Over 700 days of waiting and 400 pages of reading later, here are the key takeaways from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s long-awaited report.
“This is the end of my presidency. I’m f***ed.”
A dramatic quote indeed from President Trump when he found out Robert Mueller would be spearheading the investigation into his supposed collusion with Russia. The redactions mean that there are still plenty of questions we have about the report, but what we have so far is plenty to keep the news cycles spinning away at 100 miles an hour for the foreseeable future.
Curious to see for myself what the report said, I tried to stay away from seeing too much news coverage about it (be it Game of Thrones or grand international conspiracies, I absolutely can’t STAND spoilers). So, yesterday after I got the CNN alert on my phone that the public version of report had been released, I poured myself a cup of coffee, sat at my desk, and did what any sane person with an entire afternoon on his hands would do.
I read it.
Yup. Government jargon, black stripes and all. Right up to Special Counsel Mueller’s neat, paragraph-long conclusion. It was a long, strenuous afternoon to be sure, but I wanted to make sure I had all the information for myself and didn’t have to rely on a news anchor or sound bites from upcoming congress hearings to give me the information I needed and answer the important questions.
Unfortunately, whether you are hoping to see Mr. Trump put on one of those orange jumpsuits or not, the Mueller report is about as inconclusive as it was the first time around, so the million-dollar question still remains: Is Trump going to jail?
The verdict from someone who’s already read the report: I don’t know.
In the president’s words, he is not “totally exonerated,” but the report suggests that Trump did not coordinate with Russian interference in the 2016 election. It does, however, contain damning information about some of his aides. It’s undeniable that there was contact between members of Trump’s presidential campaign and elements within Russia who offered direct support.
What matters at this point is how much the president knew.
The report provides more details about the planned Trump Tower project in Moscow, which both the Trump campaign and influential people in Russia enthusiastically claimed back in 2015 would help give Trump the publicity he needed to secure the Republican nomination. It also addresses the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ repeated attempts to arrange a meeting between Putin and Trump, and the infamous meeting in New York between senior members of the Trump campaign (including Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr and Paul Manafort) and Russian billionaire Emin Agalarov, who had supposedly obtained “dirt” against Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of her emails.”
Yes, the report contains pretty harmful information against Trump, but the special counsel’s investigation did not find anything that could definitively link him to Russia. Trump Jr and Goldstone both testified that the president didn’t know about their meeting in New York, and Michael Cohen wasn’t able to confirm one way or another. George Papadopoulos, Trump’s foreign policy adviser during the campaign, was in direct contact with the Russians, and in June 2016 even offered to “make a trip (to Moscow) off the record” to meet with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. However, nobody has been able to link this correspondence directly to President Trump either.
Like Special Counsel Mueller’s report says, however, “While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it does not exonerate him.” Now that the report has been released, the investigation may move away from whether Trump colluded with Russia to whether Trump actively obstructed justice. The Mueller report revisits Trump’s decision to fire James Comey after he refused to stop investigating him, as well as the president’s numerous attempts to remove the special counsel and place the investigation in the hands of Republican Attorney General William Barr.
The Russian saga is bound to continue, much to Trump’s frustration as the 2020 election gets closer. There is a lot of work to be done, and Roger Stone is set to testify before congress in November. House Democrats want Mueller to testify as well, probably regarding the information that was redacted from the report and what Mueller recommends the next steps of the investigation should be. So, in short, the report may be released, but get ready for it to dominate the news for a while.
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