials as an unregistered agent of the Russian government or other Russian principal," according to the report.

Investigators conducted some searches of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen under this potential crime, but ultimately did not charge him with it, according to previously unsealed search warrants.

They also looked at whether the Trump Tower meeting could be considered a campaign finance violation.

Following the release of the Robert Mueller report, Trump's campaign manager said the President "has been fully and completely exonerated yet again."

Here's the full statement from the Trump campaign:

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report lays out the case for why Congress is able to investigate and take action against President Trump on obstruction of justice.

In the report, Mueller provided a legal justification for why the special counsel was able to investigate obstruction of justice, even if they could not indict a sitting President.

The lengthy section, citing legal precedents, also alludes to Congress’ power under checks-and-balances to investigate and potentially impeach the President over obstruction of justice. 

See it:

Democratic presidential candidate Eric Swalwell has called for Attorney General William Barr to step down following today’s news conference.

Here's what he said in a statement:

Swalwell is a member of the House Judiciary Committee

“You can be the President’s defense attorney or America’s Attorney General, but you can’t be both," he said. "William Barr was tainted from the moment he sent an unsolicited memo to the Justice Department panning Robert Mueller’s obstruction investigation, way back in June 2018."

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team declined to prosecute then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions for making false statements or committing perjury to Congress during his confirmation hearing in part because of the inexact wording of the questions.

Sessions testified that he did not have communications with Russians during the campaign.

It was later revealed Sessions interacted with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at the Republican National Convention and a campaign event at the Mayflower Hotel.

The special counsel wrote about how the President’s public comments can be considered as obstruction efforts because of his power.

Here's what he said about President’s power:

See it: