Highlights of Mueller report

The Justice Department released the Mueller report with redactions this morning. It is 448 pages long and has over 800 redactions. 

Here are some highlights. 

Mueller said there were two main efforts by Russia to influence the election, the first by a Russian company who created fake social media pages and made posts targeting American voters that mostly supported Trump and Bernie and was against Clinton. 

The second was e-mail hacking by the Russian intelligence agency, GRU, who targeted the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. Mueller said the GRU gave Wikileaks those emails and timed their release to negatively affect Clinton. 

Mueller said Russians had some contacts with the Trump campaign team and that they knew they would benefit from Russia’s actions, but that there was no evidence that Trump’s team committed criminal actions by working with Russia or helping them with their actions.

Mueller said when Trump found out that the Mueller investigation started in 2017, he slumped on his chair and told his aides, “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m f—-d.” 

Mueller said there were 10 episodes where Trump potentially obstructed justice. Those include Trump’s actions with the Michael Flynn investigation, his meetings and firing of former FBI Director Comey, his efforts to stop the Mueller investigation, his efforts for former Attorney General Sessions to reverse his recusal from the investigation and come back, and his conduct towards Michael Cohen. 

Mueller said they decided not to make a judgment if Trump obstructed justice because it is Department of Justice’s policy to not charge a sitting president. 

Mueller said Trump did not obstruct justice because his staff did not follow some of his orders. He also said Trump expressed his opinions about the investigation and made remarks to witnesses out in the open, in public. 

Mueller said the evidence did not mean that Trump was completely innocent. He said if they had confidence that he did nothing criminal, they would have said it.

Mueller said Congress can take actions on obstruction of justice. 

Democratic leaders Speaker Pelosi and Senator Schumer said they disagreed with Attorney General Barr’s conclusion that Trump did not obstruct justice. 

Now, what will be the next major event? The House wants Mueller himself to testify before them. Attorney General Barr said he would allow this. The House wants him to testify by May 23.

Another thing to look at in the future is that Mueller made 14 referrals of potential criminal activity to outside federal offices. Two of them are about Michael Cohen and former Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig. We don’t know the other 12. 

https://www.axios.com/mueller-report-takeaways-ee6cfae3...

https://www.wsj.com/.../mueller-report-release...

https://www.usatoday.com/.../mueller-report.../3500784002/

https://www.cnn.com/.../robert-mueller-report.../index.html

https://www.axios.com/mueller-report-trump-obstruction-of...

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/.../mueller-made-14...