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The Mueller Report: What to Watch For Today What to Watch Ahead of the Mueller Report Release
(32 minutes later)
It’s finally happening. The Justice Department plans to send Congress on late Thursday morning a redacted version of the report.
On Thursday, the Justice Department will release the highly anticipated findings of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. The report — expected to be about 400 pages — is the product of a yearslong investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether any Trump associates conspired as well as whether President Trump tried to undermine the inquiry. Attorney General William P. Barr has scheduled a news conference for 9:30 a.m., before the report is sent, when he will likely be questioned about his contacts with the White House about Mr. Mueller’s findings and any redactions he made in the document.
Here is what to watch as we head into an eventful day. Among the immediate questions once the report is public will be how faithfully Mr. Barr reflected its conclusions in a March 24 letter to Congress. House Democrats will be looking to see how aggressively Mr. Barr redacted passages.
Attorney General William P. Barr and his deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein, will hold a news conference at 9:30 a.m. The Justice Department will turn the report over to Congress between 11 a.m. and noon on compact discs, according to a senior department official. Though the delivery method might sound outdated, it is not unusual for lawmakers to receive large government reports on the discs. Another question is how Mr. Mueller dealt with whether President Trump illegally obstructed justice; according to Mr. Barr, the special counsel neither accused nor exonerated Mr. Trump.
The report will be posted online for the public sometime after that, the senior Justice Department official said. The report may reveal more about Russia’s election intervention and interactions with Mr. Trump’s team even if, as Mr. Barr said, Mr. Mueller did not establish a criminal conspiracy.
Mr. Barr’s news conference will be his first since he outlined Mr. Mueller’s conclusions last month in a four-page letter to Congress that has drawn criticism. Lawmakers and critics of Mr. Trump have questioned whether Mr. Barr’s account fully reflected the results of two years of investigation. Members of Mr. Mueller’s team have privately told associates that his reduction of their work did not adequately convey findings that they deemed more troubling for the president than the attorney general publicly acknowledged. The White House signaled that it may respond aggressively. Mr. Trump said that he may hold a news conference of his own and his lawyers have prepared a rebuttal document, though it was not clear whether they would issue it.
— Mikayla Bouchard Mr. Barr’s decision to speak publicly before sending the report to Capitol Hill may give him a chance to set the stage for what members of Congress and the public will find in the nearly 400 pages prepared by Mr. Mueller.
Justice Department officials in recent days have had numerous conversations with White House lawyers about the conclusions made by Mr. Mueller, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. The talks have aided the president’s legal team as it prepares a rebuttal to the report and strategizes for the coming public war over its findings. The attorney general will have a chance to explain his process for deciding what to redact from the report and to defend his handling of the matter. Justice Department officials had numerous conversations with White House lawyers about Mr. Mueller’s conclusions the days leading up to the report’s release, providing an opportunity for the president’s lawyers to prepare a response.
— Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman Democrats harshly criticized Mr. Barr for holding a news conference before releasing the report, saying he was trying to spin it to protect the president.
[Read more: White House and Justice Dept. Officials Discussed Mueller Report Before Release] “It now appears the attorney general intends to once again put his own spin on the investigative work completed by the special counsel,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. “And the fact that the attorney general is not releasing even the redacted report to Congress until after his press conference will again result in the report being presented through his own words rather than through the words of Special Counsel Mueller.”
Mr. Barr has said that law enforcement officials are blacking out sensitive information and that the redactions will be color-coded so we will know the reason behind each one. They will fall into four categories: Mr. Barr’s account of Mr. Mueller’s conclusions has been at issue since he sent a four-page letter to Congress last month.
1. Information that has been presented to a grand jury, which is subject to secrecy rules. In his letter, Mr. Barr quoted Mr. Mueller’s report saying that the investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government” and that “while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
2. Material that intelligence officials fear could compromise sensitive sources and methods. By citing only those two findings, Mr. Barr fueled Mr. Trump’s overstated public claims that Mr. Mueller’s report was a “complete and total exoneration,” though that was not the case on obstruction, even by Mr. Barr’s rendering.
3. Information that could hamper other current investigations, including spinoffs of the Mueller inquiry. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and Manhattan are investigating the finances of the Trump inaugural committee and hush payments intended to cover up a sex scandal that threatened to upend Mr. Trump’s campaign. Lawmakers and critics of Mr. Trump have questioned whether Mr. Barr’s account fully reflected the results of two years of investigation. Members of Mr. Mueller’s team have privately told associates that they were angry at his reduction of their work, which they said did not adequately convey findings that they deemed more troubling for the president than the attorney general publicly acknowledged.
4. Material that the Justice Department believes would unfairly infringe on the privacy and damage the reputations of “peripheral third parties.” Mr. Barr appeared sensitive to the criticism, later saying through a spokeswoman that his letter was not meant to be a comprehensive summary of the entire report, but only a transmission of the bottom-line conclusions.
—Sharon LaFraniere The special counsel’s report was expected to describe a series of actions that Mr. Trump or his team took that could be interpreted as impeding the Russia investigation, even though Mr. Mueller did not come to a definitive conclusion about whether they add up to a crime of obstruction.
[Read more: All the FAQs around the Mueller report.] Many of the actions were taken publicly or have been reported before, including the president’s decision to fire James B. Comey, then the F.B.I. director, who was leading the investigation into Russia’s interference and possible links to the Trump campaign. But Mr. Barr’s letter suggested that the report would cite other actions not previously disclosed.
Democrats who control the House have insisted that they be given access to the full report as well as any underlying evidence, arguing that they cannot trust Mr. Barr, a Trump appointee, to independently decide what gets released and what does not. The House Judiciary Committee has already authorized a subpoena for the unredacted report and may issue it if Democratic leaders are unsatisfied. Mr. Trump’s defenders have said a president cannot be accused of a crime for exercising the powers granted to him under the Constitution, while his critics have argued that otherwise legal actions can still be construed as obstruction if they are motivated by corrupt intent. While Mr. Mueller evidently opted not to make a decision, Mr. Barr did, telling Congress that he and Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, agreed that Mr. Trump committed no obstruction offense.
The report will also likely offer fodder for Democratic presidential candidates to criticize the president. Long before anyone outside of the Justice Department saw the report, Mr. Barr and congressional Democrats were skirmishing over how much should be made public.
Mr. Trump’s legal team is expected to release its own report to counter Mr. Mueller’s findings. The rebuttal would not be an official government document, but is likely to try to paint the investigation as biased against Mr. Trump. In providing the report to Congress and the public, Mr. Barr said he would black out information that would disclose secret grand jury proceedings, compromise open investigations, reveal intelligence sources and methods or intrude on the privacy or damage the reputations of “peripheral third parties.”
— Peter Baker But Democrats who control the House have insisted that they be given access to the full report as well as any underlying evidence, arguing that they cannot trust Mr. Barr, a Trump appointee, to independently decide what gets released and what does not. The House Judiciary Committee has already authorized a subpoena for the unredacted report and may issue it if Democratic leaders are unsatisfied.
New York Times reporters who have been closely following this story for years will be providing real-time updates, analysis and context as they read the report and uncover the most important findings. Mr. Mueller has already established — through indictments of Russian individuals and organizations he linked to the Kremlin — that Russia sought to intervene in the 2016 election on Mr. Trump’s behalf.
But even if Mr. Mueller established no illegal conspiracy by the Trump campaign, the report might offer additional information on contacts that might not rise to the level of a crime in his view. Previous court filings and public reports have already documented that Mr. Trump and at least 17 campaign officials and advisers had more than 100 contacts with Russian nationals and WikiLeaks, or their intermediaries, before his inauguration.
Mr. Mueller’s report will be examined to see if he offers any further insight into what was going on behind the scenes or any additional details on the proposed Trump Tower that Mr. Trump and his associates were secretly negotiating to build in Moscow through much of the 2016 election year.
Mr. Trump has adamantly reduced his explanation of what went on in 2016 to a two-word mantra repeated at every turn: “no collusion.” With the release of Mr. Barr’s summary of Mr. Mueller’s report, he has amended it to say, “No collusion, no obstruction.”
But Mr. Trump’s official responses to Mr. Mueller’s more specific questions have remained secret since he responded in writing in November. With his lawyers worried that he would make a false statement and expose himself to criminal charges, the president refused to be interviewed in person, and Mr. Mueller did not try to force the issue with a subpoena.
By drafting the answers in writing in consultation with his legal team, Mr. Trump may have sidestepped what his lawyers feared would be a “perjury trap.” If Mr. Mueller included them in his report in whole or in part, however, they could offer the broadest explanation by Mr. Trump of what he knew and when he knew it during the campaign and after he took office.