Mueller report summary: What is in the Trump investigation and what will we learn from William Barr’s release
Clark Mindock
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Mueller report is not the end of Trump's affair with Russia
The chairman of the US House Intelligence Committee was in London last year asking questions about people who have been investigating Donald Trump. One of his key targets was Christopher Steele who had written the explosive dossier on Trump and the Kremlin which had resulted in the issue getting massive publicity.Devin Nunes was particularly keen on who the former MI6 officer had contacts with in the FBI and Justice Department. He asked to meet the head of MI6, Alex Younger, his counterparts at MI5, Andrew Parker, and GCHQ, Jeremy Fleming. Although it was far from unusual for the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to meet the heads of Britain’s security establishment, all three refused because, it is said, they were wary, according to officials, of his motives. He had to do instead, with, Theresa May’s deputy National Security Advisor, Madeleine Alessandri.The visit by Mr Nunes, who was part of Trump’s transition team, was at a particularly difficult time for the President with the court appearances of his personal lawyer and consiglieri Michael Cohen and former campaign manager, Paul Manafort.Mr Nunes had to recuse himself for a while from the investigation after being caught out making secret visits to the White House. The Republican controlled House Committee published its report in Spring last year, with dissenting notes from the Democrat members, and it was seen as whitewash of Trump.Mr Nunes is no longer the chair of the Intelligence Committee in the Democrat controlled House, it is Adam Schiff, the former deputy chairman who has been a vociferous advocate for investigation. This is a man who can do Trump a great deal of damage, a man he could perhaps have tried to mend fences with, instead the President referred to him in a tweet as Adam ‘Schitt’ just after he took over the post.The House Intelligence Committee, under Schiff, said today that it has requested Robert Mueller to testify and it has reopened its investigation into Mr Trump. The Mueller Report reveals that one reason why the Special Counsel did not conclude whether Mr Trump was guilty of obstruction was Justice Department policy that a sitting President could not be prosecuted for a crime. This, a number of analysts has pointed out, leaves it to Congress to make the Constitutional decision whether Mr Trump can be charged.This House inquiry is possibly the most hawkish in keeping after Mr Trump, but there about 20 different continuing probes into Mr Trump, his family and associates, by Congressional Committees and Federal and State prosecutors. And no fewer than 14 of these inquiries have received information gathered by the Special Counsel’s team and passed on because it did not fit in with the focus of their task.Just 48 hours before Attorney General William Barr gave his press conference claiming that Trump has been cleared, a performance for which he was criticised for acting like the President’s Defence Attorney, House Democrats were issuing subpoenas for information from Deutsche Bank and other financial institutions in their investigation of the Mr Trump.The President, we know from redacted copies of the Mueller Report, declared when told of the appointment of a Special Counsel “slumped back in his chair and said ‘Oh my God’. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency, I’m f****d.”The 675 day inquiry may be over, but Trump and his supporters have long complained that Mueller was going beyond his remit, now the President’s critics know that what he gathered has not been wasted but taken up by other investigators.The Special Counsel, we have seen, pointed to “ten episodes” in which Mr Trump engaged in potential obstruction of justice. Barr insisted that there was no evidence to bring charges and reiterated that there was no collusion between the Russians and the Trump team.But the Mueller Report also states that Mr Trump ordered a number of his team, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, lawyer Don McGahn, and former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, to sabotage the Russia inquiry including -- but they refused.The current ongoing investigations are looking for evidence of both collusion and obstruction. The Democrats who have launched investigations maintain that just because the President failed in his attempts to obstruct justice, does not absolve him from possible charges of conspiracy to obstruct.The House Intelligence Committee has expanded its scope by looking in particular at Russian organised crime. This is in response to claims that Russian loans which Mr Trump received when Western financial institutions after one of his bankruptcies were, in fact, illicit funds being laundered. Other lines of inquiry being pursued by the Committee include the extent of contacts between the Trump team and Russia; influence on Mr Trump and his coterie from other foreign states and whether Trump obstructed justice.One of the key events which emerged during the Mueller investigation was a meeting at Trump Tower, New York, between the President’s son Donald Trump junior, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, his then campaign manager Paul Manafort and a group of Russians, some of them with links to the country’s security apparatus. The meeting was allegedly arranged so that the Russians could pass on damaging. Michael Cohen claims that Donald Trump knew about the meeting despite his denials that was the case. The Mueller Report states that Trump directed aides on multiple occasions not to disclose emails setting up the meeting, and Trump himself dictated a misleading statement. But the Special Counsel concluded that President’s actions were not criminal acts. Report also states that it did not prosecute Donald junior and others because it could not be proved that they had “wilfully” violated the law.The damage to Hillary Clinton’s campaign through the hacking of her and Democrat party emails is another avenue the House Committee is said to be taking. The Information was stolen, according to Mueller indictments, by Russian military intelligence officers from GRU some of whom were in touch with WikiLeaks which then made it public. The Committee is said to be looking at allegations that WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange who is now in police custody in London after being arrested at the Ecuadoran embassy where he had been granted asylum for seven years.Some of continuing investigations into Trump are examining what took place from the very start of his Presidency. The United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) is examining the finances of Trump’s inauguration committee which took in and spent $ 107 million. The FBI raised concern about some of the Russians who appeared at the event and other eastern European connections. Sam Patten, an associate of Mr Manafort has admitted that he helped a Ukrainian businessman put $ 50,000 into the inauguration.Prosecutors subpoenaed a range of documents from the Committee with apparent particular interest in money donated with connection to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Israel, states which have financial ties with Trump or his son-in-law Jared Kushner. They are also believed to be looking at claims that China and Qatar also targeted Kushner who is a White House senior advisor.Mr Mueller passed on information to New York attorneys about Mr Manafort, they are now looking at whether Paul Manafort, when chairman of the Trump campaign, illegally coordinated with a super PAC, Rebuilding America Now, and whether the PAC received money from Qatar and other Middle-Eastern countries. Michael Cohen has testified to Congress that prosecutors from the district are examining his communications with Trump and Trump’s representatives following FBI raids on his offices in April 2018.Investigations by New York City are New York State, and New York Attorney General’s office are looking at Trump’s finances after the New York Times reported that he had benefited from more than $ 400 million in various tax schemes. And the New York Attorney General has charged the Trump Foundation with “violations of campaign finance laws, self-dealing and illegal coordination with the Presidential campaign “. The Attorney General has said, after being given the go-ahead by a judge that he is expanding his inquiries into Trump’s broader business activities.The Attorney Generals for Maryland and District of Columbia have sent subpoenas to the Trump Organisation over the Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution which bars the President from accepting payments from foreign governments while in Office. This is expected to yield evidence that various countries have done deals with Trump’s business such as how the Saudi government booked more than 500 rooms in Trump’s hotel in Washington in the months after the election.So this is not the end of the affair as far as Trump and Russia are concerned, not even the beginning of the end. Information Mueller has provided has helped to start other investigations into Trump, and the what is revealed in the Report, even with its redactions, will be of great help in deciding whether the US President really was the Moscovian candidate for the White House.
Attorney General William Barr is set to release the Mueller report on Thursday, shedding light on many aspects of the investigation that has sparked massive speculation during Donald Trump’s first two years as president.
Roughly a month after receiving the report in the first place, Mr Barr’s release comes as Democrats have repeatedly and loudly demanded a full an un-redacted copy of the document, a request that appears unlikely to be totally met by the Justice Department.
While most of the report remains under wraps, here’s what we know so far about what is inside — and what we might expect to learn.
The report says that Mr Trump’s campaign did not collude with Russia during the campaign
Mr Barr indicated in a letter to Congress that the Mueller report found that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election, in spite of numerous reports over the past two years indicating that Trump campaign officials met with Russian sources during that time.
With those reports as backdrop, the idea that Mr Mueller’s team determined no collusion or conspiracy existed has been a contentious one since Mr Barr’s letter was released.
The report will talk about Mr Trump’s decision to fire former FBI director James Comey
The existence of the Mueller investigation at all can actually be traced back to Mr Comey’s firing, which the former FBI director reportedly found out about by taking a look at news reports on television.
Mr Trump said following the firing that the Russia investigation played a part in his reasoning for the firing — leading to claims that the president obstructed justice in the firing.
Mr Barr has indicated he does not believe sitting presidents can obstruct justice while doing their job, and has indicated the Justice Department does not view the evidence on this issue as being weighty enough to bring charges against Mr Trump.
We may get more information about interactions between Mr Trump and Mr Comey before that firing
Mr Comey, after his firing, released memos he wrote just after meetings with Donald Trump, alleging that the president pressured him to drop the Russia investigation.
The report is likely to tell us a bit more about those meetings, and who was involved.
We will likely learn how much contact the Trump campaign had with Russia — including a now-infamous meeting in Trump Tower
We already know that Donald Trump Jr and several other top Trump campaign officials met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya after being promised dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Mr Trump Jr and others have claimed they got no real intelligence from that effort, but it remains to be seen what the Mueller probe found.
At the centre of all the hacking and leaking that Russia managed to get away with is WikiLeaks, the platform where stolen emails from the DNC and Clinton campaign were published.
Roger Stone, a top adviser to Mr Trump, has some level of connection with that group. The extent of those talks, if any, could become apparent with the release of the report.
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