Word broke at 5 pm Eastern Time that Robert Mueller had just submitted his long-awaited report about his inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 elections to Attorney-General William Barr. No further indictments are recommended or to be made by Mueller himself, we are told, but we don’t know much more than that right now. It is nevertheless quite possible that information damaging Trump, or pointing to collusion with the Russians, or obstruction of justice, may be described in the report.
It is worth remembering that Mueller have already secured guilty pleas or convictions of Trump’s campaign manager, Trump’s deputy campaign manager, Trump’s campaign foreign policy adviser, Trump’s national security adviser and Trump’s longtime lawyer.
AG Barr will provide the principal conclusions of the report to Congress as soon as this weekend.
How much of the report will the public see? Will Trump fight releasing its contents, and precipitate a constitutional crisis?
We will soon find out.
Mon 3/25: Here are the surprising conclusions of the Mueller Report, with what could be gleaned from AG Barr’s letter sent to Congress on Sunday. Barr only quoted fragments of sentences from the full Mueller Report.
1. Russia meddled with the 2016 elections (we knew that already).
2. Russia tried to get Trump & company to collude but did not succeed/ succeed completely (hey: the Trump campaign & Trump Jr did meet with them in June 2016 .. and did Trump not call out to Russia on camera, to ‘see if they can find’ Hillary Clinton’s e-mails?).
3. Mueller could not/ did not want to decide if Trump obstructed justice. So it was left up to AG William Barr & Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein, who decided not to prosecute. Was it because there was no underlying crime? Was it because Trump displayed his obstruction on national television? (He admitted why he fired FBI Director James Comey, lied about Trump Jr meeting the Russians, lied about his payment to Stormy Daniels, vilified the DOJ, the FBI and the media, for two years).