UPDATED 3/29, 3:45 p.m. ET: Attorney General William Barr issued a letter Friday informing Congress that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report will become available for perusal, potentially with redactions, by the middle of April “if not sooner.” The nearly 400-page Mueller report will not go through the White House first, as stated in the letter to Senate and House Judiciary committee heads Sen. Lindsey Graham and Rep. Jerrold Nadler stated.
"Although the President would have the right to assert privilege over certain parts of the report,” Barr wrote, “he has stated publicly that he intends to defer to me and, accordingly, there are no plans to submit the report to the White House for a privilege review.”
Barr closed the lettering noting, “Finally, in the interests of keeping the public informed as to these matters, I intend to make this letter public after delivering it to you.”
See original story below.
The long-awaited report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign found no evidence of collusion between President Donald Trump's team and Russia. According to a brief letter Attorney General William Barr sent to Congress summarizing the findings of the report, the Trump campaign was not found to have colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, and no further indictments were recommended.
“The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 US Presidential Election,” Barr wrote in the letter.
The report states in no uncertain terms that Russian nationals and their government interfered in the 2016 elections. It states that the Russian-based Internet Research Agency "conduct[ed] disinformation and social media operations in the United States designed to sow social discord" and that the Russian government "successfully hacked into computers...affiliated with the Clinton campaign." However, it did not find that Trump or his organization conspired with these campaigns.
While the report ruled out the possibility of collusion, it stopped short of clearing the president's name regarding allegations of obstruction of justice. U.S. House Representative Jerry Nadler shared a portion of the letter stating that Mueller's report did not exonerate Trump completely.
“The Special Counsel states that ‘while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,’” Nadler quoted on Twitter.
Read Barr's summary of the report over at the New York Times.
