The Mueller report is out

The Department of Justice released special counsel Robert Mueller’s long awaited report earlier this morning.

The report — which only included “limited” redactions, according to Attorney General William Barr — detailed his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election.

The bottom line: We learned a lot.

You can read the full report for yourself, or get caught up with these key takeaways:

This concludes our live coverage of the report’s release. Stick with CNN as we continue to follow its reverberations.

The Justice Department told Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham and House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler today that Attorney General Bill Barr will provide the Chairman and Ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, and the “Gang of 8,” and one designated staff member per access to view the Mueller report with fewer redactions beginning on April 22nd, according to a letter obtained first by CNN.

DOJ will have a secure reading room available for lawmakers and their staff between April 22-26, from 10-5pm, and also provide it in secure spaces on Capitol Hill the week of April 29th. 

The less-redacted version will still maintain redactions for grand jury information, but the other categories of information (e.g., on ongoing investigation), will remain unredacted.

Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe just tweeted a statement about special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, calling it “remarkable.”

He said the report “stands as tribute” to the “hard work of FBI agents and lawyers” who “worked for two years to find the facts and truth amidst of a swamp of lies and misinformation.”

Read his statement:

The Justice Department released the redacted version of the report from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Here are key lines:

Trump campaign “expected” help from Russians but did not conspire Trump asked campaign aides to find Hillary Clinton’s emails Mueller “does not exonerate” Trump on obstruction Aides refused to help efforts to obstruct Mueller says Congress can pursue investigation of Trump obstruction Trump’s written answers to Mueller’s questions were “inadequate” Could not prove Trump Jr. “willfully” broke law with Trump Tower meeting Ivanka and Hope Hicks knew Don Jr. was seeking dirt on Clinton Trump misled the public on the Trump Tower meeting, but it wasn’t criminal Sarah Sanders misled the media about the firing of the FBI director Trump dropped F-bomb after Mueller got the job

House Democrats are planning to pursue their investigations on multiple fronts in the aftermath of the release of Robert Mueller’s report, pushing to examine areas they believe were not fully explored by the special counsel, according to multiple Democrats involved in the matter.

Here’s what to expect:

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, speaking to reporters in Burbank, Calif., said Thursday his plan is to not “recreate the wheel” but to be “guided by the good investigative work” Mueller has done, which is why, he said, Congress needs to see all the information the special counsel has uncovered.

The House Judiciary Committee wants to hear from individuals who had “incriminating evidence” laid out in the report, according to a Democratic source. Several Democrats said there’s an interest in bringing McGahn in for a hearing, but no decisions have been made.

McGahn is one of five former White House officials who could soon be served with subpoenas to turn over documents. The others: Steve Bannon, Hope Hicks, Reince Priebus and Annie Donaldson.

Democrats said the House Judiciary Committee inquiry is “much broader” in scope than the one launched by Mueller, who probed whether any criminal conduct occurred to thwart the Russia investigation. The Democrats’ investigation, they said, is not limited to campaign activities and criminal conduct.

A Trump adviser explained former White House counsel Don McGahn and former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski’s actions ignoring President Trump’s attempts to interfere with the investigation:

“Sometimes it’s him thinking out loud,” the adviser said.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, took aim at Attorney General William Barr over the report, saying Barr had done a “grave disservice” to the country by “misrepresenting” special counsel Robert Mueller’s report and putting a “positive spin” on the findings.

Schiff went on to say Barr is “not the President’s personal lawyer, although he may feel he is.” He noted that if Mueller had found evidence to exonerate the President, he would have said so.

Schiff said whether or not the President’s actions were criminal, they “are unquestionably dishonest, unethical, immoral and unpatriotic and should be condemned by every American.” 

Schiff called the facts in the report “damning,” adding, “whether they could or should have resulted in the indictment of the President or the people around him, they are damning. And we should call for better from our elected officials. The standard cannot simply be that you can do anything you like as long as you can declare at the end of the day that, ‘I am not a crook.’ That is not the ethical standard that the American people expect in their President.”

Schiff said they are asking for the unredacted report, as well as for Mueller to testify.  

Watch more:

Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr appeared to brief the White House counsel’s office about the targets of the FBI’s Russia investigation in March 2017, the special counsel’s report says.

The report states that FBI Director James Comey briefed the Gang of Eight — the Intelligence Committee and congressional leaders — about the investigation on March 9, 2017, before he revealed its existence publicly at a House hearing on March 20, 2017.

“The week after Comey’s briefing, the White House counsel’s office was in contact with SSCI Chairman Senator Richard Burr about the Russia investigations and appears to have received information about the status of the FBI investigation,” the report states.

In a footnote, the report states that the White House counsel’s office was briefed by Burr on the “existence of 4-5 targets,” citing notes from former deputy White House Counsel Annie Donaldson. The notes included references to former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, a redacted individual due to an ongoing investigation and “Greek Guy,” which is likely George Papadopoulos — although the footnote also notes that the Intelligence Committee “does not formally investigate individuals as ‘targets.’” 

“The notes on their face reference the FBI, the Department of Justice and Comey; and the notes track the background materials prepared by the FBI for Comey’s briefing to the Gang of 8 on March 9,” the footnote says. 

Burr spokeswoman Caitlin Carroll said that Burr did not recall the specific conversation with White House counsel Don McGahn in March 2017.

“However, any conversations between the two would have been in reference to the need for White House personnel to voluntarily comply with the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation,” she said. “If specific individuals were discussed, they would have been those known to the Committee, the White House, and the media. The chairman’s stewardship over the committee’s bipartisan and fact-based investigation over the last two years speaks for itself.”

President Trump and first lady Melania Trump just left the White House. They are headed to Mar-a-Lago in Florida for the weekend.

Trump, who waved to cameras, ignored all questions and did not talk to reporters.

Former Russian ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak repeatedly tried to meet with President Trump’s aides. The highest-ranking official caught up in Kislyak’s outreach was former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

During Sessions’ meeting with Kislyak in September 2016, Sessions criticized Russian aggression in Ukraine and they discussed NATO. Sessions told investigators that Kislyak mentioned that the Kremlin was receptive to Trump’s public overtures. None of the attendees who spoke to special counsel Robert Mueller — Sessions and at least two of his Senate aides — told Mueller that Russian meddling came up during the meeting. 

One of Sessions’ aides told him that Kislyak was an “old school KGB guy” and advised him against accepting an invitation from Kislyak for a one-on-one meeting at his personal residency.

Kislyak tried to meet Sessions again after Trump’s victory, but Sessions was out of town. Kislyak did end up meeting with other Trump aides during the transition, like Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn.

At the direction of President Trump, White House counsel Don McGahn and other aides made extensive and repeated attempts to prevent then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions from recusing himself from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, according to special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. 

In early March 2017, after media reports revealed that Sessions had not disclosed two meetings he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak before the election, prompting questions about whether Sessions should recuse himself, Trump called McGahn and “urged him” to contact Sessions “to tell him not to recuse himself.” 

“McGahn understood the President to be concerned that a recusal would make Sessions look guilty for omitting details in his confirmation hearing; leave the President unprotected from an investigation that could hobble the presidency and derail his policy objectives; and detract from favorable press coverage of a Presidential Address to Congress the President had delivered earlier in the week,” the report says.

McGahn followed Trump’s direction, calling Sessions to say Trump was “not happy” about the possibility he might recuse himself. After Sessions told McGahn he intended to comply with the recusal rules, McGahn reported that back to Trump, who reiterated his displeasure.

Over the course of the rest of the day, McGahn “continued trying on behalf of the President to avert Sessions’s recusal,” contacting Sessions’ personal counsel and chief of staff, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Sessions himself twice more. Other White House advisers also contacted Sessions that day to oppose his recusal, according what Sessions told Mueller.

That afternoon, Sessions announced his recusal.

Investigators scrutinized Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and concluded that he didn’t collude with the Russians despite his previous ties to Russian spies and campaign-era contracts with Russians.

“Russian intelligence officials had formed relationships with Page in 2008 and 2013 and Russian officials may have focused on Page in 2016 because of his affiliation with the Campaign. However, the investigation did not establish that Page coordinated with the Russian government in its efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election,” the report says. 

During one of Page’s multiple interviews with investigators in 2017, he appears to have partially confirmed a detail that first appeared in the controversial Trump-Russia dossier. 

The dossier said Page met the president of Rosneft, a state-run oil company, and discussed a deal for Trump to lift US sanctions in exchange for future energy cooperation between the two countries.

What’s in the report: Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report said Page actually met Andrey Baranov, Rosneft’s head of investor relations. Page told investigators they “might have mentioned the possibility of a sale of a stake in Rosneft in passing.” But Page has always vehemently denied brokering any quid-pro-quo regarding Trump and Rosneft.

Some of the details of Page’s meeting have been previously reported from Page’s testimony on the Hill.  

Years before Trump ran for president, Russian spies in New York City targeted Page for recruitment, according to old court filings that Mueller cited in his report. Page had many contacts and meetings with one of the spies, and the Russians faced criminal charges in 2015.

In his remarks prior to releasing the redacted report from special counsel Robert Mueller, Attorney General William Barr said that President Trump’s lawyers were given the chance to read a final version of the redacted report before it was publicly released.

That has sparked a debate over whether Barr acted properly in sharing the report with the President’s lawyers before sending it to Congress. In his remarks, Barr defended his decision, claiming it was “was consistent with the practice followed under the Ethics in Government act, which permitted individuals named in a report prepared by an Independent Counsel the opportunity to read the report before publication.”  

Facts first: It’s unusual that Barr relies on an act covering independent counsels, since neither he nor Mueller operates under it. That said, there’s nothing in the special counsel regulations that pertain to Barr and Mueller that either prohibit or mandate sharing advance copies of a report with outsiders. 

The Ethics in Government act Barr references covers independent counsels (Robert Mueller, instead, was a special counsel). Regulation – which expired in 1999 – around independent counsels left it up to the courts to determine whether “any individual named in such report” would be permitted to review the report before its release. “(T)he court may make any portion of a final report … available to any individual named in such report,” according to the US code which addresses information disclosure from independent counsel reports.   

David Kendall, a lawyer for then-President Bill Clinton during Ken Starr’s independent counsel investigation, sent a letter to Starr requesting that those named in his report be allowed to see the report before its release. Kendall closed his letter by asking Starr “to join with us in seeking a Rule 6(e) order from the Chief Judge to allow us to review the draft ‘report’ and file comments with it.”  

While Starr disagreed with Kendall’s legal interpretation of the regulations surrounding independent counsels and denied Kendall’s request, it was not up to Starr to release the report to Kendall, et al. – which is why Kendall was requesting Starr’s support in asking the court to allow a review of the draft.  

Barr’s suggestion that allowing those mentioned in the report to see it before its release “was consistent with” former practices is irrelevant because those practices and the act cited do not apply to Barr and Mueller’s authority. Barr is not legally prohibited from allowing people to see the report before releasing it, so his justification for doing such is unnecessary and out of place.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Democrat from Maryland, told CNN there is nothing he has seen so far in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report that would change the House leadership strategy to avoid impeachment proceedings.

“Based on what we have seen to date, going forward on impeachment is not worthwhile at this point. Very frankly, there is an election in 18 months and the American people will make a judgement,” Hoyer said.

The special counsel team interviewed former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in February 2019, two weeks after the release of his book, according to Robert Mueller’s report.

The focus of the Christie interview appears to have been a White House lunch he had with President Donald Trump on February 14, 2017, one day after the resignation of Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Christie also recounted that meal in his book.

Here’s what the report says about the interaction:

“Now that we fired Flynn, the Russia thing is over,” Trump told Christie, according to Christie.

Christie laughed and responded, “No way.”

Christie continued: “This Russia thing is far from over” and “[w]e’ll be here on Valentine’s Day 2018 talking about this.” 

“Christie told the President not to talk about the investigation even if he was frustrated at times,” according to the report. Christie also told Trump that he “would never be able to get rid of Flynn, ‘like gum on the bottom of your shoe.’”

According to the report, Trump also asked Christie twice to reach out to former FBI Director James Comey to say that Trump “really like[s] him. Tell him he’s part of the team.” Christie told the special counsel he never intended to fulfill those requests.

“He thought the President’s request was ‘nonsensical,’” the report says, “and Christie did not want to put Comey in the position of having to receive such a phone call.” 

A redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report has been public for about four hours now.

Here’s what we’ve learned since our last catch-up:

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, speaking at a press conference hours after Attorney General William Barr’s release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s redacted report, accused Barr of protecting President Trump and willfully ignoring key findings.

“Barr’s words and actions suggest he has been disingenuous and misleading,” Nadler said.

Citing a number of instances laid out in Mueller’s report, Nadler said it outlines “disturbing evidence that President Trump engaged in obstruction of justice and other misconduct.” He said that it’s what motivated him to invite Mueller to testify.

Nadler added, “That is why I have formally requested that special counsel Mueller testify before the House Judiciary committee as soon as possible — so we could get some answers to these critical questions. Because we clearly can’t believe what Attorney General Barr tells us.”

Sen. Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intel Committee, criticized Attorney General William Barr in a statement, saying he “fundamentally mischaracterized” special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

In a statement, he pledged that the committee’s own investigation will continue.

“Even a preliminary review of the material makes it clear that the attorney general fundamentally mischaracterized the special counsel’s findings in his pre-emptive press conference this morning. In the days to come, it is essential that Congress hear directly from the special counsel regarding his investigation. The Senate Intelligence Committee continues its own investigation, and I expect to receive a full briefing, an unredacted report, and all the materials underlying the special counsel’s findings.”

In former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s extensive interviews with investigators, he said he couldn’t remember anyone discussing the political implications of landing a Russian deal during the campaign.

But he did say that Trump told him participating in the presidential race would be a significant “infomercial” for Trump-branded properties.

Robert Mueller’s report paints a vivid picture of President Trump’s aides repeatedly ignoring or brushing aside his dictates — both in the interest of guarding the President from his own worst instincts and of protecting themselves from further legal implications.

At the same time, it portrays aides as willfully misleading the public (and, at times, each other) about his actions and mindset around some key developments.

It also characterizes deep enmity and tension between the President and his top officials, some of whom told Mueller they were themselves shocked by certain developments related to 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 wrote in the report.

According to White House officials, that dynamic has been a constant undercurrent to Trump’s presidency, including on matters of policy. The report bolsters that impression, and is peppered with examples of Presidential underlings spurning Trump’s orders.

Advisers Corey Lewandowski and Rick Dearborn each declined to deliver a message from the President to Jeff Sessions saying he should curtail the scope of the special counsel’s investigation.

Lewandowski, who took dictation of the message from the President, initially told Trump he would handle the matter himself, and took steps to arrange a meeting with Sessions that would avoid any public record.

But later he passed the note on to Dearborn, who he believed would be a better messenger, without saying the President had dictated the message himself. Reading the message, Dearborn said it “definitely raised an eyebrow.”

He never passed along the note, but told Lewandowski he had “handled the situation,” according to Mueller.

In another example, then-staff secretary Robert Porter declined to contact Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand after Trump asked him to reach out to her in order to gauge whether she was “on the team” and might be interested in overseeing the special counsel’s investigation.

“Porter didn’t reach out to her because he was uncomfortable with the task,” the report states. 

And Trump and then-White House Counsel Don McGahn engaged in a bitter dispute over whether Trump ordered Mueller’s firing, one that resulted in Trump castigating McGahn as a “lying bastard” and comparing him unfavorably to his onetime lawyer Roy Cohn.

McGahn refused Trump’s request to deny media reports about the firing, and later declined to draft a formal letter “for our records” that would deny the stories. 

Special counsel Robert Mueller declined to prosecute “several” people on a range of charges, including Donald Trump Jr. and then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.  

Mueller outlined how “several” individuals connected to the Trump campaign lied to the special counsel’s office and to Congress about their contact with Russians and on other matters — but only brought criminal charges on “some of those lies.”

Mueller, in his report, acknowledged the several defendants in his investigation who pleaded guilty to lying to Congress, and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, whom a judge found lied during cooperation interviews and under oath.

What the report lists: The report’s prosecution and declination section lists a number of people that they did charge for lying, including former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and Trump campaign adviser George Papadapolous, and its decision not to charge Sessions for misleading Congress. The section identifies two individuals under investigation but details about both of them are redacted, one for grand jury material and the other because of an ongoing investigation. It is not clear if those are declinations or referrals.

Another section indicates Mueller considered the testimony of a number of individuals who were interviewed during the investigation who they declined to prosecute. The report doesn’t identify the people but the four paragraphs that follow are redacted for personal privacy or grand jury material.

“In some instances, that decision was due to evidentiary hurdles to proving falsity. In others, the Office determined that the witness ultimately provided truthful information and that considerations of culpability, deterrence, and resource-preservation weighed against prosecution.” 

“Those lies materially impaired the investigation of Russian election interference,” Mueller noted.

Where Mueller was thwarted: In some instances, Mueller could not find evidence he could use in a criminal case or could not get to the bottom of what happened. Some individuals associated with the campaign deleted communications, Mueller said.

And “some individuals” refused to speak, claiming their Constitutional protection not to incriminate themselves. Others lied or did not give complete information in their interviews, while some information was kept confidential from investigators because it fell under attorney-client privilege, Mueller wrote.

“Given these identified gaps, the office cannot rule out the possibility that the unavailable information would shed additional light on (or cast in a new light) the events described in the report,” Mueller wrote. 

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell strongly praised the “sterling reputations” of Attorney General William Barr, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and special counsel Robert Mueller.

“You could not have asked for more objective individuals to be involved in this process, that we’ve all heard about on a virtual daily basis for two long years.  I don’t want you to buy any notions that somehow these people are political hacks. They’ve never run for anything, they have sterling reputations,” McConnell told reporters today.

He said they would “not be able to sleep at night” if they didn’t handle this “extremely controversial and complex investigation in a straight-up way.”  

McConnell warned that Democrats might try to “destroy their reputations” because they are unhappy about the results of Mueller’s probe.

Kellyanne Conway said President Trump did not have the reaction to Robert Mueller’s appointment outlined in the Special Counsel’s report.

“I was very surprised to see that because that was not the reaction of the President that day,” Conway said while speaking to reporters outside the White House today.

“I was there,” she added.

According to the report, Trump “slumped back in his chair and said, ‘Oh my God. This is terrible,’” when he learned that a special counsel had been appointed, adding, “This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.”

“He has never said that during the campaign he has certainly never said it since we’re here, and I’ve been by his side for three straight years now, on the campaign and here, and he has never expressed that, that ‘my presidency is over,’” she added.

Conway served as a senior advisor on the Trump campaign and now serves as counselor to the President.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer issued a joint statement following the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

They said there are “stark” differences between what Attorney General William Barr and Mueller have said about obstruction.

“Barr presented a conclusion that the president did not obstruct justice while Mueller’s report appears to undercut that finding,” they said.

Here’s the full statement:

Security contractor Erik Prince, who is the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, helped finance an effort to obtain Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails in 2016.

This effort was led by Barbara Ledeen, a onetime GOP Hill staffer and associate of President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Flynn reached out to Ledeen after Trump privately and repeatedly asked him and other campaign officials to obtain the deleted emails from Clinton’s private server, according to the report.

One thing to note: This was one of multiple Flynn-linked efforts to get Clinton’s emails, another being with GOP operative Peter Smith. 

In September 2016, Ledeen claimed to have received “a trove of emails” that belonged to Clinton but wanted to authenticate the emails. Prince “provided funding to hire a tech advisor to ascertain the authenticity of the emails,” the report said. The analysis determined the emails weren’t real.

Prince, former Blackwater CEO, and Flynn provided information about these efforts to investigators, according to the footnotes.

There are no references in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report to President Trump’s taxes or loans to his business beyond the discussions around Trump Tower projects in Moscow that was evaluated under the “collusion” umbrella.

It isn’t clear if that information was reviewed or redacted or referred out in a separate investigation.

Donald Trump Jr., at a morning meeting with top campaign and Trump campaign members, announced “that he had a lead on negative information about the Clinton Foundation” in the days before the Trump Tower meeting, special counsel Robert Mueller wrote. 

Then-deputy campaign manager Rick Gates, a top Mueller cooperator, recounted that Trump Jr. believed the information would come from a group in Kyrgyzstan — potentially a reference Aras Agalarov, the Azerbaijani-Russian who helped to orchestrate the meeting, according to the special counsel.

Mueller wrote that, according to Gates, Trump Jr., Eric Trump, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, then-White House communications director Hope Hicks, Ivanka Trump and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner all attended the meeting. Ivanka Trump and Kushner attended late, according to Gates, Mueller wrote.

According to the report, Gates said Manafort, however, cautioned the group to be careful and raised doubts the upcoming meeting would actually yield vital information.

Hicks later denied knowing about the meeting in advance, and Kushner said he did not recall knowing about it.

President Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow said they were not briefed on special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

Sekulow would not say whether they then talked to Trump about it, saying he would not talk about those discussions.

The special counsel examined whether President Trump learned during the presidential campaign of the rumored existence of compromising tapes made of him years earlier when he visited Moscow.

According to a footnote in the special counsel’s report, in October 2016, prior to the election, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen received a text from Russian businessman, Giorgi Rtskhiladze, that said: “Stopped flow of tapes from Russia but not sure if there’s anything else. Just so you know…”

Rtskhiladze told the special counsel that “tapes” referred to “compromising tapes of Trump rumored to be held by persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group,” which had helped host the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant, according to the report. Cohen told the special counsel that he spoke to Trump about the issue after receiving Rtskhiladze’s text.

Rtskhiladze, however, told prosecutors that he was told the tapes were fake, but that he didn’t convey that to Cohen. 

Scott Balber, a lawyer for Aras Agalarov, founder of Crocus Group, said the allegation that “compromising tapes rumored to be held by persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group,” is “total nonsense.” He added that Crocus Group does not have any compromising tapes.

Why this matters: The footnote raises the matter in the context of explaining that former FBI Director James Comey had briefed the President-elect in January 2017 on a dossier compiled by retired British spy Christopher Steele, including that “the Russians had compromising tapes of the President involving conduct when he was a private citizen during a 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe Pageant.”

About the dossier: The controversial 35 pages of intelligence memos compiled by Steele paint a picture of widespread conspiracy of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

See more:

Special counsel Robert Mueller considered President Donald Trump’s written responses “inadequate” and sought an interview with Trump, but ultimately decided not to issue a subpoena for the interview. 

Why this matters: The criticism stands in contrast to the attorney general saying Thursday the White House had “fully cooperated.” 

In a report appendix, the special counsel wrote that it sought an interview with the President for more than a year, beginning in December 2017, and considered an interview “vital to our investigation.” 

The special counsel agreed to receive written responses from Trump, but it “viewed the written answers to be inadequate.”

“The written responses, we informed counsel, ‘demonstrate the inadequacy of the written format, as we have had no opportunity to ask follow-up questions that would ensure complete answers and potentially refresh your client’s recollection or clarify the extent or nature of his lack of recollection,’” the special counsel added.

Why there wasn’t a subpoena: The special counsel said it considered a subpoena, but ultimately decided against it because the investigation had already “made significant progress.”

“We thus weighed the costs of potentially lengthy constitutional litigation, with resulting delay in finishing our investigation, against the anticipated benefits for our investigation and report,” the report states. “We determined that the substantial quantity of information we had obtained from other sources allowed us to draw relevant factual conclusions on intent and credibility, which are often inferred from circumstantial evidence and assessed without direct testimony from the subject of the investigation.”

After Trump publicly asked Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails at a July 2016 press conference, he privately and repeatedly “asked individuals affiliated with his campaign to find the deleted Clinton emails,” the report says.

The public request was also followed within five hours by Russian intelligence’s first effort to infiltrate Clinton’s emails, the special counsel said.

They sent 15 email accounts connected to Clinton’s campaign malicious links, Mueller said. This was only a small part of the broad effort the Russians made to hack the Democratic Party for damaging information and election officials.

One of the campaign people Trump asked was Michael Flynn, who later told investigators that Trump repeatedly made the request, according to the report. Flynn then tried to get Clinton’s emails and reached out to “multiple” associates — including GOP operative Peter Smith, whose efforts have been detailed in press accounts.

Why this matters: This confirms for the first time that a senior Trump campaign adviser was involved in Smith’s pursuit to find Clinton’s emails. Smith killed himself in May 2017 and left a note saying there was “no foul play.”

This seems to contradict what an unnamed Trump campaign official told The Wall Street Journal in June 2017, that if Mr. Flynn coordinated with Smith, it was only in Flynn’s capacity as a private individual. 

During Smith’s shadowy pursuit of the emails, he told associates that he was working with Russian hackers. But the investigation concluded that Smith was never actually in contact with any Russians. 

In emails to associates while trying to find the emails, Smith claimed he was working “in coordination” with the Trump campaign and name-dropped Flynn, Sam Clovis, Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway. The Mueller investigation established that Smith communicated with “at least” Flynn and Clovis but did not find any evidence suggesting that Smith was in contact with the other Trump campaign officials.

Mueller’s office interviewed multiple people about Smith’s efforts, according to footnotes in the report, and Flynn provided a lot of information about his role and Trump’s interest in the emails. Flynn was a marquee cooperator in the investigation and pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in 2017.

Speaking to Robert Mueller about her comments following the firing of FBI Director James Comey, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders conceded she made statements to the media that were not based in fact.

Specifically, Sanders said her assertion in response to a question about FBI agents supporting Comey wasn’t “founded on anything,” according to Mueller. 

In a back-and-forth during a briefing, a reporter told Sanders the “vast majority” of FBI agents supported Comey. 

What Sanders told Mueller: She said that comment was a “slip of the tongue” made “in the heat of the moment.”

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The controversial GOP platform change about Ukraine wasn’t done “at the behest” of candidate Donald Trump or the Russian government, according to the report.

“[T]he investigation did not establish that one campaign official’s efforts to dilute a portion of the Republican Party platform on providing assistance to Ukraine were undertaken at the behest of candidate Trump or Russia,” the report said.

Some background: Before the 2016 Republican convention, Trump campaign aides blocked language from appearing in the platform that endorsed the US government sending lethal arms to Ukraine and aggressively supporting Ukraine’s anti-corruption bureau, according to public reports from CNN and other outlets.

The Department of Justice released a redacted version of the special counsel Robert Mueller’s report this morning. CNN is going through the document now, and we’ve been posting highlights here.

In the first moments the report was released, we learned that Mueller wasn’t able to conclude “no criminal conduct occurred” and that the special counsel believed it had the authority to subpoena Trump — but decided against doing so. (Read more about the initial report highlights here.)

Here’s what we’ve learned since we last caught you up:

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. 

“When interviewed, Papadopoulos and the campaign officials who interacted with him told the (special counsel’s) office that they could not recall Papadopoulos’s sharing the information that Russia had obtained ‘dirt’ on candidate Clinton in the form of emails or that Russia could assist the campaign through the anonymous release of information about Clinton,” the report said.

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:

“President Trump has been fully and completely exonerated yet again. Now the tables have turned, and it’s time to investigate the liars who instigated this sham investigation into President Trump, motivated by political retribution and based on no evidence whatsoever. There is simply no denying that ‘spying did occur’ on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, as Attorney General Barr himself noted in testimony before Congress. Barr went on to testify that there was a ‘failure among a group of leaders there at the upper echelon [of the FBI]… [and] I feel I have an obligation to make sure that government power is not abused.’ Now that the collusion and obstruction conspiracy theories have been exposed for the pathetic hoaxes they always were, the Obama-era DOJ and FBI must answer for their misdeeds and the scam that they perpetrated against the American people. Justice will be served.”

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. 

“The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law,” the report states

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:

“While it may be more difficult to establish that public-facing acts were motivated by a corrupt intent, the President’s power to influence actions, persons, and the events is enhanced by his unique ability to attract attention through use of mass communications. And no principle of law excludes public acts from the scope of obstruction statutes. If the likely effect of the acts is to intimidate witnesses or alter their testimony, the justice system’s integrity is equally threatened.
Although the series of events we investigated involved discrete acts — e.g. the President’s statement to (James) Comey about the (Michael) Flynn investigation, his termination of Comey, and his efforts to remove the special counsel — it is important to view the President’s patter of conduct as a whole. That pattern sheds light on the nature of the President’s acts and the inferences that can be drawn about his intent.” 

See it:

Robert Mueller’s team declined to prosecute Donald Trump, Jr. and members of the campaign for campaign finance violations for their participation in the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in part because they couldn’t prove that they “willfully” violated the law.

Here’s what it says in the report:

“Taking into account the high burden to establish a culpable mental state in a campaign-finance prosecution and the difficulty in establishing the required valuation, the office decided not to pursue criminal campaign-finance charges against Trump Jr. or other campaign officials for the events culminating in the June 9 meeting.”

Mueller’s team explained: “The office ultimately concluded that, even if the principal legal questions were resolved favorably to the government, a prosecution would encounter difficulties proving that campaign officials or individuals connected to the campaign willfully violated the law.”

In the report, special counsel Robert Mueller outlined why obstruction by President Trump failed. It failed because others refused to “carry out orders.”

“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,” the report said.

“(James) Comey did not end the investigation of (Michael) Flynn, which ultimately resulted in Flynn’s prosecution and conviction for lying to the FBI. (Don) McGahn did not tell the Acting Attorney General that the special counsel must be removed, but was instead prepared to resign over the President’s order. (Corey) Lewandowski and Dearborn did not deliver the President ‘s message to (Jeff) Sessions that he should confine the Russia investigation to future election meddling only. And McGahn refused to recede from his recollections about events surrounding the President’s direction to have the special counsel removed, despite the President’s multiple demands that he do so. Consistent with that pattern, the evidence we obtained would not support potential obstruction charges against the President’s aides and associates beyond those already filed,” the report said.

See it:

In May 2017, after President Trump learned from then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had appointed special counsel Robert Mueller, Trump “slumped back in his chair and said, ‘Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.’”

According to the report, “The President returned to the consequences of the appointment and said, ‘Everyone tells me if you get one of these independent counsels it ruins your presidency. It takes years and years and I won’t be able to do anything. This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.’”

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On June 17, 2017, after media reports indicated that special counsel Robert Mueller was investigating whether President Trump had obstructed justice, Trump called former White House lawyer Don McGahn at home and directed him to call the acting attorney general and say Mueller “had conflicts of interest and must be removed.”

McGahn declined to do so, deciding that he would “rather resign than trigger what he regarded as a potential Saturday Night Massacre.”

See it:

Hear it:

Special counsel Robert Mueller described a previously unknown example of the President’s attempts to curtail the investigation involving Trump’s former campaign aide Cory Lewandowski.

Mueller says that on June 19, 2017, Trump met in the Oval Office with Lewandowski and dictated a message intended for then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who at that point had recused himself from matters involving the probe.

In the message, Sessions was told to publicly announce the investigation was “‘very unfair’ to the President, the President had done nothing wrong, and Sessions planned to meet with the special counsel and ‘let [him] move forward with investigation election meddling for future elections.’” Lewandowski told Trump he understood his instructions.

A month later, Trump checked back in with Lewandowski on the status of his message. Lewandowski said the message would be delivered soon.

Ultimately, Lewandowski declined to deliver the message personally, instead asking a senior White House official — Rick Dearborn — to do it instead. Mueller’s report says Dearborn was “uncomfortable with the task and did not follow through.”

See it:

The Department of Justice released a redacted version of the special counsel Robert Mueller’s report moments ago.

CNN is still going through the report, but here are the highlights so far:

The House Intel Committee has also requested that Robert Mueller testify before them “at the earliest opportunity,” Chairman Adam Schiff tweeted out on Thursday morning.

Outside of the Senate Judiciary Committee office, the printers are buzzing.

It’s one of the only sounds on this very quiet day in Dirksen Senate Office Building. Members are on recess and there are some murmurs or staff conversations from down the hall. Otherwise, just the sound of printing as Washington learns what is inside this redacted report.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team referred 14 investigations to other US attorney’s offices, including the prosecution of Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen and Greg Craig, the Skadden Arps attorney who was indicted for lying to DOJ about work he had done for the Ukraine Ministry of Justice.

The other 12 investigations are redacted.

About some of the investigations:

More on the other investigations into Trump’s world:

The special counsel believed it had the authority to subpoena President Trump, but decided against doing so because it would delay the investigation, according to the report. The prosecutors also believed they already had a substantial amount of evidence.

“We made the decision in view of the substantial delay that such an investigative step would likely produce at a late stage in our investigation” special counsel wrote in the report. “We had sufficient evidence to understand relevant events and to make certain assessments without the President’s testimony.”

The report also says that while the Office of Legal Council opinion concludes that a sitting president may not be prosecuted, “It recognizes that a criminal investigation during a President’s term is permissible.”

The OLC opinion “also recognizes that a President does not have immunity after he leaves office,” the report says.

In his evaluation of whether President Trump obstructed justice, special counsel Robert Mueller looked at a number of issues and areas involving the President and his aides focused on whether they were attempting to curtail the investigation. 

Those areas include: The Trump campaign’s response to reports about Russian support for Trump and conduct involving FBI Director James Comey and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Mueller’s report says that after the election, “the President expressed concerns to advisors that reports of Russia’s election interference might lead the public to question the legitimacy of his election.”

Other areas that Mueller probed: The President’s reaction to the continuing Russia investigation; the firing of FBI director James Comey; the appointment of the Special Counsel and efforts to remove him; efforts to curtail the special counsel; efforts to prevent public disclosure of evidence; further efforts to have attorney general Jeff Sessions take control of investigation; efforts to have White House counsel Don McGahn deny that the President ordered him to have Mueller removed; conduct towards Flynn and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort; and conduct toward former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen.

President Trump’s lawyers just sent out a statement following following the release of the redacted version of Robert Mueller’s report.

The described the investigation as a “total victory for the President.”

Read the full statement:

“The results of the investigation are 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. After a 17-month investigation, testimony from some 500 witnesses, the issuance of 2,800 subpoenas, the execution of nearly 500 search warrants, early morning raids, the examination of more than 1.4 million pages of documents, and the unprecedented cooperation of the President, it is clear there was no criminal wrongdoing. Nothing withheld; nothing concealed; nothing deleted; nothing destroyed; and nothing bleached. In addition to the report completely vindicating the President, both Attorney General Bill Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein - working with the career professionals in the Office of Legal Counsel - concluded there was not a single instance in which the elements of any crime were met.
It is also clear that the President acted properly in firing now-disgraced, former FBI Director James Comey who lied and displayed disdain for the values at the core of the FBI. It is troubling that Comey - and top members of his team - launched a biased, political attack against the President - turning one of our foundational legal standards on its head. Instead of protecting the time-honored principle that the President - as with any American - is innocent until proven guilty, they clearly set up a scheme to derail the President - pushing a twisted narrative claiming he was guilty until proven innocent. 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.’ 
This vindication of the President is an important step forward for the country and a strong reminder that this type of abuse must never be permitted to occur again.”

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he’s having a good day, following Attorney General Bill Barr’s news conference ahead of the release of the Mueller report.

He continued: “There never was by the way and there never will be. And we do have to get to the bottom of these things I will say. This should’ve never happened … I say this in front of my friends, this should never happen to another president again. This hoax — it should never happen again. Thank you.”

The redacted version of the Robert Mueller report has been delivered to the House and Senate Judiciary committees on Capitol Hill.

In special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, the team writes that: 

“With respect to whether the President can be found to have obstructed justice by exercising his powers under Article II of the Constitution, we concluded that Congress has the authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice.” 

In the portion of the report that focused on collusion, Mueller offered a big-picture overview of the myriad contacts between Trump associates and Russians that occurred in 2016.

“The Russian contacts consisted of business connections, offers of assistance to the campaign, invitations for candidate Trump and Putin to meet in person, invitations for campaign officials and representatives of the Russian government to meet, and policy positions seeking improved US-Russian relations,” Mueller wrote in the report.

Many of these contacts are already known. At least 16 Trump associates had Russian contacts during the campaign or transition, according to public statements, court filings, and reports from CNN and others. Some of the Trump aides lied about these contacts and were charged with lying to investigators.

These contacts include the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, negotiations with a Russian company to build a Trump-branded tower in Moscow, meetings with the Russian ambassador, and more.

The special counsel’s investigation into possible collusion found that members of the Trump campaign knew they would benefit from Russia’s illegal actions to influence the election, but didn’t take criminal steps to help, Robert Mueller’s report said.

 “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 the election interference activities,” the report said.

Mueller specifically said Trump’s presidential campaign “showed interest” in WikiLeaks’ releases of emails that the Russians stole from the Democrats to hurt his opponent Hillary Clinton.

Barr noted earlier Thursday that “publication of these types of materials would not be criminal unless the publisher also participated in the underlying hacking conspiracy.” 

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation was unable to clear the president on obstruction. The report states that the evidence obtained “about the about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred.”

Here’s what the special counsel team said:

“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, however, we are unable to reach that judgment. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

The Department of Justice has posted a redacted version of the special counsel report.

Top Democratic lawmakers are tweeting ahead of the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer demanded a full public release of the report:

Meanwhile, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said it is now “more urgent than ever” that Mueller testify before Congress:

Attorney General William Barr gave credit to the at-times controversial White House strategy throughout 2017 and 2018 for giving Robert Mueller’s team “unfettered” access to campaign and White House documents, as part of his judgment that President Trump did not obstruct justice.

Trump “took no act” to hamper that effort, Barr said.

The approach to hand over so much material — under Trump’s lawyer John Dowd and White House attorney Ty Cobb — was in contrast to a more combative approach against Mueller taken by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. (Giuliani took over after Dowd and Cobb left the legal team.)

Here’s what Barr said at his news conference:

“As the special counsel’s report acknowledges, there is substantial evidence to show that the President was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks. Nonetheless, the White House fully cooperated with the special counsel’s investigation, providing unfettered access to campaign and White House documents, directing senior aides to testify freely, and asserting no privilege claims. And at the same time, the President took no act that in fact deprived the special counsel of the documents and witnesses necessary to complete his investigation.”

As we wait for Attorney General William Barr to submit a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report to Congress, some 2020 Democratic candidates are weighing in on it.

Some are calling on Mueller to testify, while others are asking for Barr to make a full, unredacted version of the report public. Some are also criticizing Barr’s remarks at this morning’s news conference.

Sen. Cory Booker

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand

Sen. Amy Klobuchar

Rep. Eric Swalwell

Sen. Elizabeth Warren

Attorney General William Barr gave a full endorsement of special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment against Russians hackers.

This puts him at odds with President Trump, who has never unequivocally accepted the conclusions from US intelligence agencies that the Russian government was responsible. Trump even questioned those conclusions while standing next to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Helsinki summit last year.

Here’s what Barr said: 

“The report details efforts by Russian military officials associated with the GRU to hack into computers and steal documents and emails from individuals affiliated with the Democratic Party and the presidential campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton for the purpose of eventually publicizing those emails. Obtaining such unauthorized access into computers is a federal crime. Following a thorough investigation of these hacking operations, the Special Counsel brought charges in federal court against several Russian military officers for their respective roles in these illegal hacking activities.”

Over the years, Trump has speculated that the hackers could have been working for the Chinese government, other countries, or even some random person “sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.”

He has also suggested – in June 2016 – that the Democratic National Committee hadn’t been hacked at all, and in fact conjured the story itself after the party’s research on Trump was purportedly sent to journalists by a hacker.

“We believe it was the DNC that did the ‘hacking’ as a way to distract from the many issues facing their deeply flawed candidate and failed party leader. Too bad the DNC doesn’t hack Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 missing emails,” he said at the time.

Attorney General William Barr just wrapped up his news conference on special counsel Robert Mueller’s report and legal analyst Elie Honig examined his prepared remarks.

Here’s what Honig found:

On the hacking, the bar here is did they participate in the hacking effort? This line of the conspiracy is up to the prosecutor, and this is very narrowly defined. We will have to see what Mueller says about efforts to receive and publish the information once hacked, which may not have been seen as criminal but could be problematic from a legal and ethical standpoint. 

Under applicable law, publication of these types of materials would not be criminal unless the publisher also participated in the underlying hacking conspiracy. Here, too, the special counsel’s report did not find that any person associated with the Trump campaign illegally participated in the dissemination of the materials.

The first hint that Barr and Mueller did not approach obstruction in the same manner. Barr says he accepted the framework from Mueller, nonetheless, but it was not solely the basis of Barr and Rosenstein’s ultimate decision.

Although the Deputy Attorney General and I disagreed with some of the special counsel’s legal theories and felt that some of the episodes examined did not amount to obstruction as a matter of law, we did not rely solely on that in making our decision. Instead, we accepted the special counsel’s legal framework for purposes of our analysis and evaluated the evidence as presented by the special counsel in reaching our conclusion. 

This is a debatable premise to negate the idea of obstruction. In fact, it could be argued this would speak to motive for obstruction.

And as the special counsel’s report acknowledges, there is substantial evidence to show that the President was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks.   

We’re expecting Attorney General William Barr to release a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report soon.

While Barr just held a news conference and answered several questions about the forthcoming report, it still hasn’t been released. Here’s what we know so far:

Attorney General William Barr asserted in his statement that Robert Mueller found “no evidence that any Americans” helped the Russian government or the Internet Research Agency in their schemes to influence the 2016 election.

But one American was charged with aiding the Internet Research Agency— though he did so without knowing the full extent of the alleged conspiracy — and is serving six months in prison for the crime of identity fraud.

That American, a Californian named Richard Pinedo, admitted to selling to Russians involved in the Internet Research Agency effort to disrupt the election online accounts that allowed them to post propaganda on social media that could affect American voters.

Pinedo, 29, is in federal prison in California for another month.

Barr in his statement quoted directly from Mueller’s report that the special counsel had not identified evidence that US persons “knowingly or intentionally coordinated” with the Internet Research Agency.

Pinedo ran a website that sold dummy bank accounts to eBay, Facebook and other online service users having trouble with the transaction service PayPal. His service allowed people online to breeze through PayPal’s financial verification steps and, in the case of the Russians, buy ads on Facebook. 

Prosecutors told a judge last year that Pinedo gave them “significant assistance” as part of his guilty plea, and that his admissions and testimony “saved the government significant time and resources in the investigation.” He helped them identify previously anonymous Russians and the details of their alleged scheme.

The criminal case against the Internet Research Agency is continuing, with a Russian company charged in the case pleading not guilty.

Rep. Jerry Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has sent a letter to special counsel Robert Mueller asking him to testify soon.

“I request your testimony before the the Judiciary Committee as soon as possible — but, in any event, no later than May 23, 2019,” he wrote.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have already called on Mueller to testify.

Here’s Nadler’s letter:

President Trump tweeted “game over” moments after Attorney General William Barr held a news conference detailing special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

He tweeted an image of himself that appropriated the font style from “Game of Thrones.”

HBO later issued a statement in response to Trump’s tweet.

Some background: Trump has used appropriated images from the “Game of Thrones” before.

In the past, HBO has responded, saying: “We were not aware of this messaging and would prefer our trademark not be misappropriated for political purposes.”

(HBO and CNN share parent company WarnerMedia.)

Asked if special counsel Robert Mueller should testify before Congress about his report, Attorney General William Barr said he has no objection.

Barr is scheduled to testify next month in front of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees.

Attorney General William Barr just delivered remarks on the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s redacted report on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. 

Click or tap here for a copy of the full remarks as prepared for delivery.

Attorney General William Barr said a group of bipartisan leaders from several congressional committees will see a version of report with no redactions, except for grand jury information.

“Nevertheless, in an effort to accommodate congressional requests, we will make available to a bipartisan group of leaders from several congressional committees a version of the report with all redactions removed except those relating to grand-jury information,” he said.

President Trump’s lawyers did not request redactions in the report, Attorney General William Barr said.

Barr made clear: “No one outside this group proposed any redactions, and no one outside the department has seen the unredacted report, with the exception of certain sections that were made available to IC, the intelligence community, for their advice on protecting intelligence sources and methods.”

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report examined 10 episodes involving President Trump and “elements of an obstruction offense,” Attorney General William Barr said.

“After finding no underlying collusion with Russia, the special counsel’s report goes on to consider whether certain actions of the President could amount to obstruction of the special counsel’s investigation. As I addressed in my March 24 letter, the special counsel did not make a traditional prosecutorial judgment regarding this allegation. Instead, the report recounts 10 episodes involving the President and discusses potential legal theories for connecting these actions to elements of an obstruction offense.”

Attorney General William Barr said the soon-to-be-released report contains only “limited redactions” — none of which were the result of executive privilege.

“As you will see, most of the redactions were compelled by the need to prevent harm to ongoing matters and to comply with court orders prohibiting the public disclosure of information bearing upon ongoing investigations and criminal cases, such as the IRA case and the Roger Stone case,” Barr said.

The redactions were “applied by Department of Justice attorneys working closely together with attorneys from the Special Counsel’s Office, as well as with the intelligence community, and prosecutors who are handling ongoing cases. 

“The redactions are their work product,” Barr said.

Barr said the decision “whether to assert executive privilege” on part of the report rested with President Trump. Trump decided he would not assert that privilege, Barr said.

Watch here:

Attorney General William Barr said that, while special counsel Robert Mueller and his team “investigated a number of links or contacts between Trump Campaign officials and individuals connected with the Russian government,” they found no evidence of collusion.

“After reviewing those contacts, the special counsel did not find any conspiracy to violate US law involving Russia-linked persons and any persons associated with the Trump campaign,” Barr said.

He continued:

So that is the bottom line. After nearly two years of investigation, thousands of subpoenas, and hundreds of warrants and witness interviews, the Special Counsel confirmed that the Russian government sponsored efforts to illegally interfere with the 2016 presidential election but did not find that the Trump campaign or other Americans colluded in those schemes. 

Attorney General William Barr said the special counsel’s report details Russian efforts to hack into computers and steal documents and emails from the Democratic party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The purpose, he said, was to “eventually publicizing these documents.”

Attorney General William Barr said special counsel Robert Mueller’s report shows that Russian operatives sought to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election.

He added that the special counsel found “no collusion by any Americans.”

“The special counsel found no evidence that any Americans – including anyone associated with the Trump campaign – conspired or coordinated with the Russian government or the IRA in carrying out this illegal scheme.” Barr said.

“Put another way, the Special Counsel found no ‘collusion’ by any Americans in the IRA’s illegal activity,” he said.

Attorney General William Barr detailed the timing of the report’s release.

He said the report will be released to the chairman and ranking members of the Senate and House judiciary committees at 11 a.m. ET.

The report will also be posted on the Department of Justice’s website for the public after it’s delivered to Congress, he said.

Attorney General William Barr is expected to speak soon on the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

President Trump’s personal lawyers, led by Rudolph Giuliani, are working on a rebuttal to special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

His lawyers have been reworking a response they’ve been planning for months to conform more to what they expect in Mueller’s report based on Barr’s letter, though that rebuttal is not expected until sometime after the redacted version is released today.

At the White House: The President and White House officials are not expected to review the report ahead of its public release, people familiar with the matter said. Instead, aides — like the rest of official Washington — are planning to pore over the hundreds of pages starting the moment they are released.

Trump, who is known to prefer one-page summaries with visual aids over lengthy briefing texts, is not expected to read each page of the report himself, according to one official. Instead, his legal team is planning to brief him on the findings once they’ve been read and digested. And the President is likely to spend hours consuming television coverage of the report, which newsrooms are gearing up to read and analyze.

The special counsel’s report is expected to be released today. But one question lingering is what will happen after it’s out.

Here’s what could happen:

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report will be released to Congress on discs, according to a senior Department of Justice official. 

Lawmakers could receive the report some time in the 11 a.m. ET hour after Attorney General William Barr’s news conference.

There will be two versions of the redacted special counsel report: One being released to the public and one that will eventually go to a limited number of members of Congress with fewer redactions, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

Some of the redactions in the Mueller report will be because of the gag order in the case involving Republican activist Roger Stone, they wrote in a court filing. Prosecutors say they are making these redactions so not to potentially prejudice a jury, since Stone has pleaded not guilty to the charges he faces and is headed to trial.

In the court filing related to the Stone case, prosecutors outlined a careful plan to prevent leaks of the less-redacted version the Justice Department plans to provide to Congress.

First, prosecutors will “secure” the less-redacted version — suggesting it won’t be available immediately. They will also keep it in an “appropriate setting” and limit its access to only some members of Congress and their staff. 

If Congress wants copies of the less-redacted version, prosecutors may want to ask a federal judge for permission before giving it to them, prosecutors wrote on Wednesday.

The publicly released version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report is expected to have relatively minimal redactions in the section on obstruction of justice, according to a source familiar with the report.

This was first reported in The Washington Post.

Why this matters: This part of the report would be expected to have fewer redactions than the part dealing with Russian interference and ties to Trump campaign due to the fact the obstruction investigation included testimony the Mueller investigators received from current and former Trump aides, not testimony before a grand jury.

A copy of Robert Mueller’s redacted report will be posted on the special counsel website after it has been delivered to Congress.

A senior DOJ official said the report will be delivered between 11 a.m. ET and noon to Capitol Hill and lawmakers will receive discs. 

President Trump tweeted “presidential harassment” ahead of the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

Moments ago, Trump sent out these two tweets:

Attorney General William Barr is expected to release a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report today.

Here’s what we know so far:

President Trump told WMAL Radio’s Larry O’Connor on Wednesday that he may have a news conference after Barr’s. 

Barr’s news conference is scheduled at 9:30 a.m. ET.The New York Tims reported Wednesday officials from the Justice Department have spoken repeatedly with the White House about special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings

The Times report, citing people with knowledge of the discussions, said the talks “aided the President’s legal team” as it works to rebut the report, which the Justice Department said it will release with redactions today.

According to Department of Justice spokesperson Kerri Kupec, Attorney General William Barr will address these things at the 9:30 a.m. ET news conference today:

The news conference is expected to last 20 to 30 minutes. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is not planning to make a statement, but he will be there with Barr.

She described Barr as calm this morning and ready for the briefing.

The Department of Justice has informed congressional committees they will be sent a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report around 11 a.m. ET, multiple congressional sources tell CNN. 

Rep. Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, tweeted Wednesday that Congress would receive the report after Attorney General William Barr’s news conference.

Attorney General William Barr will hold a news conference on special counsel Robert Mueller’s report at 9:30 a.m. ET today at the Justice Department, DOJ spokesperson Kerri Kupec said.

Barr will take questions. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will also be there.

One thing to note: Neither Mueller nor members of his prosecutorial team will be attending, the special counsel office’s spokesperson Peter Carr said.

Carr, who will be there, said he also works as a spokesman for the criminal division.

He declined to comment on the reason why Mueller will not attend.

Attorney General William Barr is expected today to release a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said the report will be released this morning.

The redacted report will provide more details into what was uncovered during the 22-month special counsel investigation into possible collusion between Donald Trump’s team and Russia and possible obstruction of justice.

Some background: Barr said he would use color-coded categories and explain the rationale for the redactions that are made from Mueller’s nearly 400-page report.

He has said four types of information would be redacted from the report he submits: grand jury material, classified information, material tied to ongoing investigation, and information that could harm “peripheral third parties.”