The tweets and the declarations of ‘No collusion’ from President Trump will finally come to an end this week, with Special Counsel Robert Mueller turning in his report to Attorney General William Barr last Friday.
All of America had a weekend to stew over what Mueller had found over the two year investigation. The result of 2,800 subpoenas, almost 500 search warrants, 500 witness interviews and 13 different requests to foreign governments for evidence all culminated in this final report that could change the course of the U.S.
On Sunday, Barr released a summary of the report to Congress, saying that President Trump, or anyone associated with Trump’s campaign, did not coordinate with Russia during the 2016 campaign.
Barr’s summary said that there were two Russian operations that attempted to influence the election: one being disinformation and social media posts online, and the other being “computer hacking operations” that would be used to obtain and spread information to influence the election. The Special Counsel “did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts…”
The report also looked whether or not the President obstructed justice during the investigation. In the summary, it’s stated that the Special Counsel did not come to a conclusive decision on whether the president’s conduct constituted obstruction of justice.
According to CNN, Mueller told AG Barr 3 weeks ago that he would not reach a conclusion on the obstruction of justice claim.
At the end of Barr’s summary, the Attorney General noted that Mueller’s report would quite possibly be kept confidential, but noting the “public interest” in the case, the AG would try to get out as much of the report as possible to the people. President Trump himself has said that he would be fine with the report coming out, saying that “it wouldn’t bother me at all”.
Mitch McConnell on Monday blocked the full release of the report following a unanimous vote to release it from the House, citing national security concerns. It remains to be seen if the report will be released to the public; for now all we have to work with is the four page report that the AG has provided.
It still has yet to be seen whether or not the full report will be released for the public to see, which both government officials and some members of the general public are clamoring for.
Bernie Sanders, Vermont senator and 2020 presidential candidate, tweeted that he didn’t “want a summary of the Mueller report. [He wanted] the whole damn report.”
Releasing the report would be the right thing to do for the sake of transparency in the government. What new details that report would add that isn’t said in the summary is obviously yet to be seen, but letting the public read the report and inform themselves on how this two year investigation ended is critical.
Not a summary. Not secondhand.
The full report.