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What We Know So Far From the Mueller Report The Mueller Report: Live Analysis and Excerpts
(32 minutes later)
Mr. Mueller examined 10 actions by President Trump to determine whether he sought to obstruct justice but could not reach a conclusion “based on the facts and the applicable legal standards.” While he found a concerted effort by Russia to interfere in the 2016 election, Mr. Mueller established no criminal conspiracy between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia. After a sweeping, 22-month investigation that consumed the national political conversation and imperiled the Trump presidency, Robert S. Mueller III found there was insufficient evidence to establish that Mr. Trump or his associates engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Russia to disrupt the 2016 election.
The report detailed dramatic conflicts within the White House. When Mr. Trump learned of Mr. Mueller’s appointment, he slumped in his chair and said: “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked.” Investigators identified numerous contacts between campaign advisers and Russians affiliated with the government during the campaign and after the election. Some were for business purposes, some for policy reasons. But the special counsel did not establish that the contacts added up to an illegal conspiracy.
Attorney General William P. Barr offered a strong defense of Mr. Trump before releasing Mr. Mueller’s report, saying that investigators “found no evidence” that any member of the Trump campaign conspired with Russia in its effort to interfere in the 2016 election. The report voluminously detailed Mr. Trump’s efforts to thwart the investigation, and the Mueller team debated whether the episodes amounted to criminal obstruction of justice. The report said that, by virtue of his position as president, he had the authority to carry out several of the acts in question — including firing James B. Comey as F.B.I. director.
Mr. Barr said he gave Mr. Trump’s lawyers access to Mr. Mueller’s report “earlier this week,” before it was released. Mr. Trump’s lawyers did not ask for any redactions. In the end, the special counsel decided to make no judgment on whether the president had obstructed justice. Attorney General William P. Barr made a decision for him. He decided the president had not.
At a White House event for wounded troops, Mr. Trump claimed vindication to cheers from the audience. Democrats lashed out at Mr. Barr, accusing him of acting as a spokesman for the president. Read more on Mr. Barr’s news conference and the reaction to the report.
Investigators examined 10 episodes in which the president may have obstructed justice, but Mr. Mueller said he could not reach a conclusion. Key Moment | POSTED AT 12:05 PM
“The evidence we obtained about the president’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment. At the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” On May 17, 2017, the Acting Attorney General for the Russia investigation appointed a special counsel to conduct the investigation and related matters. The president reacted to news that a special counsel had been appointed by telling advisors that it was ‘the end of his presidency’ and demanding that Sessions resign. Sessions submitted his resignation, but the president ultimately did not accept it. The president told aides that the special counsel had conflicts of interest and suggested that the special counsel therefore could not serve. The president’s advisors told him the asserted conflicts were meritless and had already been considered by the department of justice.
Mr. Barr, however, opted to reach the conclusion that Mr. Mueller would not. “After carefully reviewing the facts and legal theories outlined in the report, and in consultation with the Office of Legal Counsel and other department lawyers, the deputy attorney general and I concluded that the evidence developed by the special counsel is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense,” Mr. Barr said at a news conference before the release of the report. The president immediately recognized the threat of the investigation. When he learned of Mr. Mueller’s appointment, he slumped in his chair and said, “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked.”
Mr. Barr said that he “disagreed with some of the special counsel’s legal theories” regarding obstruction but even accepting them found no basis for a criminal charge. He also lashed out at the attorney general for what Mr. Trump viewed as a failure to protect him. This would ultimately become a key consideration for the special counsel in debating whether the president obstructed justice, or sought to. — Maggie Haberman
Among the incidents that the special counsel examined was Mr. Trump’s decision to fire James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, in May 2017, and an attempt by the president a month later to have his White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, fire Mr. Mueller. POSTED AT 12:46 PM
He also looked at the president’s efforts to hide details of a Trump Tower meeting with Russians during the election and to pressure Jeff Sessions, then the attorney general, to reverse his decision to recuse himself from supervising the investigation. “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.”
Mr. Barr said he would not stand in the way of Mr. Mueller testifying on Capitol Hill about his findings. “I have no objection to Bob Mueller testifying,” Mr. Barr said. Whether Mr. Trump engaged in obstruction of justice involves complicated legal and constitutional issues that do not apply to ordinary citizens, but the report explicitly says that the inquiry did not clear the president. Discussing whether the president could have obstructed justice while exercising his constitutional authority, such as by firing James B. Comey as the director of the F.B.I., the report notes that Congress is empowered to step in to stop the corrupt use of presidential power. Democrats in Congress will surely seize on that language as justification for their burgeoning inquiries.— Sharon LaFraniere
The last two years were filled with angry clashes, outbursts, threatened resignations and false statements as Mr. Trump reacted to the investigation. POSTED AT 12:36 PM
After saying that Mr. Mueller’s appointment would mean “the end of my presidency,” Mr. Trump turned on Jeff Sessions, then the attorney general, blaming him for recusing himself from overseeing the investigation. “How could you let this happen, Jeff?” he demanded. In early May 2017, Cohen received requests from Congress to provide testimony and documents in connection with congressional investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election. At that time, Cohen understood Congress’s interest in him to be focused on the allegations in the Steele reporting concerning a meeting Cohen allegedly had with Russian officials in Prague during the campaign. Cohen had never traveled to Prague and was not concerned about those allegations, which he believed were provably false. On May 18, 2017, Cohen met with the President to discuss the request from Congress, and the President instructed Cohen that he should cooperate because there was nothing there.
The tension between Mr. Trump and Mr. McGahn, then the White House counsel, flared repeatedly. In June 2017, Mr. Trump called Mr. McGahn from Camp David twice and told him to have Mr. Mueller fired for alleged conflicts of interest. Mr. McGahn refused, saying he did not want to repeat the “Saturday Night Massacre,” when Richard M. Nixon ordered the firing of Watergate prosecutors. This further undercuts explosive information in the dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, the former British spy.— Adam Goldman
Mr. McGahn prepared to submit his resignation. He called Reince Priebus, then the White House chief of staff, and told him the president had asked him to “do crazy shit.” Ultimately, Mr. Trump backed off, but when The New York Times reported about the episode, he told Mr. McGahn to publicly deny it, which he would not do. POSTED AT 12:27 PM
Mr. Trump referred to Mr. McGahn as a “lying bastard” and said that if he did not deny the report, “then maybe I’ll have to get rid of him.” He did not fire Mr. McGahn, who left later that year. [REDACTED] Manafort also [REDACTED] wanted to be kept apprised of any developments with WikiLeaks and separately told Gates to keep in touch [REDACTED] about future WikiLeaks releases. According to Gates, by the late summer of 2016, the Trump Campaign was planning a press strategy, a communications campaign, and messaging based on the possible release of Clinton emails by WikiLeaks. [REDACTED] while Trump and Gates were driving to LaGuardia Airport. [REDACTED], shortly after the call candidate Trump told Gates that more releases of damaging information would be coming. [REDACTED]
In his news conference on Thursday morning, Mr. Barr at times sounded like a defense lawyer, making no criticism of the president and instead offering an understanding interpretation of actions that Mr. Trump’s critics have said amounted to obstruction of justice. Mr. Barr said this type of material must be kept secret because it was relevant to a continuing criminal matter. That is probably, at a minimum, the indictment of the former Trump adviser Roger Stone Jr., who is charged with lying about his participation in such efforts. But this raises a larger question: whether the hidden evidence shows that the Trump campaign conspired with WikiLeaks. At his news conference on Thursday morning, Mr. Barr said any campaign collusion with WikiLeaks could not amount to a criminal conspiracy because WikiLeaks’ publication of the emails was not a crime so long as it did not help Russia hacking them.—Charlie Savage
[Read Mr. Barr’s full prepared remarks.] POSTED AT 12:25 PM
In addressing obstruction, Mr. Barr said the president had no corrupt intent and that his actions seen as impeding the investigation were a result of being understandably “frustrated and angered by his sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents and fueled by illegal leaks.” During the course of the investigation, the Office periodically identified evidence of potential criminal activity that was outside the scope of the Special Counsel’s jurisdiction established by the Acting Attorney General. After consultation with the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, the Office referred that evidence to appropriate law enforcement authorities, principally other components of the Department of Justice and the FBI.
Mr. Barr said he gave access to the report to Mr. Trump’s lawyers, which gave them an opportunity to prepare their public defense in advance. Twelve of those referrals remain secret. Two others have been made public, including prosecutions involving Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, and Gregory B. Craig, a White House counsel in the Obama administration.— Adam Goldman
“Earlier this week, the president’s personal counsel requested and were given the opportunity to read a final version of the redacted report before it was publicly released,” Mr. Barr said. “The president’s personal lawyers were not permitted to make, and did not request, any redactions.” POSTED AT 12:20 PM
[Here’s what you need to know about the redactions and what they mean.] In early 2018, the press reported that the president had directed McGahn to have the special counsel removed in June 2017 and that McGahn had threatened to resign rather than carry out the order. The president reacted to the news stories by directing White House officials to tell McGahn to dispute the story and to create a record stating he had not been ordered to have the special counsel removed. McGahn told those officials that the media reports were accurate in stating that the president had directed McGahn to have the special counsel removed. The president then met with McGahn in the Oval Office and again pressured him to deny the reports. In the same meeting, the president also asked McGahn why he had told the special counsel about the president’s effort to remove the special counsel and why McGahn took notes of his conversation with the president. McGahn refused to back away from what he remembered happening and perceived the president to be testing his mettle.
Mr. Barr said he did so in accordance with the “practice followed under the Ethics in Government Act,” permitting those named in a report to read it before publication. However, that has not always been the practice. In 1998, the independent counsel Ken Starr declined to let President Bill Clinton or his lawyers read his report on the Monica Lewinsky case before he sent it to Congress. This is one of the most damning episodes listed in the report, despite having already been reported by The New York Times. It demonstrated an active effort by the president to paint a false narrative about his conduct, both in the news media and with the special counsel.— Maggie Haberman
Mr. Barr said that the White House made no claims of executive privilege over any information in the report and that none of the redactions in the public report Congress were made at the request of the White House. POSTED AT 12:08 PM
At the news conference, Mr. Barr made sure to include Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, who first appointed Mr. Mueller. When Flynn’s counsel reiterated that Flynn could no longer share information pursuant to a joint defense agreement, the president’s personal counsel said he would make sure that the President knew that Flynn’s actions reflected ‘hostility’ towards the president.
Mr. Barr provided an important qualifier to the determination that Mr. Trump and the Trump campaign did not engage in illegal collusion — not with the Russian government that stole the Democratic emails, but with WikiLeaks, which published them. The report does not state what the president might do in response, if anything. But the episode is part of a pattern, laid out in the report, of the president or his lawyers trying to determine what former aides were telling the special counsel, praising those who refused to cooperate and warning those who did help the special counsel’s team.—Sharon LaFraniere
“The special counsel also investigated whether any member or affiliate of the Trump campaign encouraged or otherwise played a role in these dissemination efforts,” he said. “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.” POSTED AT 12:06 PM
In other words, since WikiLeaks did not participate in Russia’s underlying hacking of the emails, its actions were no crime. Thus, any Trump campaign collusion with WikiLeaks could not be an illegal conspiracy. Ultimately, while we believed that we had the authority and legal justification to issue a grand jury subpoena to obtain the President’s testimony, we chose not to do so. We made that decision in view of the substantial delay that such an investigative step would likely produce at a late stage in our investigation. We also assessed that based on the significant body of evidence we had already obtained of the President’s actions and his public and private statements describing or explaining those actions, we had sufficient evidence to understand relevant events and to make certain assessments without the President’s testimony.
Mr. Trump responded to the report at an event at the White House for wounded troops, saying that it had vindicated him. Without an interview, Mr. Mueller never had a chance to question the president about the central question of the obstruction investigation: what was his intention when he took a range of actions that could have impeded the investigation?—Michael S. Schmidt
“They’re having a good day,” he said of the troops. “I’m having a good day too. It’s called ‘no collusion, no obstruction.’ There never was, by the way, and there never will be.” POSTED AT 11:58 AM
“This should never happen to another president again, this hoax,” he added. Shortly after requesting Flynn’s resignation and speaking privately to Comey, the President sought to have Deputy National Security Advisor K.T. McFarland draft an internal letter stating that the President had not directed Flynn to discuss sanctions with Kislyak. McFarland declined because she did not know whether that was true, and a White House Counsel’s Office attorney thought that the request would look like a quid pro quo for an ambassadorship she had been offered.
Even before the report was released, Mr. Trump was claiming victory and lashing out at investigators and his critics. He tweeted a photo resembling a “Game of Thrones” poster that depicted him staring into a cloud, saying “No Collusion. No Obstruction. For the haters and radical left Democrats: Game Over.” Even the president’s closest advisers were reluctant to protect Mr. Trump because they could not be sure he was telling the truth.— Adam Goldman
POSTED AT 11:55 AM
The tweet was the latest of a barrage that the president posted starting early Thursday morning, long before the report was released. Like collusion, “coordination” does not have a settled definition in federal criminal law. We understood coordination to require an agreement—tacit or express—between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government on election interference. That requires more than the two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other’s actions or interests.
The report may for the first time provide Mr. Trump’s official responses to Mr. Mueller’s specific questions, which 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. Mr. Trump likes to say there was “no collusion,” and Mr. Barr used that term again in his news conference on Thursday morning. But collusion is not a legal concept. In looking for evidence of a criminal conspiracy, Mr. Mueller said he was instead looking for whether there was evidence of “coordination” between the Trump campaign and Russia in its election interference activities. He decided that the evidence fell short of meeting that standard.
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.” — Charlie Savage
Democrats quickly assailed Mr. Barr for trying to frame the results of the report before lawmakers or the public had a chance to read it for themselves. POSTED AT 11:53 AM
“It is clear Congress and the American people must hear from Special Counsel Robert Mueller in person to better understand his findings,” Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said on Twitter. “We are now requesting Mueller to appear before @HouseJudiciary as soon as possible.” The Office investigated several other events that have been publicly reported to involve potential Russia-related contacts. For example, the investigation established that interactions between Russian Ambassador Kislyak and Trump Campaign officials both at the candidate’s April 2016 foreign policy speech in Washington, D.C., and during the week of the Republican National Convention were brief, public, and non-substantive. And the 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.
Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, said Mr. Barr’s performance demonstrated fealty to Mr. Trump. “Attorney General Barr is supposed to be the nation’s top impartial lawyer, not a White House spokesman,” he said. “His press conference was just an attempt to spin a report nobody has read yet, and that’s really disappointing.” Reporters circled for months around rumors of meetings between members of the Trump campaign, including Jeff Sessions, then a senator, and Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador at the time, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington and elsewhere. There were also lingering questions about why a portion of the Republican Party platform about Ukraine had changed during summer 2016. People involved in each had publicly denied any untoward behavior, and Mr. Mueller appears to have confirmed that the meetings were “non-substantive.” His assessment of the platform change is more nuanced, but ultimately did not “establish” the platform change had been directed by Mr. Trump or Russia.—Nicholas Fandos
Democratic presidential candidates quickly pounced on Mr. Barr as well. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, in a tweet, labeled the attorney general’s remarks as “spin.” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said it was “ a disgrace to see an Attorney General acting as if he’s the personal attorney and publicist for the president of the United States.” Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York called Mr. Barr’s news conference “a complete farce and an embarrassing display of propaganda on behalf of President Trump.” POSTED AT 11:52 AM
Katie Benner, Michael S. Schmidt, Eileen Sullivan, Michael Tackett and Noah Weiland contributed reporting. Several features of the conduct we investigated distinguish it from typical obstruction-of-justice cases. First, the investigation concerned the President, and some of his actions, such as firing the FBI director, involved facially lawful acts within his Article II authority, which raises constitutional issues discussed below. At the same time, the President’s position as the head of the Executive Branch provided him with unique and powerful means of influencing official proceedings, subordinate officers, and potential witnesses—all of which is relevant to a potential obstruction-of-justice analysis.
Mr. Mueller is saying that Mr. Trump’s powers as president were tied in with the actions he took that could have constituted obstruction, like ousting James B. Comey as F.B.I. director. This made building a case more difficult because Mr. Trump had the authority as president to take many of the actions that were scrutinized.— Michael S. Schmidt
POSTED AT 11:51 AM
On several occasions, the president directed aides not to publicly disclose the emails setting up the June 9 [2016] meeting, suggesting that the emails would not leak and that the number of lawyers with access to them should be limited. Before the emails became public, the president edited a press statement for Trump Jr. by deleting a line that acknowledged that the meeting was with ‘an individual who [Trump Jr.] was told might have information helpful to the campaign’ and instead said only the meeting was about adoptions of Russian children. When the press asked questions about the president’s involvement in Trump Jr.’s statement, the president’s personal lawyer repeatedly denied the president had played any role.
This confirms a New York Times report in July 2017 that disclosed that the president had helped draft the misleading statement made by his son Donald Trump Jr. and pushed for a version that did not reveal the true nature of the meeting. That The Times learned of the meeting at the time shook the president and was a key factor in what was a tumultuous summer for the White House.— Maggie Haberman
POSTED AT 11:48 AM
Both men believed the plan would require candidate Trump’s assent to succeed (were he to be elected president.) They also discussed the status of the Trump campaign and Manafort’s strategy for winning Democratic votes in Midwestern states.
This suggests that Russia was trying to influence the Trump campaign to support a plan that would have allowed Russia to control part of eastern Ukraine, which would have been a huge victory for the Kremlin. Mr. Manafort had shared internal campaign polling data with the Russian associate before their Aug. 2, 2016, meeting — and for some period afterward, the report said.— Sharon LaFraniere
POSTED AT 11:44 AM
In early summer 2017, the president called Sessions at home and again asked him to reverse his recusal from the Russia investigation.
The president instructed Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, in 2017 to tell Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself. The president wanted an attorney general who would shield the president, and his efforts to put Mr. Sessions back in charge of the Russia investigation showed he actively interfered in Mr. Sessions’s recusal as a possible act of obstruction.— Adam Goldman
POSTED AT 11:40 AM
While the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign, the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges. Among other things, the evidence was not sufficient to charge any Campaign official as an unregistered agent of the Russian government or other Russian principal. And our evidence about the June 9, 2016 meeting and WikiLeak’s release of hacked materials was not sufficient to charge a criminal campaign-finance violation.
Mr. Barr repeatedly said that the president’s campaign did not collude with Russia. Mr. Mueller’s report offers a more nuanced definition. He writes that while there was ample evidence of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia as it carried out its social media influence and hacking campaigns, the evidence was not strong enough to support bringing criminal charges.—Nicholas Fandos
POSTED AT 11:38 AM
Papadopoulos suggested to a representative of a foreign government that the Trump Campaign had received indications from the Russian government that it could assist the Trump campaign through the anonymous release of information that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton.
It has long been known that Mr. Papadopoulos, a young campaign aide, was told that the Russian government had “dirt” on Mrs. Clinton. This goes much farther, and helps explain why the F.B.I. investigated members of the Trump campaign in 2016. Mr. Papadopoulos appeared to suggest an explicit offer by the Russian government to work with the Trump campaign to sabotage Mrs. Clinton.
— Matt Apuzzo
POSTED AT 11:29 AM
On June 17, 2017 the president called McGahn at home and directed him to call the acting attorney general and say that the special counsel had conflicts of interest and must be removed. McGahn did not carry out the direction, however, deciding that he would resign rather than trigger what he regarded as a potential Saturday Night Massacre.
We knew that Mr. Trump had ordered his White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, in June 2017 to have the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, fire Mr. Mueller, and that Mr. McGahn had refused to do so. We did not know that the president called him at home to pressure him. The “Saturday Night Massacre” refers to the Watergate episode in which the Nixon administration’s attorney general and deputy attorney general both resigned rather than carry out President Nixon’s order to fire the prosecutor investigating that scandal, leading to a severe political backlash.
— Charlie Savage
POSTED AT 11:23 AM
An agreement “requires more than the two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to other’s actions or interests.”
It was not enough for investigators simply to show the Trump campaign knew what the Russians were up to, and responded. Trump associates had to specifically agree with the Russians to violate the law.
— Sharon LaFraniere
POSTED AT 11:19 AM
Substantial evidence indicates that the catalyst for the president’s decision to fire Comey was Comey’s unwillingness to publicly state that the president was not personally under investigation, despite the president’s repeated requests that Comey make such an announcement.
Mr. Mueller effectively finds that the White House’s initial explanation for the firing was untrue. White House officials said that Mr. Comey was dismissed over his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. The administration’s ever-changing justification for that firing led to speculation that Mr. Trump had fired him to sabotage the Russia investigation.
— Matt Apuzzo