![]() ![]() It ensnared nearly three dozen people, senior Trump campaign operatives among them. The special counsel's investigation did not come up empty-handed. Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, implicated Trump in campaign finance violations when he pleaded guilty last year. Federal prosecutors in New York, for instance, are investigating hush-money payments made to two women during the campaign who say they had sex with the president. Mueller's findings absolve Trump on the question of colluding with Russia but don't entirely remove the legal threats the president and associates are facing. Those include his firing of Comey one week before Mueller's appointment, his public and private haranguing of then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia investigation because of his work on the campaign, his request of Comey to end an investigation into Michael Flynn, the White House's first national security adviser, and his drafting of an incomplete explanation about his oldest son's meeting with a Russian lawyer during the campaign. Mueller's team examined a series of actions by the president in the last two years to determine if he intended obstruction. Barr has previously voiced a broad view of presidential powers, and in an unsolicited memo last June he cast doubt on whether the president could have obstructed justice through acts like firing his FBI director that he was legally empowered to take.īarr said their decision was based on the evidence uncovered by Mueller and not affected by Justice Department legal opinions that say a sitting president cannot be indicted. The attorney general said he and Rosenstein had determined that Mueller's evidence was insufficient to prove in court that Trump had committed obstruction of justice to hamper the probe. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!Īccording 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."īarr, who was nominated by Trump in December, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller in May 2017 and oversaw much of his work, went further in Trump's favor. No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION. The resolution also could deflate the hopes of Democrats in Congress and on the 2020 campaign trail that incriminating findings from Mueller would hobble the president's agenda and re-election bid. ![]() Mueller's conclusions, summarized by Barr in a four-page letter to Congress, represented a victory for Trump on a key question that has hung over his presidency from the start: Did his campaign work with Russia to defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton? That was further good news for the president on top of the Justice Department's earlier announcement that Mueller had wrapped his investigation without new indictments. They insisted that even the summary by the president's attorney general hardly put him in the clear. To be honest, it's a shame that your president has had to go through this," he said.ĭemocrats pointed out that Mueller found evidence for and against obstruction and demanded to see his full report. "It's a shame that our country has had to go through this. Trump cheered the outcome but also laid bare his resentment after two years of investigations that have shadowed his administration.
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