The Mueller report is out

Special counsel Robert Mueller declined to prosecute “several” people on a range of charges, including Donald Trump Jr. and then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.  

Mueller outlined how “several” individuals connected to the Trump campaign lied to the special counsel’s office and to Congress about their contact with Russians and on other matters — but only brought criminal charges on “some of those lies.”

Mueller, in his report, acknowledged the several defendants in his investigation who pleaded guilty to lying to Congress, and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, whom a judge found lied during cooperation interviews and under oath.

What the report lists: The report’s prosecution and declination section lists a number of people that they did charge for lying, including former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and Trump campaign adviser George Papadapolous, and its decision not to charge Sessions for misleading Congress. The section identifies two individuals under investigation but details about both of them are redacted, one for grand jury material and the other because of an ongoing investigation. It is not clear if those are declinations or referrals.

Another section indicates Mueller considered the testimony of a number of individuals who were interviewed during the investigation who they declined to prosecute. The report doesn’t identify the people but the four paragraphs that follow are redacted for personal privacy or grand jury material.

“Those lies materially impaired the investigation of Russian election interference,” Mueller noted.

Where Mueller was thwarted: In some instances, Mueller could not find evidence he could use in a criminal case or could not get to the bottom of what happened. Some individuals associated with the campaign deleted communications, Mueller said.

And “some individuals” refused to speak, claiming their Constitutional protection not to incriminate themselves. Others lied or did not give complete information in their interviews, while some information was kept confidential from investigators because it fell under attorney-client privilege, Mueller wrote.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell strongly praised the “sterling reputations” of Attorney General William Barr, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and special counsel Robert Mueller.

“You could not have asked for more objective individuals to be involved in this process, that we’ve all heard about on a virtual daily basis for two long years.  I don’t want you to buy any notions that somehow these people are political hacks. They’ve never run for anything, they have sterling reputations,” McConnell told reporters today.

He said they would “not be able to sleep at night” if they didn’t handle this “extremely controversial and complex investigation in a straight-up way.”  

McConnell warned that Democrats might try to “destroy their reputations” because they are unhappy about the results of Mueller’s probe.

Kellyanne Conway said President Trump did not have the reaction to Robert Mueller’s appointment outlined in the Special Counsel’s report.

“I was very surprised to see that because that was not the reaction of the President that day,” Conway said while speaking to reporters outside the White House today.

“I was there,” she added.

According to the report, Trump “slumped back in his chair and said, ‘Oh my God. This is terrible,’” when he learned that a special counsel had been appointed, adding, “This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.”

“He has never said that during the campaign he has certainly never said it since we’re here, and I’ve been by his side for three straight years now, on the campaign and here, and he has never expressed that, that ‘my presidency is over,’” she added.

Conway served as a senior advisor on the Trump campaign and now serves as counselor to the President.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer issued a joint statement following the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

They said there are “stark” differences between what Attorney General William Barr and Mueller have said about obstruction.

“Barr presented a conclusion that the president did not obstruct justice while Mueller’s report appears to undercut that finding,” they said.

Here’s the full statement:

Security contractor Erik Prince, who is the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, helped finance an effort to obtain Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails in 2016.

This effort was led by Barbara Ledeen, a onetime GOP Hill staffer and associate of President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Flynn reached out to Ledeen after Trump privately and repeatedly asked him and other campaign officials to obtain the deleted emails from Clinton’s private server, according to the report.

One thing to note: This was one of multiple Flynn-linked efforts to get Clinton’s emails, another being with GOP operative Peter Smith. 

In September 2016, Ledeen claimed to have received “a trove of emails” that belonged to Clinton but wanted to authenticate the emails. Prince “provided funding to hire a tech advisor to ascertain the authenticity of the emails,” the report said. The analysis determined the emails weren’t real.

Prince, former Blackwater CEO, and Flynn provided information about these efforts to investigators, according to the footnotes.

There are no references in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report to President Trump’s taxes or loans to his business beyond the discussions around Trump Tower projects in Moscow that was evaluated under the “collusion” umbrella.

It isn’t clear if that information was reviewed or redacted or referred out in a separate investigation.

Donald Trump Jr., at a morning meeting with top campaign and Trump campaign members, announced “that he had a lead on negative information about the Clinton Foundation” in the days before the Trump Tower meeting, special counsel Robert Mueller wrote. 

Then-deputy campaign manager Rick Gates, a top Mueller cooperator, recounted that Trump Jr. believed the information would come from a group in Kyrgyzstan — potentially a reference Aras Agalarov, the Azerbaijani-Russian who helped to orchestrate the meeting, according to the special counsel.

Mueller wrote that, according to Gates, Trump Jr., Eric Trump, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, then-White House communications director Hope Hicks, Ivanka Trump and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner all attended the meeting. Ivanka Trump and Kushner attended late, according to Gates, Mueller wrote.

According to the report, Gates said Manafort, however, cautioned the group to be careful and raised doubts the upcoming meeting would actually yield vital information.

Hicks later denied knowing about the meeting in advance, and Kushner said he did not recall knowing about it.

President Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow said they were not briefed on special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

Sekulow would not say whether they then talked to Trump about it, saying he would not talk about those discussions.

The special counsel examined whether President Trump learned during the presidential campaign of the rumored existence of compromising tapes made of him years earlier when he visited Moscow.

According to a footnote in the special counsel’s report, in October 2016, prior to the election, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen received a text from Russian businessman, Giorgi Rtskhiladze, that said: “Stopped flow of tapes from Russia but not sure if there’s anything else. Just so you know…”

Rtskhiladze told the special counsel that “tapes” referred to “compromising tapes of Trump rumored to be held by persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group,” which had helped host the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant, according to the report. Cohen told the special counsel that he spoke to Trump about the issue after receiving Rtskhiladze’s text.

Rtskhiladze, however, told prosecutors that he was told the tapes were fake, but that he didn’t convey that to Cohen. 

Scott Balber, a lawyer for Aras Agalarov, founder of Crocus Group, said the allegation that “compromising tapes rumored to be held by persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group,” is “total nonsense.” He added that Crocus Group does not have any compromising tapes.

Why this matters: The footnote raises the matter in the context of explaining that former FBI Director James Comey had briefed the President-elect in January 2017 on a dossier compiled by retired British spy Christopher Steele, including that “the Russians had compromising tapes of the President involving conduct when he was a private citizen during a 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe Pageant.”

About the dossier: The controversial 35 pages of intelligence memos compiled by Steele paint a picture of widespread conspiracy of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

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Special counsel Robert Mueller considered President Donald Trump’s written responses “inadequate” and sought an interview with Trump, but ultimately decided not to issue a subpoena for the interview. 

Why this matters: The criticism stands in contrast to the attorney general saying Thursday the White House had “fully cooperated.” 

In a report appendix, the special counsel wrote that it sought an interview with the President for more than a year, beginning in December 2017, and considered an interview “vital to our investigation.” 

The special counsel agreed to receive written responses from Trump, but it “viewed the written answers to be inadequate.”

“The written responses, we informed counsel, ‘demonstrate the inadequacy of the written format, as we have had no opportunity to ask follow-up questions that would ensure complete answers and potentially refresh your client’s recollection or clarify the extent or nature of his lack of recollection,’” the special counsel added.

Why there wasn’t a subpoena: The special counsel said it considered a subpoena, but ultimately decided against it because the investigation had already “made significant progress.”

“We thus weighed the costs of potentially lengthy constitutional litigation, with resulting delay in finishing our investigation, against the anticipated benefits for our investigation and report,” the report states. “We determined that the substantial quantity of information we had obtained from other sources allowed us to draw relevant factual conclusions on intent and credibility, which are often inferred from circumstantial evidence and assessed without direct testimony from the subject of the investigation.”

After Trump publicly asked Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails at a July 2016 press conference, he privately and repeatedly “asked individuals affiliated with his campaign to find the deleted Clinton emails,” the report says.

The public request was also followed within five hours by Russian intelligence’s first effort to infiltrate Clinton’s emails, the special counsel said.

They sent 15 email accounts connected to Clinton’s campaign malicious links, Mueller said. This was only a small part of the broad effort the Russians made to hack the Democratic Party for damaging information and election officials.

One of the campaign people Trump asked was Michael Flynn, who later told investigators that Trump repeatedly made the request, according to the report. Flynn then tried to get Clinton’s emails and reached out to “multiple” associates — including GOP operative Peter Smith, whose efforts have been detailed in press accounts.

Why this matters: This confirms for the first time that a senior Trump campaign adviser was involved in Smith’s pursuit to find Clinton’s emails. Smith killed himself in May 2017 and left a note saying there was “no foul play.”

This seems to contradict what an unnamed Trump campaign official told The Wall Street Journal in June 2017, that if Mr. Flynn coordinated with Smith, it was only in Flynn’s capacity as a private individual. 

During Smith’s shadowy pursuit of the emails, he told associates that he was working with Russian hackers. But the investigation concluded that Smith was never actually in contact with any Russians. 

In emails to associates while trying to find the emails, Smith claimed he was working “in coordination” with the Trump campaign and name-dropped Flynn, Sam Clovis, Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway. The Mueller investigation established that Smith communicated with “at least” Flynn and Clovis but did not find any evidence suggesting that Smith was in contact with the other Trump campaign officials.

Mueller’s office interviewed multiple people about Smith’s efforts, according to footnotes in the report, and Flynn provided a lot of information about his role and Trump’s interest in the emails. Flynn was a marquee cooperator in the investigation and pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in 2017.

Speaking to Robert Mueller about her comments following the firing of FBI Director James Comey, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders conceded she made statements to the media that were not based in fact.

Specifically, Sanders said her assertion in response to a question about FBI agents supporting Comey wasn’t “founded on anything,” according to Mueller. 

In a back-and-forth during a briefing, a reporter told Sanders the “vast majority” of FBI agents supported Comey. 

What Sanders told Mueller: She said that comment was a “slip of the tongue” made “in the heat of the moment.”

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The controversial GOP platform change about Ukraine wasn’t done “at the behest” of candidate Donald Trump or the Russian government, according to the report.

Some background: Before the 2016 Republican convention, Trump campaign aides blocked language from appearing in the platform that endorsed the US government sending lethal arms to Ukraine and aggressively supporting Ukraine’s anti-corruption bureau, according to public reports from CNN and other outlets.

The Department of Justice released a redacted version of the special counsel Robert Mueller’s report this morning. CNN is going through the document now, and we’ve been posting highlights here.

In the first moments the report was released, we learned that Mueller wasn’t able to conclude “no criminal conduct occurred” and that the special counsel believed it had the authority to subpoena Trump — but decided against doing so. (Read more about the initial report highlights here.)

Here’s what we’ve learned since we last caught you up:

Special counsel Robert Mueller provides an extensive recounting of how President Trump and his aides handled the fallout of the June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Russians and senior campaign officials.

The report, citing interviews with former White House communications officials Hope Hicks and Josh Raffel, says Trump directed aides on multiple occasions not to publicly disclose emails setting up the meeting. Later, the report affirms that Trump himself dictated a misleading statement to the press, saying the meeting primarily discussed adoption. 

The report describes White House officials learning — sometimes with shock — about the meeting. For example, then-White House chief of staff Reince Priebus first learned about the meeting in late June 2017 from Fox News host Sean Hannity (the report does not say how Hannity learned of it). 

Hicks recalls being “shocked” by the emails setting up the meeting, concerned they looked “really bad.” Together with senior advisers Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Hicks discussed the emails with Trump, who told the group “he did not want to know about it” and refused to hear details of the matter. He said he was confident the emails would never leak.

When Trump learned the New York Times was working on a story about the Trump Tower meeting, Trump initially directed Hicks not to comment — which she said was odd, according to Mueller, “because he usually considered not responding to the press to be the ultimate sin.”

Later, when Hicks showed Trump a draft statement about the meeting attributed to his son, the President deemed it too revealing. He told Hicks “to say only that Trump Jr. took a brief meeting and it was about Russian adoption.” 

Trump Jr. expressed concern about that statement, however, insisting the word “primarily” be inserted to suggest the meeting included other topics aside from just adoption.

In his report, Mueller describes finding at least three occasions when Trump directed Hicks or others not the publicly disclose information about the Trump Tower meeting. Ultimately, however, Mueller determines that Trump’s efforts were only directed at keeping information from the press.

He says they would only amount to obstructive action if there were attempts to withhold the information from congressional investigators or the special counsel’s office.

Robert Mueller never found any evidence that Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos told anyone on the campaign that he was tipped off about the Russians having emails that could damage Hillary Clinton.

Papadopoulos was told in April 2016 by a Kremlin-linked professor that the Russians had thousands of emails that were damaging to Clinton, according to court filings. That wasn’t publicly known at the time. It wasn’t until months later, when WikiLeaks and other Russian-backed websites, started releasing tens of thousands of embarrassing emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee. 

The report continued: “No documentary evidence, and nothing in the email accounts or other communications facilities reviewed by the office, shows that Papadopoulos shared this information with the campaign.”

A quick note: We’ve just made it so the entirety of the Mueller report is searchable on CNN.com.

Special counsel Robert Mueller looked at potential crimes outside of conspiracy as he investigated collusion, including crimes under campaign finance law and regarding individuals potentially acting as illegal foreign agents for the Russian government.

“Among other things, the evidence was not sufficient to charge any campaign officials as an unregistered agent of the Russian government or other Russian principal,” according to the report.

Investigators conducted some searches of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen under this potential crime, but ultimately did not charge him with it, according to previously unsealed search warrants.

They also looked at whether the Trump Tower meeting could be considered a campaign finance violation.

Following the release of the Robert Mueller report, Trump’s campaign manager said the President “has been fully and completely exonerated yet again.”

Here’s the full statement from the Trump campaign:

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report lays out the case for why Congress is able to investigate and take action against President Trump on obstruction of justice.

In the report, Mueller provided a legal justification for why the special counsel was able to investigate obstruction of justice, even if they could not indict a sitting President.

The lengthy section, citing legal precedents, also alludes to Congress’ power under checks-and-balances to investigate and potentially impeach the President over obstruction of justice. 

See it:

Democratic presidential candidate Eric Swalwell has called for Attorney General William Barr to step down following today’s news conference.

Here’s what he said in a statement:

Swalwell is a member of the House Judiciary Committee

“You can be the President’s defense attorney or America’s Attorney General, but you can’t be both,” he said. “William Barr was tainted from the moment he sent an unsolicited memo to the Justice Department panning Robert Mueller’s obstruction investigation, way back in June 2018.”

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team declined to prosecute then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions for making false statements or committing perjury to Congress during his confirmation hearing in part because of the inexact wording of the questions.

Sessions testified that he did not have communications with Russians during the campaign.

It was later revealed Sessions interacted with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at the Republican National Convention and a campaign event at the Mayflower Hotel.

The special counsel wrote about how the President’s public comments can be considered as obstruction efforts because of his power.

Here’s what he said about President’s power:

See it:

Robert Mueller’s team declined to prosecute Donald Trump, Jr. and members of the campaign for campaign finance violations for their participation in the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in part because they couldn’t prove that they “willfully” violated the law.

Here’s what it says in the report:

Mueller’s team explained: “The office ultimately concluded that, even if the principal legal questions were resolved favorably to the government, a prosecution would encounter difficulties proving that campaign officials or individuals connected to the campaign willfully violated the law.”

In the report, special counsel Robert Mueller outlined why obstruction by President Trump failed. It failed because others refused to “carry out orders.”

“(James) Comey did not end the investigation of (Michael) Flynn, which ultimately resulted in Flynn’s prosecution and conviction for lying to the FBI. (Don) McGahn did not tell the Acting Attorney General that the special counsel must be removed, but was instead prepared to resign over the President’s order. (Corey) Lewandowski and Dearborn did not deliver the President ‘s message to (Jeff) Sessions that he should confine the Russia investigation to future election meddling only. And McGahn refused to recede from his recollections about events surrounding the President’s direction to have the special counsel removed, despite the President’s multiple demands that he do so. Consistent with that pattern, the evidence we obtained would not support potential obstruction charges against the President’s aides and associates beyond those already filed,” the report said.

See it:

In May 2017, after President Trump learned from then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had appointed special counsel Robert Mueller, Trump “slumped back in his chair and said, ‘Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.’”

According to the report, “The President returned to the consequences of the appointment and said, ‘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.’”

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On June 17, 2017, after media reports indicated that special counsel Robert Mueller was investigating whether President Trump had obstructed justice, Trump called former White House lawyer Don McGahn at home and directed him to call the acting attorney general and say Mueller “had conflicts of interest and must be removed.”

McGahn declined to do so, deciding that he would “rather resign than trigger what he regarded as a potential Saturday Night Massacre.”

See it:

Hear it:

Special counsel Robert Mueller described a previously unknown example of the President’s attempts to curtail the investigation involving Trump’s former campaign aide Cory Lewandowski.

Mueller says that on June 19, 2017, Trump met in the Oval Office with Lewandowski and dictated a message intended for then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who at that point had recused himself from matters involving the probe.

In the message, Sessions was told to publicly announce the investigation was “‘very unfair’ to the President, the President had done nothing wrong, and Sessions planned to meet with the special counsel and ‘let [him] move forward with investigation election meddling for future elections.’” Lewandowski told Trump he understood his instructions.

A month later, Trump checked back in with Lewandowski on the status of his message. Lewandowski said the message would be delivered soon.

Ultimately, Lewandowski declined to deliver the message personally, instead asking a senior White House official — Rick Dearborn — to do it instead. Mueller’s report says Dearborn was “uncomfortable with the task and did not follow through.”

See it:

The Department of Justice released a redacted version of the special counsel Robert Mueller’s report moments ago.

CNN is still going through the report, but here are the highlights so far:

The House Intel Committee has also requested that Robert Mueller testify before them “at the earliest opportunity,” Chairman Adam Schiff tweeted out on Thursday morning.

Outside of the Senate Judiciary Committee office, the printers are buzzing.

It’s one of the only sounds on this very quiet day in Dirksen Senate Office Building. Members are on recess and there are some murmurs or staff conversations from down the hall. Otherwise, just the sound of printing as Washington learns what is inside this redacted report.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team referred 14 investigations to other US attorney’s offices, including the prosecution of Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen and Greg Craig, the Skadden Arps attorney who was indicted for lying to DOJ about work he had done for the Ukraine Ministry of Justice.

The other 12 investigations are redacted.

About some of the investigations:

More on the other investigations into Trump’s world:

The special counsel believed it had the authority to subpoena President Trump, but decided against doing so because it would delay the investigation, according to the report. The prosecutors also believed they already had a substantial amount of evidence.

The report also says that while the Office of Legal Council opinion concludes that a sitting president may not be prosecuted, “It recognizes that a criminal investigation during a President’s term is permissible.”

The OLC opinion “also recognizes that a President does not have immunity after he leaves office,” the report says.

In his evaluation of whether President Trump obstructed justice, special counsel Robert Mueller looked at a number of issues and areas involving the President and his aides focused on whether they were attempting to curtail the investigation. 

Those areas include: The Trump campaign’s response to reports about Russian support for Trump and conduct involving FBI Director James Comey and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Mueller’s report says that after the election, “the President expressed concerns to advisors that reports of Russia’s election interference might lead the public to question the legitimacy of his election.”

Other areas that Mueller probed: The President’s reaction to the continuing Russia investigation; the firing of FBI director James Comey; the appointment of the Special Counsel and efforts to remove him; efforts to curtail the special counsel; efforts to prevent public disclosure of evidence; further efforts to have attorney general Jeff Sessions take control of investigation; efforts to have White House counsel Don McGahn deny that the President ordered him to have Mueller removed; conduct towards Flynn and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort; and conduct toward former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen.

President Trump’s lawyers just sent out a statement following following the release of the redacted version of Robert Mueller’s report.

The described the investigation as a “total victory for the President.”

Read the full statement:

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he’s having a good day, following Attorney General Bill Barr’s news conference ahead of the release of the Mueller report.

He continued: “There never was by the way and there never will be. And we do have to get to the bottom of these things I will say. This should’ve never happened … I say this in front of my friends, this should never happen to another president again. This hoax — it should never happen again. Thank you.”

The redacted version of the Robert Mueller report has been delivered to the House and Senate Judiciary committees on Capitol Hill.

In special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, the team writes that: 

In the portion of the report that focused on collusion, Mueller offered a big-picture overview of the myriad contacts between Trump associates and Russians that occurred in 2016.

Many of these contacts are already known. At least 16 Trump associates had Russian contacts during the campaign or transition, according to public statements, court filings, and reports from CNN and others. Some of the Trump aides lied about these contacts and were charged with lying to investigators.

These contacts include the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, negotiations with a Russian company to build a Trump-branded tower in Moscow, meetings with the Russian ambassador, and more.

The special counsel’s investigation into possible collusion found that members of the Trump campaign knew they would benefit from Russia’s illegal actions to influence the election, but didn’t take criminal steps to help, Robert Mueller’s report said.

Mueller specifically said Trump’s presidential campaign “showed interest” in WikiLeaks’ releases of emails that the Russians stole from the Democrats to hurt his opponent Hillary Clinton.

Barr noted earlier Thursday that “publication of these types of materials would not be criminal unless the publisher also participated in the underlying hacking conspiracy.” 

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation was unable to clear the president on obstruction. The report states that the evidence obtained “about the about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred.”

Here’s what the special counsel team said:

The Department of Justice has posted a redacted version of the special counsel report.

Top Democratic lawmakers are tweeting ahead of the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer demanded a full public release of the report:

Meanwhile, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said it is now “more urgent than ever” that Mueller testify before Congress:

Attorney General William Barr gave credit to the at-times controversial White House strategy throughout 2017 and 2018 for giving Robert Mueller’s team “unfettered” access to campaign and White House documents, as part of his judgment that President Trump did not obstruct justice.

Trump “took no act” to hamper that effort, Barr said.

The approach to hand over so much material — under Trump’s lawyer John Dowd and White House attorney Ty Cobb — was in contrast to a more combative approach against Mueller taken by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. (Giuliani took over after Dowd and Cobb left the legal team.)

Here’s what Barr said at his news conference:

As we wait for Attorney General William Barr to submit a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report to Congress, some 2020 Democratic candidates are weighing in on it.

Some are calling on Mueller to testify, while others are asking for Barr to make a full, unredacted version of the report public. Some are also criticizing Barr’s remarks at this morning’s news conference.

Sen. Cory Booker

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand

Sen. Amy Klobuchar

Rep. Eric Swalwell

Sen. Elizabeth Warren

Attorney General William Barr gave a full endorsement of special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment against Russians hackers.

This puts him at odds with President Trump, who has never unequivocally accepted the conclusions from US intelligence agencies that the Russian government was responsible. Trump even questioned those conclusions while standing next to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Helsinki summit last year.

Here’s what Barr said: 

Over the years, Trump has speculated that the hackers could have been working for the Chinese government, other countries, or even some random person “sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.”

He has also suggested – in June 2016 – that the Democratic National Committee hadn’t been hacked at all, and in fact conjured the story itself after the party’s research on Trump was purportedly sent to journalists by a hacker.

“We believe it was the DNC that did the ‘hacking’ as a way to distract from the many issues facing their deeply flawed candidate and failed party leader. Too bad the DNC doesn’t hack Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 missing emails,” he said at the time.

Attorney General William Barr just wrapped up his news conference on special counsel Robert Mueller’s report and legal analyst Elie Honig examined his prepared remarks.

Here’s what Honig found:

On the hacking, the bar here is did they participate in the hacking effort? This line of the conspiracy is up to the prosecutor, and this is very narrowly defined. We will have to see what Mueller says about efforts to receive and publish the information once hacked, which may not have been seen as criminal but could be problematic from a legal and ethical standpoint. 

The first hint that Barr and Mueller did not approach obstruction in the same manner. Barr says he accepted the framework from Mueller, nonetheless, but it was not solely the basis of Barr and Rosenstein’s ultimate decision.

This is a debatable premise to negate the idea of obstruction. In fact, it could be argued this would speak to motive for obstruction.

We’re expecting Attorney General William Barr to release a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report soon.

While Barr just held a news conference and answered several questions about the forthcoming report, it still hasn’t been released. Here’s what we know so far:

Attorney General William Barr asserted in his statement that Robert Mueller found “no evidence that any Americans” helped the Russian government or the Internet Research Agency in their schemes to influence the 2016 election.

But one American was charged with aiding the Internet Research Agency— though he did so without knowing the full extent of the alleged conspiracy — and is serving six months in prison for the crime of identity fraud.

That American, a Californian named Richard Pinedo, admitted to selling to Russians involved in the Internet Research Agency effort to disrupt the election online accounts that allowed them to post propaganda on social media that could affect American voters.

Pinedo, 29, is in federal prison in California for another month.

Barr in his statement quoted directly from Mueller’s report that the special counsel had not identified evidence that US persons “knowingly or intentionally coordinated” with the Internet Research Agency.

Pinedo ran a website that sold dummy bank accounts to eBay, Facebook and other online service users having trouble with the transaction service PayPal. His service allowed people online to breeze through PayPal’s financial verification steps and, in the case of the Russians, buy ads on Facebook. 

Prosecutors told a judge last year that Pinedo gave them “significant assistance” as part of his guilty plea, and that his admissions and testimony “saved the government significant time and resources in the investigation.” He helped them identify previously anonymous Russians and the details of their alleged scheme.

The criminal case against the Internet Research Agency is continuing, with a Russian company charged in the case pleading not guilty.

Rep. Jerry Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has sent a letter to special counsel Robert Mueller asking him to testify soon.

“I request your testimony before the the Judiciary Committee as soon as possible — but, in any event, no later than May 23, 2019,” he wrote.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have already called on Mueller to testify.

Here’s Nadler’s letter:

President Trump tweeted “game over” moments after Attorney General William Barr held a news conference detailing special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

He tweeted an image of himself that appropriated the font style from “Game of Thrones.”

HBO later issued a statement in response to Trump’s tweet.

Some background: Trump has used appropriated images from the “Game of Thrones” before.

In the past, HBO has responded, saying: “We were not aware of this messaging and would prefer our trademark not be misappropriated for political purposes.”

(HBO and CNN share parent company WarnerMedia.)

Asked if special counsel Robert Mueller should testify before Congress about his report, Attorney General William Barr said he has no objection.

Barr is scheduled to testify next month in front of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees.

Attorney General William Barr just delivered remarks on the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s redacted report on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. 

Click or tap here for a copy of the full remarks as prepared for delivery.

Attorney General William Barr said a group of bipartisan leaders from several congressional committees will see a version of report with no redactions, except for grand jury information.

President Trump’s lawyers did not request redactions in the report, Attorney General William Barr said.

Barr made clear: “No one outside this group proposed any redactions, and no one outside the department has seen the unredacted report, with the exception of certain sections that were made available to IC, the intelligence community, for their advice on protecting intelligence sources and methods.”

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report examined 10 episodes involving President Trump and “elements of an obstruction offense,” Attorney General William Barr said.

Attorney General William Barr said the soon-to-be-released report contains only “limited redactions” — none of which were the result of executive privilege.

“As you will see, most of the redactions were compelled by the need to prevent harm to ongoing matters and to comply with court orders prohibiting the public disclosure of information bearing upon ongoing investigations and criminal cases, such as the IRA case and the Roger Stone case,” Barr said.

The redactions were “applied by Department of Justice attorneys working closely together with attorneys from the Special Counsel’s Office, as well as with the intelligence community, and prosecutors who are handling ongoing cases. 

“The redactions are their work product,” Barr said.

Barr said the decision “whether to assert executive privilege” on part of the report rested with President Trump. Trump decided he would not assert that privilege, Barr said.

Watch here:

Attorney General William Barr said that, while special counsel Robert Mueller and his team “investigated a number of links or contacts between Trump Campaign officials and individuals connected with the Russian government,” they found no evidence of collusion.

“After reviewing those contacts, the special counsel did not find any conspiracy to violate US law involving Russia-linked persons and any persons associated with the Trump campaign,” Barr said.

He continued:

Attorney General William Barr said the special counsel’s report details Russian efforts to hack into computers and steal documents and emails from the Democratic party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The purpose, he said, was to “eventually publicizing these documents.”

Attorney General William Barr said special counsel Robert Mueller’s report shows that Russian operatives sought to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election.

He added that the special counsel found “no collusion by any Americans.”

“The special counsel found no evidence that any Americans – including anyone associated with the Trump campaign – conspired or coordinated with the Russian government or the IRA in carrying out this illegal scheme.” Barr said.

“Put another way, the Special Counsel found no ‘collusion’ by any Americans in the IRA’s illegal activity,” he said.

Attorney General William Barr detailed the timing of the report’s release.

He said the report will be released to the chairman and ranking members of the Senate and House judiciary committees at 11 a.m. ET.

The report will also be posted on the Department of Justice’s website for the public after it’s delivered to Congress, he said.

Attorney General William Barr is expected to speak soon on the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

President Trump’s personal lawyers, led by Rudolph Giuliani, are working on a rebuttal to special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

His lawyers have been reworking a response they’ve been planning for months to conform more to what they expect in Mueller’s report based on Barr’s letter, though that rebuttal is not expected until sometime after the redacted version is released today.

At the White House: The President and White House officials are not expected to review the report ahead of its public release, people familiar with the matter said. Instead, aides — like the rest of official Washington — are planning to pore over the hundreds of pages starting the moment they are released.

Trump, who is known to prefer one-page summaries with visual aids over lengthy briefing texts, is not expected to read each page of the report himself, according to one official. Instead, his legal team is planning to brief him on the findings once they’ve been read and digested. And the President is likely to spend hours consuming television coverage of the report, which newsrooms are gearing up to read and analyze.

The special counsel’s report is expected to be released today. But one question lingering is what will happen after it’s out.

Here’s what could happen:

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report will be released to Congress on discs, according to a senior Department of Justice official. 

Lawmakers could receive the report some time in the 11 a.m. ET hour after Attorney General William Barr’s news conference.

There will be two versions of the redacted special counsel report: One being released to the public and one that will eventually go to a limited number of members of Congress with fewer redactions, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

Some of the redactions in the Mueller report will be because of the gag order in the case involving Republican activist Roger Stone, they wrote in a court filing. Prosecutors say they are making these redactions so not to potentially prejudice a jury, since Stone has pleaded not guilty to the charges he faces and is headed to trial.

In the court filing related to the Stone case, prosecutors outlined a careful plan to prevent leaks of the less-redacted version the Justice Department plans to provide to Congress.

First, prosecutors will “secure” the less-redacted version — suggesting it won’t be available immediately. They will also keep it in an “appropriate setting” and limit its access to only some members of Congress and their staff. 

If Congress wants copies of the less-redacted version, prosecutors may want to ask a federal judge for permission before giving it to them, prosecutors wrote on Wednesday.

The publicly released version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report is expected to have relatively minimal redactions in the section on obstruction of justice, according to a source familiar with the report.

This was first reported in The Washington Post.

Why this matters: This part of the report would be expected to have fewer redactions than the part dealing with Russian interference and ties to Trump campaign due to the fact the obstruction investigation included testimony the Mueller investigators received from current and former Trump aides, not testimony before a grand jury.

A copy of Robert Mueller’s redacted report will be posted on the special counsel website after it has been delivered to Congress.

A senior DOJ official said the report will be delivered between 11 a.m. ET and noon to Capitol Hill and lawmakers will receive discs. 

President Trump tweeted “presidential harassment” ahead of the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

Moments ago, Trump sent out these two tweets:

Attorney General William Barr is expected to release a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report today.

Here’s what we know so far:

President Trump told WMAL Radio’s Larry O’Connor on Wednesday that he may have a news conference after Barr’s. 

Barr’s news conference is scheduled at 9:30 a.m. ET.The New York Tims reported Wednesday officials from the Justice Department have spoken repeatedly with the White House about special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings

The Times report, citing people with knowledge of the discussions, said the talks “aided the President’s legal team” as it works to rebut the report, which the Justice Department said it will release with redactions today.

According to Department of Justice spokesperson Kerri Kupec, Attorney General William Barr will address these things at the 9:30 a.m. ET news conference today:

The news conference is expected to last 20 to 30 minutes. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is not planning to make a statement, but he will be there with Barr.

She described Barr as calm this morning and ready for the briefing.

The Department of Justice has informed congressional committees they will be sent a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report around 11 a.m. ET, multiple congressional sources tell CNN. 

Rep. Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, tweeted Wednesday that Congress would receive the report after Attorney General William Barr’s news conference.

Attorney General William Barr will hold a news conference on special counsel Robert Mueller’s report at 9:30 a.m. ET today at the Justice Department, DOJ spokesperson Kerri Kupec said.

Barr will take questions. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will also be there.

One thing to note: Neither Mueller nor members of his prosecutorial team will be attending, the special counsel office’s spokesperson Peter Carr said.

Carr, who will be there, said he also works as a spokesman for the criminal division.

He declined to comment on the reason why Mueller will not attend.

Attorney General William Barr is expected today to release a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said the report will be released this morning.

The redacted report will provide more details into what was uncovered during the 22-month special counsel investigation into possible collusion between Donald Trump’s team and Russia and possible obstruction of justice.

Some background: Barr said he would use color-coded categories and explain the rationale for the redactions that are made from Mueller’s nearly 400-page report.

He has said four types of information would be redacted from the report he submits: grand jury material, classified information, material tied to ongoing investigation, and information that could harm “peripheral third parties.”