Tag: Mueller Report

Barr expects to release nearly 400-page Mueller report by mid-April

Attorney General William Barr told lawmakers on Friday that he expects to have a public version of special counsel Robert Mueller‘s report ready for release by mid-April and that President Trump has deferred to him to decide what makes it into the redacted document.

“Our progress is such that I anticipate we will be in a position to release the report by mid-April, if not sooner,” Barr wrote to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

“Although the President would have the right to assert privilege over certain parts of the report, 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 wrote.

View the complete March 29 article by Olivia Beavers and Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Trump veers off post-Mueller ‘no collusion’ victory message as conservatives worry

WSJ editorial board, others warn president to drop legal effort to nix Obamacare with no replacement

ANALYSIS — President Donald Trump spent Wednesday night and Thursday morning veering from topic to topic and enemy to enemy, again stepping on a victory with other messages.

He and his surrogates could have seized on a common message after Attorney General William Barr sent Congress a summary of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report that found no criminal-level conspiracy between his 2016 campaign and Russia. They could have used that messaging blitz to more forcefully counter Democrats who are loudly noting Mueller, according to Barr, opted against exonerating Trump on obstruction of justice.

Instead, as the president and his team — inside and outside government — have done repeatedly since he took office, they instead have veered from a major victory and brought up other controversial topics or made moves that have pushed wins off the cable news chyrons that clearly capture the president’s attention most days.

View the complete March 28 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.

Rudy Giuliani goes off script and reveals on CNN that the Mueller report hardly vindicates Trump

Since Attorney General Bill Barr released his summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, President Donald Trump and his supporters have been screaming from the rooftops that the investigation has completely exonerated the president — despite the fact that Barr’s summary does nothing of the sort.

And yet one of Trump’s most prominent supporters doesn’t seem to have gotten the talking points.

On Tuesday evening, the president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani appeared on CNN with Wolf Blitzer to discuss the developments. He celebrated the completion of the report, saying that the country should move on and that the story of Trump-Russia collusion has been disproven.

View the complete March 26 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.

Barr: White House To ‘Review’ Mueller Report Before Release

After special counsel Robert Mueller finished his report last week, Democrats warned that Trump’s cronies would scheme to conceal the full results of the investigation from the American people.

They were right.

On Tuesday afternoon, Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, said he will allow Trump to review Mueller’s final report before Congress or the public can see it. The news was shared by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), one of Trump’s staunchest supporters in Congress.

View the complete March 26 article by Dan Desai Martin on the National Memo website here.

McConnell blocks resolution to release full Mueller report

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has blocked a non-binding resolution to make special counsel Robert Mueller’s full report public.

The big picture: The resolution was passed unanimously in the House, and President Trump himself said earlier Monday that it “wouldn’t bother [him] at all” if the full report was released. McConnell cited national security concerns for his decision to block the resolution, and he argued that Attorney General Bill Barr should have time to decide what’s made public. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who put forth the resolution, said that it does not specify a time frame.

View the March 25 post by Zachary Basu on the Axios website here.

Conservative columnist cuts through Trump’s spin on Mueller’s final report and explains why Trump isn’t close to being vindicated

President Donald Trump has been gloating over Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s long-awaited final report for the Russia investigation, boasting on Twitter that it showed “No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION.” And much of the right-wing media has been echoing that assertion. But conservative journalist Max Boot has a very different perspective, explaining in his Monday column for the Washington Post why he doesn’t see Mueller’s final report as a total vindication of Trump and his associates.

“Trump has gotten a big and unexpected political boost from the end of the Mueller investigation,” Boot asserts. “What he did not get was a clean bill of ethical health.”

Boot writes that although Mueller evidently concluded that the Trump campaign’s actions in 2016 “did not rise to the level of ‘conspiracy’ or ‘coordination’ with ‘the Russian government,’” there are still many reasons why Trump and his associates are hardly spotless.

View the complete March 25 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

There’s a glaring omission in the Mueller report — and the obstruction of justice question hinges on it

Did President Donald Trump obstruct justice in the course of the Russia investigation? According to a new letter from Attorney General Bill Barr, Special Counsel Robert Mueller did not answer that question directly, only providing evidence for and against the proposition. But Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded, reading Mueller’s report, that there is not enough evidence to bring the charge of obstruction against Trump.

But there’s a key problem with this conclusion: Trump was never formally interviewed by Mueller.

Though he answered written questions from the special counsel, Trump steadfastly refused to sit down with him, despite having promised that he would testify in the case under oath. And this is particularly problematic because, as Barr noted in his letter, Trump’s intent with regard to potentially obstructive acts is a key factor when determining whether a crime was committed. How can the investigators come to a conclusion about Trump’s intent without asking him questions and assessing his answers?

View the complete March 24 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.

18 State Attorneys General Urge US Attorney General Barr To Release Mueller Report

The following release was posted on the New York Attorney General’s website on March 22:

“As the top law officers in states across the country, we strongly urge United States Attorney General Barr to immediately make public the findings of the Mueller investigation. The American people deserve to know the truth.”

The following Attorneys General signed onto this statement: Continue reading “18 State Attorneys General Urge US Attorney General Barr To Release Mueller Report”

Mueller’s conclusion raises new questions

Attorney General William Barr has notified Congress that special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence during his inquiry that President Trump’s campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election.

The bombshell disclosure appeared to resolve a core question of the Mueller investigation. It sent shock waves through Washington, with Trump and his allies claiming total vindication of the president after the investigation dogged the White House for just shy of two years.

However, Barr’s four-page letter sent Sunday has raised new questions, and the full contents of Mueller’s final, confidential report to the Justice Department remain shrouded in mystery.

View the complete March 24 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Trump’s legal troubles are far from over even as Mueller probe ends

For 22 months, Donald Trump’s presidency has been haunted largely by one legal foe, a Washington prosecutor with seemingly unlimited power but who was also a single target for Trump to portray as the leader of an unfair “witch hunt.”

Yet even as one legal cloud lifts with the conclusion of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation, others loom large on the horizon — creating additional threats to the president’s standing as he seeks to shift attention toward his 2020 reelection campaign.

Nearly every organization Trump has run over the past decade remains under investigation by state or federal authorities, and he is mired in a variety of civil litigation, with the center of gravity shifting from Mueller’s offices in Southwest Washington to Capitol Hill and state and federal courtrooms in New York, the president’s hometown and the headquarters of his company.

View the complete March 23 article by Rosalind S. Helderman and David A. Fahrenthold on The Washington Post website here.