Mueller report
The Mueller report, officially titled Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, is the official report documenting the findings and conclusions of former Special CounselRobert Mueller's investigation into Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 United States presidential election, allegations of conspiracy or coordination between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia, and allegations of obstruction of justice. The report was submitted to Attorney GeneralWilliam Barr on March 22, 2019,[1] and a redacted version of the 448-page report was publicly released by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on April 18, 2019. It is divided into two volumes. The redactions from the report and its supporting material are under President Trump's temporary "protective assertion" of executive privilege as of May 8, 2019, preventing the material from being passed to Congress,[2] despite earlier reassurance by Barr that Trump "confirmed" he would not exert privilege.[3]
Volume I of the report concludes that the investigation did not find sufficient evidence that the campaign "coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities".[4][5][6] Investigators ultimately had an incomplete picture of what happened due to communications that were encrypted, deleted, or not saved and due to testimony that was false, incomplete, or declined.[7][8][9] However, the report states that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was illegal and occurred "in sweeping and systematic fashion"[10][11][12] but was welcomed by the Trump campaign as it expected to benefit from such efforts.[13][14][15] It also identifies links between Trump campaign officials and individuals with ties to the Russian government,[16] about which several persons connected to the campaign made false statements and obstructed investigations.[4] Mueller later stated that his investigation's conclusion on Russian interference "deserves the attention of every American".[17]
Volume II of the report addresses obstruction of justice. The investigation intentionally took an approach that could not result in a judgment that Trump committed a crime,[18][19][20] abiding by an Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion that a sitting president is immune from criminal prosecution,[21][22][23] fearing that charges would affect Trump's governing and preempt impeachment[19][22][24] and feeling that it would be unfair to accuse Trump of a crime without charges or a trial.[21][22][25] As such, the investigation "does not conclude that the President committed a crime"; however, "it also does not exonerate him",[26][27] with investigators not confident of Trump's innocence.[28][29][30][31]The report describes ten episodes where Trump may have obstructed justice while president and one before he was elected,[32][33] noting that he privately tried to "control the investigation".[34][35][36] The report further states that Congress can decide whether Trump obstructed justice and take action accordingly,[19][37][38] referencing impeachment.[39][40]
On March 24, Barr sent Congress a four-page letter detailing the report's conclusions. On March 27, Mueller privately wrote to Barr, stating that the March 24 Barr letter "did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office's work and conclusions" and that this led to "public confusion".[41] Barr declined Mueller's request to release the report's introduction and executive summaries ahead of the full report.[42] Also on March 24, Barr's letter stated that he and Deputy Attorney GeneralRod Rosenstein concluded that the evidence was "not sufficient to establish" that Trump had obstructed justice.[43][44] On May 1, Barr testified that he "didn't exonerate" Trump on obstruction as "that's not what the Justice Department does"[45] and that neither he nor Rosenstein had reviewed the underlying evidence in the report.[46] In July 2019, Mueller testified to Congress that a president could be charged with crimes including obstruction of justice after they left office.[47] In 2020, a Republican-appointed federal judge decided to personally review if the report's redactions were legitimate. The judge said Barr's "misleading" statements about the report's findings led him to suspect that Barr had tried to establish a "one-sided narrative" favorable to Trump.[48][49]
Background
Impetus for investigation
On May 9, 2017, PresidentDonald Trump dismissed former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey, who had been leading an ongoing Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigation into links between Trump associates and Russian officials.[51][52] This investigation, code named Crossfire Hurricane, began in July 2016 after the Australian government advised US authorities that George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy advisor in the Trump campaign, had met with one of their diplomats in May 2016 and "suggested the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia" that Russia could release information that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton.[53][54] Papadopolous had received this suggestion in April 2016, well before it was publicly reported that Russia had damaging information about Clinton (the Democratic National Committee had in June 2016 announced that a Russian hack occurred).[55][56] Papadopoulos later testified that this "damaging information" was in the form of hacked emails that were stolen from the Democratic Party.[57]
Over 130 Democratic lawmakers of the United States Congress called for a special counsel to be appointed in reaction to Comey's firing.[58]CNN reported that within eight days of Comey's dismissal, an FBI investigation on Trump for obstruction of justice was opened by the acting FBI Director at the time, Andrew McCabe, who cited multiple reasons including Comey's firing.[59] After McCabe was later fired from the FBI, he confirmed that he had opened the obstruction investigation, and gave additional reasons for its launch.[60]
Eight days after Comey's dismissal, then-Deputy Attorney GeneralRod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller, under 28 CFR § 600.1, as special counsel to take over and expand an existing FBI counterintelligence investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, as well as the FBI investigation into links between Trump associates and Russian officials that Comey was leading.[52][61][62] The special counsel also took over the FBI investigation into whether President Trump obstructed justice with Comey.[59] Rosenstein's authority to appoint Mueller arose due to Attorney General Jeff Sessions' March 2017 recusal of himself from investigations into the Trump campaign.[52][62][63]
Scope and mandate
According to its authorizing document,[50] which was signed by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on May 17, 2017, the investigation's scope included allegations that there were links or coordination between President Donald Trump's presidential campaign and the Russian government[64][65] as well as "any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation".[50] The authorizing document also included "any other matters within the scope of 28 CFR § 600.4(a)";[50] enabling the special counsel "to investigate and prosecute" any attempts to interfere with its investigation, "such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses".[66]
Proceedings of investigation
The Special Counsel investigation ran from May 17, 2017, to March 22, 2019, and resulted in thirty-four indictments, including against several former members of the Trump campaign and many of which are still being tried. The investigation issued over 2,800 subpoenas, executed almost 500 search warrants, and interviewed approximately 500 witnesses.[67]
The Mueller report included references to 14 criminal investigations that were referred to other offices, 12 of which were completely redacted in the April 18 release. The other two related to Michael Cohen and Gregory Craig, cases that were already public.[68]
Findings
Volume I
Volume I starts on page 1 of the report and focuses on Russian interference and allegations of conspiracy or coordination between Trump's presidential campaign and Russia.[69]
Russian interference
The Mueller report found that the Russian government "interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion" and "violated U.S. criminal law".[11][12][70] The report relayed two methods by which Russia attempted to influence the election.[71][72]
Social media campaign
The first method of Russian interference was done through the Internet Research Agency (IRA), waging "a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton".[26] The IRA also sought to "provoke and amplify political and social discord in the United States".[73][74]
By February 2016, internal IRA documents showed an order to support the candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, while IRA members were to "use any opportunity to criticize" Hillary Clinton and the rest of the candidates.[75] From June 2016, the IRA organized election rallies in the U.S. "often promoting" Trump's campaign while "opposing" Clinton's campaign.[76] The IRA posed as Americans, hiding their Russian background, while asking Trump campaign members for campaign buttons, flyers, and posters for the rallies. The Mueller report detailed that the IRA spent $100,000 for over 3,500 Facebook advertisements, which included anti-Clinton and pro-Trump advertisements.[77]
The report lists IRA-created groups on Facebook to include "purported conservative groups" (e.g. 'Tea Party News'), "purported Black social justice groups" (e.g. 'Blacktivist') "LGBTQ groups" (e.g. 'LGBT United'), "and religious groups" (e.g. 'United Muslims of America').[77] The IRA Twitter accounts included @TEN_GOP (claiming to be related to the Tennessee Republican Party), @jenn_abrams, and @Pamela_Moore13 (both claimed to be Trump supporters and both had 70,000 followers).[78] Several Trump campaign members (Donald J. Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale, and Michael Flynn) linked or reposted material from the IRA's @TEN_GOP Twitter account listed above. Other people who responded to IRA social media accounts include Michael McFaul, Sean Hannity, Roger Stone, and Michael G. Flynn (Michael Flynn's son).[79]
Hacking and release of material
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The second method of Russian interference saw the Russian military intelligence agency GRU hacking into email accounts owned by volunteers and employees of the Clinton presidential campaign, including that of campaign chairman John Podesta, and also hacking into "the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC)". As a result, the GRU obtained hundreds of thousands of hacked documents, and the GRU proceeded by arranging releases of damaging hacked material via the WikiLeaks organization and also GRU's false personas "DCLeaks" and "Guccifer 2.0".[80][81][82]
Conspiracy or coordination
To establish whether a crime was committed by members of the Trump campaign with regard to Russian interference, investigators "applied the framework of conspiracy law", and not the concept of "collusion", because collusion "is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States Code, nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law".[83][84] They also investigated if members of the Trump campaign "coordinated" with Russia, using the definition of "coordination" as having "an agreement – tacit or express – between the Trump campaign and the Russian government on election interference." Investigators further elaborated that merely having "two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other's actions or interests" was not enough to establish coordination.[85][86]
The investigation found there were over 100 contacts between Trump campaign advisors and individuals affiliated with the Russian government, before and after the election, but the evidence was insufficient to show an illegal conspiracy.[87]The New York Times estimated as many as 140 contacts between "Mr. Trump and his associates and Russian nationals and WikiLeaks or their intermediaries" in the report.[88]
The special counsel identified two methods the Russian government tried to communicate with the Trump campaign. "The investigation identified two different forms of connections between the IRA and members of the Trump Campaign. [...] First, on multiple occasions, members and surrogates of the Trump Campaign promoted – typically by linking, retweeting, or similar methods of reposting – pro-Trump or anti-Clinton content published by the IRA through IRA-controlled social media accounts. Additionally, in a few instances, IRA employees represented themselves as U.S. persons to communicate with members of the Trump Campaign in an effort to seek assistance and coordination on IRA-organized political rallies inside the United States", the report states.[70]
Secondly, the report details a meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016. The intent of the meeting was to exchange "dirt" on the Clinton campaign. There was speculation that Trump Jr. told his father. However, the special counsel could not find any evidence that he did.[70] The office declined to pursue charges for two reasons: the office "did not obtain admissible evidence" that would meet the burden of proof principle beyond a reasonable doubt that the campaign officials acted with general knowledge about the illegality of their conduct; secondly, the office expected difficulty in valuing the promised information that "exceeded the threshold for a criminal violation" of $2,000 for a criminal violation and $25,000 for a felony punishment.[89]
The Report cited several impediments to investigators' ability to acquire information, including witnesses invoking their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, witnesses deleting electronic communications or using encrypted or self-destructing messaging apps, limitations of interviewing attorneys or individuals asserting they were members of the media, information obtained through subpoenas that was screened from investigators due to legal privilege, and false or incomplete testimony provided by witnesses.[7][8][90][9][91]
While conspiracy or coordination was not proven, Mueller's report left many unanswered questions, such as whether the myriad secret contacts between Trump associates and Russians, which they lied about, constituted, using Mueller's words, "a third avenue of attempted Russian interference with or influence on the 2016 presidential election"? Benjamin Wittes has written about this:
Put another way, what is the story these contacts tell if it's not one of active coordination? They surely aren't, in the aggregate, innocent. They aren't normal business practice for a presidential campaign. When Mueller asks whether they constituted some sort of third avenue for Russian interference, he's really asking, in the prosecutorial language available to him, what to make of them.... To my mind, anyway, that's the story Mueller told in this section. It may not be a crime, but it is a very deep betrayal.[92]
George Croner of the Foreign Policy Research Institute has also expressed his concerns with what he describes as a "curiously flaccid" approach taken by Mueller in dealing with what the public would normally interpret as "coordination". He sees Mueller's dependence on a formal "tacit agreement" approach as "an overly cautious" and "legalistic construct":
To most individuals, at some point, persistent parallel conduct coupled with "multiple links" between the participants increasingly suggests that the conduct is coordinated—not coincidentally parallel.... [I]t is not surprising that many are confounded by the Special Counsel's inability, or refusal, to render a conclusion on what is publicly perceived as having been the raison d'être of the inquiry.[93]
Volume II
Volume II starts on page 208 of the official PDF file of the report and details potential instances of obstruction of justice.[94][95][96][97] Page numbering in the file restarts with Volume II.[97]
Trump's reaction to Mueller appointment
According to the report, upon learning that Mueller had been appointed as Special Counsel, Trump said "Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I'm fucked", to Jeff Sessions when they were having a meeting in the Oval Office.[98][99] "You were supposed to protect me", Sessions recalled Trump telling him. "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", Trump later said, according to Sessions and Jody Hunt, Sessions' then-chief of staff.[99]
Obstruction of justice
Regarding obstruction of justice, the report stated that the investigation "did not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference", but investigators wrote that obstruction of justice could still occur "regardless of whether a person committed an underlying wrong".[100][101] Trump, Barr, Rudy Giuliani and others have persistently and incorrectly maintained that an individual cannot obstruct justice unless the individual committed an underlying crime.[further explanation needed][102][103][104][105]
On obstruction of justice, the report "does not conclude that the President committed a crime, [and] it also does not exonerate him". Since the special counsel's office had decided "not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment", they "did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President's conduct". The report "does not conclude that the president committed a crime",[26] as investigators decided "not to apply an approach that could potentially result in a judgment that the president committed crimes".[18][37][19] Investigators did not make a judgment about whether to charge Trump with a crime, for two main reasons: Firstly, the investigation abided by DOJ Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion written in 2000 that a sitting president cannot be federally indicted, a stance taken from the start of the investigation.[21][22][106] Secondly, investigators did not want to charge Trump because a federal criminal charge would hinder a sitting president's "capacity to govern and potentially preempt constitutional process for addressing presidential misconduct",[107] with a footnote reference to impeachment.[108] Even if charges were recommended in a secret memo or a charging document sealed until Trump's presidency ended, the information could still be leaked.[19][22][70] In addition, the special counsel's office rejected the alternative option of accusing Trump of committing a crime without bringing a charge. Investigators felt that this alternative option would be unfair to Trump, as there would be no trial in which Trump could clear his own name.[21][22][34]
The special counsel's office did not exonerate Trump on obstruction of justice because they were not confident that Trump was clearly innocent, after examining "evidence [they] obtained about the President's actions and intent".[28][29][30][39] The "investigation found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations".[109] The report noted that once Trump was aware that he was personally being investigated for obstruction of justice, he started "public attacks on the investigation and individuals involved in it who could possess evidence adverse to the president, while in private, the president engaged in a series of targeted efforts to control the investigation."[34] However, President Trump'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." This prevented further obstruction of justice charges "against the President's aides and associates beyond those already filed".[34][35][110][111]
The report notes that Congress has the authority to decide if Trump obstructed justice, and then take further action if obstruction occurred, with investigators writing: "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." This phrase was interpreted as a possible reference to Congress potentially initiating impeachment proceedings against President Trump.[19][34][37][39][112]
Episodes of alleged obstruction
Some sources such as FactCheck.org, PBS NewsHour, and The New York Times describe the report as detailing eleven episodes where Trump may have possibly obstructed justice; one episode as a presidential candidate or president-elect, and ten episodes while Trump was president:[32][33][113]
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