Mueller report discussion thread
Mueller Delivers Report on Trump-Russia Investigation to Attorney General
March 22, 2019
WASHINGTON — The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, on Friday delivered a report on his inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election to Attorney General William P. Barr, bringing to a close an investigation that has consumed the nation and cast a shadow over President Trump for nearly two years.
Mr. Barr told congressional leaders in a letter that he may brief them on the special counsel’s “principal conclusions” as early as this weekend, a surprisingly fast turnaround for a report anticipated for months. The attorney general said he “remained committed to as much transparency as possible.”
In an apparent endorsement of an investigation that Mr. Trump has relentlessly attacked as a “witch hunt,” Mr. Barr said Justice Department officials never had to intervene to keep Mr. Mueller from taking an inappropriate or unwarranted step. The department’s regulations would have required Mr. Barr to inform the leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary committees about any such interventions in his letter.
A senior Justice Department official said that Mr. Mueller would not recommend new indictments, a statement aimed at ending speculation that Mr. Trump or other key figures might be charged down the line. With department officials emphasizing that Mr. Mueller’s inquiry was over and his office closing, the question for both Mr. Trump’s critics and defenders was whether the prosecutors condemned the president’s behavior in their report, exonerated him — or neither. The president’s lawyers were already girding for a possible fight over whether they could assert executive privilege to keep parts of the report secret.
Graham sends ominous tweet to Comey: See you soon
By Edmund DeMarche | Fox News
https://i.imgur.com/mNWe4ubh.jpg
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., posted an ominous reply to ex-FBI-Director James Comey on Twitter Sunday after Comey seemed to sum up the summary of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation by posting a picture of a man who appeared lost in the woods.
The photo posted by Comey was of a man surrounded by tall trees, and the caption was simply: "So many questions."
Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, replied, "Could not agree more," an obvious message that he hopes to question the former FBI head.
Comey's tweet followed Attorney General William Barr’s announcement that Mueller did not find evidence that Trump’s campaign “conspired or coordinated” with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election but reached no conclusion on whether Trump obstructed justice.
Trump and his team celebrated the outcome but also laid bare his resentment after two years of investigations that have shadowed his administration. “It’s a shame that our country has had to go through this. To be honest, it’s a shame that your president has had to go through this,” he said.
Despite Trump’s claim of total exoneration, Mueller did not draw a conclusion one way or the other on whether he sought to stifle the Russia investigation through his actions including the firing of former FBI director James Comey.
According to Barr’s summary, Mueller set out "evidence on both sides of the question" and stated that "while this report does not conclude the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
The Hill reached out to Graham for clarification about his tweet and his office referred the website to a letter from Graham to the attorney general about investigating a FISA surveillance warrant against Carter Page, a former campaign adviser to then-candidate Trump.
The surveillance of Page became a contentious matter between Republicans and Democrats.
Republicans say the FBI had abused its surveillance powers and improperly obtained the warrant, a charge that Democrats rebutted as both sides characterized the documents in different ways.
Critics have charged that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who signed off on the FISA application renewals, should not have approved them without more reliable intelligence.
Trump has claimed that his campaign was “illegally” spied on for “the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC.”
Fox News' Gregg Re, Catherine Herridge and the Associated Press contributed to this report