Mueller Report Quotes

The President slumped back in his chair and said, Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked.

The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.

The investigation also identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign.

Some individuals invoked their Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination and were not, in the Office's judgment, appropriate candidates for grants of immunity.

they sometimes provided information that was false or incomplete,

Trump Campaign—deleted relevant communications

The Mueller report exposed the Left’s plot to remake America. Donald Trump’s election interrupted the leftward, globalist course Barack Obama had set. It would have been full steam ahead under Hillary Clinton. So, they had to take Trump down if they were ever going to get back on course.

Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked.

The investigation also identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign.

A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.

the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts,

if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.

Third, the investigation established that several individuals affiliated with the Trump Campaign lied to the Office, and to Congress, about their interactions with Russian-affiliated individuals and related matters.

Volume II addresses the President's actions towards the FBI's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election and related matters, and his actions towards the Special Counsel's investigation.

many of the President’s acts directed at witnesses, including discouragement of cooperation with the government and suggestions of possible future pardons, took place in public view. That circumstance is unusual, but no principle of law excludes public acts from the reach of the obstruction laws. If the likely effect of public acts is to influence witnesses or alter their testimony, the harm to the justice system’s integrity is the same.

Third, the investigation established that several individuals affiliated with the Trump Campaign lied to the Office, and to Congress, about their interactions with Russian-affiliated individuals and related matters. Those lies materially impaired the investigation of Russian election interference.

Kushner asked Kislyak if they could communicate using secure facilities at the Russian Embassy.

Bannon also told the President that firing Comey was not going to stop the investigation,

Aven also testified that Putin spoke of the difficulty faced by the Russian government in getting in touch with the incoming Trump Administration.984 According

the Democratic National Committee and its cyber response team publicly announced that Russian hackers had compromised its computer network.

An “agent of a foreign government” is an “individual” who “agrees to operate” in the United States “subject to the direction or control of a foreign government or official.

The only people who try to deny the existence of Russian trolls are Russian trolls.

obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.

A few members of Mueller’s team wanted to be explicit in the report about the incriminating information they had found about Trump and explain that if he had not been a sitting president, he could likely have faced charges.

the active measures investigation has resulted in criminal charges against 13 individual Russian nationals and three Russian entities, principally for conspiracy to defraud the United States, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371.

The President fired Comey abruptly without offering him an opportunity to resign, banned him from the FBI building, and criticized him publicly, calling him a “showboat” and claiming that the FBI was “in turmoil” under his leadership.

Fourth, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment.

It is well established that a[n] [obstruction-of-justice] offense is complete when one corruptly endeavors to obstruct or impede the due administration of justice; the prosecution need not prove that the due administration of justice was actually obstructed or impeded.

A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts. In evaluating whether evidence about collective action of multiple individuals constituted a crime, we applied the framework of conspiracy law, not the concept of “collusion.

Although the President publicly stated during and after the election that he had no connection to Russia, the Trump Organization, through Michael Cohen, was pursuing the proposed Trump Tower Moscow project through June 2016 and candidate Trump was repeatedly briefed on the progress of those efforts.

With respect to whether the President can be found to have obstructed justice by exercising his powers under Article II of the Constitution, we concluded that Congress has authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice.

Taking into account that information and our analysis of applicable statutory and constitutional principles (discussed below in Volume II, Section III, infra), we determined that there was a sufficient factual and legal basis to further investigate potential obstruction-of-justice issues involving the President.

In fact, Mueller’s report established that Russia had illegally intervened in the election to benefit Trump and that the campaign “expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.” Mueller publicly complained to Barr about the spin he had put on the report, but it was too late: Trump crowed that he was exonerated, and his supporters not only bought it, they accepted it as proof that the institutions of government were persecuting their president.

Barr decided to write a second letter to Congress, which would detail the special counsel’s principal conclusions. He and his team scanned the Mueller report looking for sentences that they could quote in the letter that summarized the special counsel’s findings or reflected the bottom line. They found the report to be a garbled mess and struggled to find something worth quoting. At one point, O’Callaghan homed in on this line: “While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” “If we don’t include that, people are going to criticize us,” O’Callaghan said. Barr agreed. “You know what, Ed? That’s a good point. Let’s put that in there,” he said. As they finalized the draft of the letter, O’Callaghan called Aaron Zebley, Mueller’s chief of staff. He told Zebley that Barr would be laying out Mueller’s bottom-line conclusions and asked if he would want to read the draft before it was released. Zebley responded no, telling O’Callaghan that they did not need to see it. Zebley was hoping and assuming that Barr’s letter would quote the summaries the team had spent so much time on. But he didn’t say that to O’Callaghan. Yet again, the Mueller team declined an opportunity to weigh in on how their investigation’s findings would be presented to the public.

On July 13, 2018, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned an indictment charging Russian military intelligence officers from the GRU with conspiring to hack into various U.S. computers used by the Clinton Campaign, DNC, DCCC, and other U.S. persons, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1030 and 371 (Count One); committing identity theft and conspiring to commit money laundering in furtherance of that hacking conspiracy, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1028A and 1956(h) (Counts Two through Ten); and a separate conspiracy to hack into the computers of U.S. persons and entities responsible for the administration of the 2016 U.S. election, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1030 and 371 (Count Eleven). Netyksho Indictment.1277 As of this writing, all 12 defendants remain at large.

And yet, in early January 2017, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released a report that aggregated the findings of the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA (National Security Agency, which operates under the authority of the director of national intelligence), concluding that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump. Over the next two years, two investigations, one by Special Counsel Robert Mueller from the Department of Justice and another by the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee, found that the Trump campaign had, at the very least, played along.[1] The story was not just about Trump or Russia or the private dealings between the two. It was the story of authoritarianism undermining American democracy by using disinformation to manipulate voters.

On November 3, 2015, the day after the Trump Organization transmitted the LOI, Sater emailed Cohen suggesting that the Trump Moscow project could be used to increase candidate Trump's chances at being elected, writing: Buddy our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process. . . . Michael, Putin gets on stage with Donald for a ribbon cutting for Trump Moscow, and Donald owns the republican nomination. And possibly beats Hillary and our boy is in.... We will manage this process better than anyone. You and I will get Donald and Vladimir on a stage together very shortly. That the game changer.327 Later that day, Sater followed up: Donald doesn't stare down, he negotiates and understands the economic issues and Putin only want to deal with a pragmatic leader, and a successful business man is a good candidate for someone who knows how to negotiate. "Business, politics, whatever it all is the same for someone who knows how to deal" I think I can get Putin to say that at the Trump Moscow press conference. If he says it we own this election. Americas most difficult adversary agreeing that Donald is a good guy to negotiate. . . . We can own this election. Michael my next steps are very sensitive with Putins very very close people, we can pull this off. Michael lets go. 2 boys from Brooklyn getting a USA president elected. This is good really good.328

Mueller kicked off the meeting by pulling out a piece of paper with some notes. The attorney general and his aides believed they noticed something worrisome. Mueller’s hands shook as he held the paper. His voice was shaky, too. This was not the Bob Mueller everyone knew. As he made some perfunctory introductory remarks, Barr, Rosenstein, O’Callaghan, and Rabbitt couldn’t help but worry about Mueller’s health. They were taken aback. As Barr would later ask his colleagues, “Did he seem off to you?” Later, close friends would say they noticed Mueller had changed dramatically, but a member of Mueller’s team would insist he had no medical problems. Mueller quickly turned the meeting over to his deputies, a notable handoff. Zebley went first, summing up the Russian interference portion of the investigation. He explained that the team had already shared most of its findings in two major indictments in February and July 2018. Though they had virtually no chance of bringing the accused to trial in the United States, Mueller’s team had indicted thirteen Russian nationals who led a troll farm to flood U.S. social media with phony stories to sow division and help Trump. They also indicted twelve Russian military intelligence officers who hacked internal Democratic Party emails and leaked them to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The Trump campaign had no known role in either operation. Zebley explained they had found insufficient evidence to suggest a conspiracy, “no campaign finance [violations], no issues found. . . . We have questions about [Paul] Manafort, but we’re very comfortable saying there was no collusion, no conspiracy.” Then Quarles talked about the obstruction of justice portion. “We’re going to follow the OLC opinion and conclude it wasn’t appropriate for us to make a final determination as to whether or not there was a crime,” he said. “We’re going to report the facts, the analysis, and leave it there. We are not going to say we would indict but for the OLC opinion.

Once unbound from the shackles of truth, Fox’s power came from what it decided to cover—its chosen narratives—and what it decided to ignore. Trump’s immature, erratic, and immoral behavior? His sucking up to Putin? His mingling of presidential business and personal profit? Fox talk shows played dumb and targeted the “deep state” instead. Conservative media types were like spiders, spinning webs and trying to catch prey. They insisted the real story was an Obama-led plot against Trump to stop him from winning the election. One night Hannity irrationally exclaimed, “This makes Watergate look like stealing a Snickers bar from a drugstore!” Another night he upped the hysteria, insisting this scandal “will make Watergate look like a parking ticket.” The following night he screeched, “This is Watergate times a thousand.” He strung viewers along, invoking mysterious “sources” who were “telling us” that “this is just the tip of the iceberg.” There was always another “iceberg” ahead, always another twist coming, always another Democrat villain to attack after the commercial break. Hannity and Trump were so aligned that, on one weird night in 2018, Hannity had to deny that he was giving Trump a sneak peek at his monologues after the president tweeted out, twelve minutes before air, “Big show tonight on @SeanHannity! 9: 00 P.M. on @FoxNews.” Political reporters fumbled for their remotes and flipped over to Fox en masse. Hannity raved about the “Mueller crime family” and said the Russia investigation was “corrupt” and promoted a guest who said Mueller “surrounded himself with literally a bunch of legal terrorists,” whatever that meant. Some reporters who did not watch Fox regularly were shocked at how unhinged and extreme the content was. But this was just an ordinary night in the pro-Trump alternative universe. Night after night, Hannity said the Mueller probe needed to be stopped immediately, for the good of the country. Trump’s attempts at obstruction flowed directly from his “Executive Time.

I wanna be sure you know that, at any juncture, if you think I am a distraction to the work of the office or unnecessary baggage, I do not want to be here. I’d want to go. I’d want to do what is necessary for the success of our mission.” Mueller started nodding. He could now see where all my meandering was headed, and he was uninterested in taking the ride. “Are you done?” he said. I nodded. “Well,” he said, “you needn’t worry. If I have to fire you, I won’t be considering your feelings on the matter—at all.

There is an old joke about a country lawyer who, when he was hired to defend a man accused of killing a family of four and their dog, produces a dog and denies everything. When the Trump wing of the conservative media isn’t simply inventing something out of nothing—the murder “conspiracy” of the DNC staffer Seth Rich is a perfect example—it loves to take one bit of truth and abuse it into a much larger lie. Some of this is merely silly and falls into the category of life imitating high school. But some has profound impact on domestic and foreign policy. When the Mueller Report was complete and did not find grounds sufficient to bring a charge of criminal conspiracy against the Trump campaign, it became for Trump “complete and total exoneration,” and he immediately renewed his demand for an investigation into the “conspiracy” against him. Conspiracies are dominant realities in the world Trump and his followers inhabit.

On November 8, 1923, he and his associates marched on the Bürgerbräukeller, a beer hall where Kahr was making a speech in front of 3,000 people. Beer halls at that time were common meeting locations in Germany. Hitler and some 600 SA, a paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, surrounded the beer hall and set up a machine gun in the auditorium. Hitler and his forces took control of the building, taking Kahr, Seisser, and Lossow into a room at gunpoint where they demanded they support the coup. Kahr refused, stating that he could not possibly collaborate since he had been taken from the auditorium under heavy guard. Irritated by this, Hitler went back into the auditorium and gave a speech explaining the action they had taken to the audience. One supporter of Kahr, Dr. Karl Alexander von Mueller, a professor of modern history and political science, reported that the attitude of the crowd was changed with just a few sentences, which he described as almost magical. By the end of his speech, the beer hall erupted in a roar of support for Hitler.

But it would not be a fair fight. Barr was as vibrant, smart, funny, and cunning as he had ever been. But Mueller seemed to be a shell of his former self. As he spoke in the meeting, his voice trembled, his hands shook, and he seemed at times confused. To Barr, it was sad to see what had happened to Mueller. But this was not the time for sentimentality for his old colleague and friend. Barr controlled how the report would be released, giving him some ability to sculpt the narrative’s findings, influence how its conclusions would be interpreted and understood, and shape the ultimate outcome for Trump.

Mueller and his team were disciplined, restrained, and orderly; they avoided publicity, and their presentations to the public—especially the Mueller Report, which closed their work—hewed scrupulously to provable facts. Trump was in every way their opposite, and his public statements were medleys of invective and falsehood.

Mueller’s report, if read carefully, establishes that Trump committed several acts of criminal obstruction of justice. The impeachment proceedings against both Nixon and Clinton were rooted in charges of obstruction of justice, and Trump’s offenses were even more extensive and enduring.

The Mueller Report spelled it out clearly. Trump told Comey to lay off Michael Flynn; when Comey didn’t, Trump fired Comey. Trump tried to undermine Mueller, and then he ordered McGahn to oust the prosecutor; then Trump told McGahn to lie about it. These were illegal acts—in conception and execution. These were crimes, even if Mueller stopped short of saying that they were.

Some firms use ethics-speak as PR to reassure regulators and investors, even though studies have shown that the more often words like “ethics” and “corporate responsibility” appear in a firm’s annual report, the more likely it is to have a poor corporate governance record and a history of class action lawsuits.

Pelosi’s wariness seemed confirmed on March 22, 2019, when Mueller flubbed the unveiling of his team’s report on Trump’s ties to foreign governments. Although the report was devastating, Mueller’s initial silence allowed Attorney General William Barr to issue misleading characterizations that overshadowed the report’s details. Barr claimed that the report “exonerated” the president. The actual report documented a number of extremely problematic relationships between the president’s campaign and Russian officials. Mueller, who did not believe he had the authority to call for impeachment since the independent counsel law had expired, then made things worse by faltering in congressional testimony.

provisioning of the Russian army, and the member of the Hofkriegsrath

It was the German powerhouse Deutsche Bank AG, not my fictitious RhineBank, that financed the construction of the extermination camp at Auschwitz and the nearby factory that manufactured Zyklon B pellets. And it was Deutsche Bank that earned millions of Nazi reichsmarks through the Aryanization of Jewish-owned businesses. Deutsche Bank also incurred massive multibillion-dollar fines for helping rogue nations such as Iran and Syria evade US economic sanctions; for manipulating the London interbank lending rate; for selling toxic mortgage-backed securities to unwitting investors; and for laundering untold billions’ worth of tainted Russian assets through its so-called Russian Laundromat. In 2007 and 2008, Deutsche Bank extended an unsecured $1 billion line of credit to VTB Bank, a Kremlin-controlled lender that financed the Russian intelligence services and granted cover jobs to Russian intelligence officers operating abroad. Which meant that Germany’s biggest lender, knowingly or unknowingly, was a silent partner in Vladimir Putin’s war against the West and liberal democracy. Increasingly, that war is being waged by Putin’s wealthy cronies and by privately owned companies like the Wagner Group and the Internet Research Agency, the St. Petersburg troll factory that allegedly meddled in the 2016 US presidential election. The IRA was one of three Russian companies named in a sprawling indictment handed down by the Justice Department in February 2018 that detailed the scope and sophistication of the Russian interference. According to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, the Russian cyber operatives stole the identities of American citizens, posed as political and religious activists on social media, and used divisive issues such as race and immigration to inflame an already divided electorate—all in support of their preferred candidate, the reality television star and real estate developer Donald Trump. Russian operatives even traveled to the United States to gather intelligence. They focused their efforts on key battleground states and, remarkably, covertly coordinated with members of the Trump campaign in August 2016 to organize rallies in Florida. The Russian interference also included a hack of the Democratic National Committee that resulted in a politically devastating leak of thousands of emails that threw the Democratic convention in Philadelphia into turmoil. In his final report, released in redacted form in April 2019, Robert Mueller said that Moscow’s efforts were part of a “sweeping and systematic” campaign to assist Donald Trump and weaken his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. Mueller was unable to establish a chargeable criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, though the report noted that key witnesses used encrypted communications, engaged in obstructive behavior, gave false or misleading testimony, or chose not to testify at all. Perhaps most damning was the special counsel’s conclusion that the Trump campaign “expected it would benefit electorally from the information stolen and released through Russian efforts.

Recently deceased 26-year-old investigative journalist Bre Payton reported at The Federalist on December 13, 2018 that a newly-released DOJ Office of the Inspector General report reveals that Mueller’s Special Counsel Investigation (SCI) Records Officer deleted text messages that Strzok and Page exchanged while working on the Russian Collusion investigation. Deleting government records is a violation of the Federal Records Act. Destruction of evidence is also considered a crime. “The 11-page report reveals that almost a month after Strzok was removed from Mueller’s team, his government-issued iPhone was wiped clean and restored to factory settings by another individual working in Mueller’s office” Payton reported.

report points out the absence of evidence or conflicts in the evidence about a particular fact or event. In other instances, when substantial, credible evidence enabled the Office to reach a conclusion with confidence, the report states that the investigation established that certain actions or events occurred. A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.

WILL

According to Cohen, the President’s personal counsel responded that Cohen should stay on message, that the investigation was a witch hunt, and that everything would be fine.1033 Cohen understood based on this conversation and previous conversations about pardons with the President’s personal counsel that as long as he stayed on message, he would be taken care of by the President, either through a pardon or through the investigation being shut down.

During the summer of 2016, Cohen recalled that candidate Trump publicly claimed that he had nothing to do with Russia and then shortly afterwards privately checked with Cohen about the status of the Trump Tower Moscow project, which Cohen found “interesting.

Cohen eventually entered into a joint defense agreement (JDA) with the President and other individuals who were part of the Russia investigation.

Cohen said that the President’s personal counsel also conveyed that, as part of the JDA, Cohen was protected, which he would not be if he “went rogue.

after Sessions announced his recusal on March 2, the President expressed anger at the decision and told advisors that he should have an Attorney General who would protect him.

Finally, a witness’s false description of an encounter can imply consciousness of wrongdoing. See Al-Adahi v. Obama, 613 F.3d 1102, 1107 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (noting the “well-settled principle that false exculpatory statements are evidence—often strong evidence—of guilt”).

And after the media reported on the President’s actions, he denied that he ever ordered McGahn to have the Special Counsel terminated and made repeated efforts to have McGahn deny the story, as discussed in Volume II, Section II.I, infra. Those denials are contrary to the evidence and suggest the President’s awareness that the direction to McGahn could be seen as improper.

We also sought a voluntary interview with the President. After more than a year of discussion, the President declined to be interviewed. [~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~] During the course of our discussions, the President did agree to answer written questions on certain Russia-related topics, and he provided us with answers. He did not similarly agree to provide written answers to questions on obstruction topics or questions on events during the transition.

Ultimately, while we believed that we had the authority and legal justification to issue a grand jury subpoena to obtain the President’s testimony, we chose not to do so. We made that decision in view of the substantial delay that such an investigative step would likely produce at a late stage in our investigation. We also assessed that based on the significant body of evidence we had already obtained of the President’s actions and his public and private statements describing or explaining those actions, we had sufficient evidence to understand relevant events and to make certain assessments without the President’s testimony. The

A. Russian “Active Measures” Social Media Campaign On February 16, 2018, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned an indictment charging 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities—including the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and Concord Management and Consulting LLC (Concord)—with violating U.S. criminal laws in order to interfere with U.S. elections and political processes.

I decided not to do the project. . . . I decided ultimately not to do it. There would have been nothing wrong if I did do it. If I did do it, there would have been nothing wrong. That was my business. . . . It was an option that I decided not to do. . . . I decided not to do it. The primary reason . . . I was focused on running for President. . . . I was running my business while I was campaigning. There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won, in which case I would’ve gone back into the business. And why should I lose lots of opportunities

In an interview with the New York Times, Giuliani quoted the President as saying that the discussions regarding the Trump Moscow project were “going on from the day I announced to the day I won.

Statutory language need not be colloquial,” Justice Scalia explained, and “the term ‘corruptly’ in criminal laws has a longstanding and well-accepted meaning. It denotes an act done with an intent to give some advantage inconsistent with official duty and the rights of others.

Justice Scalia added that “in the context of obstructing jury proceedings, any claim of ignorance of wrongdoing is incredible.

In sum, in light of the breadth of Section 1512(c)(2) and the other obstruction statutes, an argument that the conduct at issue in this investigation falls outside the scope of the obstruction laws lacks merit.

We did not find counsel’s contention, however, to accord with our reading of the Supreme Court authority addressing separation-of-powers issues. Applying the Court’s framework for analysis, we concluded that Congress can validly regulate the President’s exercise of official duties to prohibit actions motivated by a corrupt intent to obstruct justice. The limited effect on presidential power that results from that restriction would not impermissibly undermine the President’s ability to perform his Article II functions.

Separation-of-Powers Principles Support the Conclusion that Congress May Validly Prohibit Corrupt Obstructive Acts Carried Out Through the President’s Official Powers

For example, although the President’s power to grant pardons is exclusive and not subject to congressional regulation, see United States v. Klein, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 128, 147-148 (1872), Congress has the authority to prohibit the corrupt use of “anything of value” to influence the testimony of another person in a judicial, congressional, or agency proceeding, 18 U.S.C. § 201(b)(3)—which would include the offer or promise of a pardon to induce a person to testify falsely or not to testify at all.

Sanders told this Office that her reference to hearing from “countless members of the FBI” was a “slip of the tongue.”482 She also recalled that her statement in a separate press interview that rank-and-file FBI agents had lost confidence in Comey was a comment she made “in the heat of the moment” that was not founded on anything.483

The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.

the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.

In this investigation, the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference. But the evidence does point to a range of other possible personal motives animating the President’s conduct. These include concerns that continued investigation would call into question the legitimacy of his election and potential uncertainty about whether certain events—such as advance notice of WikiLeaks’s release of hacked information or the June 9, 2016 meeting between senior campaign officials and Russians—could be seen as criminal activity by the President, his campaign, or his family.

The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.

In considering the full scope of the conduct we investigated, the President’s actions can be divided into two distinct phases reflecting a possible shift in the President’s motives. In the first phase, before the President fired Comey, the President had been assured that the FBI had not opened an investigation of him personally. The President deemed it critically important to make public that he was not under investigation, and he included that information in his termination letter to Comey after other efforts to have that information disclosed were unsuccessful.

Soon after he fired Comey, however, the President became aware that investigators were conducting an obstruction-of-justice inquiry into his own conduct. That awareness marked a significant change in the President’s conduct and the start of a second phase of action. The President launched public attacks on the investigation and individuals involved in it who could possess evidence adverse to the President, while in private, the President engaged in a series of targeted efforts to control the investigation. For instance, the President attempted to remove the Special Counsel; he sought to have Attorney General Sessions unrecuse himself and limit the investigation; he sought to prevent public disclosure of information about the June 9, 2016 meeting between Russians and campaign officials; and he used public forums to attack potential witnesses who might offer adverse information and to praise witnesses who declined to cooperate with the government. Judgments about the nature of the President’s motives during each phase would be informed by the totality of the evidence.

A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.

In evaluating whether evidence about collective action of multiple individuals constituted a crime, we applied the framework of conspiracy law, not the concept of "collusion." In so doing, the Office recognized that the word "collud[e]" was used in communications with the Acting Attorney General confirming certain aspects of the investigation's scope and that the term has frequently been invoked in public reporting about the investigation. But collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States Code, nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law. For those reasons, the Office's focus in analyzing questions of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as defined in federal law.

We also considered why it was important to the President that Comey announce publicly that he was not under investigation. Some evidence indicates that the President believed that the erroneous perception he was under investigation harmed his ability to manage domestic and foreign affairs, particularly in dealings with Russia. The President told Comey that the “cloud” of “this Russia business” was making it difficult to run the country. The President told Sessions and McGahn that foreign leaders had expressed sympathy to him for being under investigation and that the perception he was under investigation was hurting his ability to address foreign relations issues. The President complained to Rogers that “the thing with the Russians [was] messing up” his ability to get things done with Russia, and told Coats, “I can’t do anything with Russia, there’s things I’d like to do with Russia, with trade, with ISIS, they’re all over me with this.” The President also may have viewed Comey as insubordinate for his failure to make clear in the May 3 testimony that the President was not under investigation.

Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.

In connection with that analysis, we addressed the factual question whether members of the Trump Campaign "coordinat[ed]"—a term that appears in the appointment order—with Russian election interference activities. Like collusion, "coordination" does not have a settled definition in federal criminal law. We understood coordination to require an agreement—tacit or express—between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government on election interference. That requires more than the two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other's actions or interests. We applied the term coordination in that sense when stating in the report that the investigation did not establish that the Trump Campaign coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.

The IRA later used social media accounts and interest groups to sow discord in the U.S. political system through what it termed "information warfare.

At the same time that the IRA operation began to focus on supporting candidate Trump in early 2016, the Russian government employed a second form of interference: cyber intrusions (hacking) and releases of hacked materials damaging to the Clinton Campaign. The Russian intelligence service known as the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Army (GRU) carried out these operations.

The social media campaign and the GRU hacking operations coincided with a series of contacts between Trump Campaign officials and individuals with ties to the Russian government. The Office investigated whether those contacts reflected or resulted in the Campaign conspiring or coordinating with Russia in its election-interference activities. Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.

The Russian contacts consisted of business connections, offers of assistance to the Campaign, invitations for candidate Trump and Putin to meet in person, invitations for Campaign officials and representatives of the Russian government to meet, and policy positions seeking improved U.S.-Russian relations.

Throughout that period of time and for several months thereafter, Papadopoulos worked with Mifsud and two Russian nationals to arrange a meeting between the Campaign and the Russian government. No meeting took place.

On June 9, 2016, for example, a Russian lawyer met with senior Trump Campaign officials Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and campaign chairman Paul Manafort to deliver what the email proposing the meeting had described as "official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary.

On June 9, 2016, for example, a Russian lawyer met with senior Trump Campaign officials Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and campaign chairman Paul Manafort to deliver what the email proposing the meeting had described as "official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary." The materials were offered to Trump Jr. as "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." The written communications setting up the meeting showed that the Campaign anticipated receiving information from Russia that could assist candidate Trump's electoral prospects, but the Russian lawyer's presentation did not provide such information.

They also discussed the status of the Trump Campaign and Manafort's strategy for winning Democratic votes in Midwestern states. Months before that meeting, Manafort had caused internal polling data to be shared with Kilimnik, and the sharing continued for some period of time after their August meeting.

On December 29, 2016, then-President Obama imposed sanctions on Russia for having interfered in the election. Incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn called Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and asked Russia not to escalate the situation in response to the sanctions. The following day, Putin announced that Russia would not take retaliatory measures in response to the sanctions at that time. Hours later, President-Elect Trump tweeted, "Great move on delay (by V. Putin)." The next day, on December 31, 2016, Kislyak called Flynn and told him the request had been received at the highest levels and Russia had chosen not to retaliate as a result of Flynn's request.

Because we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President’s conduct. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment. At the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.

In advance of the meeting, Simes sent Kushner a “Russia Policy Memo” laying out “what Mr. Trump may want to say about Russia.”654 In a cover email transmitting that memo and a phone call to set up the meeting, Simes mentioned “a well-documented story of highly questionable connections between Bill Clinton” and the Russian government, “parts of [which]” (according to Simes) had even been “discussed with the CIA and the FBI in the late 1990s and shared with the [Independent Counsel] at the end of the Clinton presidency.”655 Kushner forwarded the email to senior Trump Campaign officials Stephen Miller, Paul Manafort, and Rick Gates, with the note “suggestion only.”656 Manafort subsequently forwarded the email to his assistant and scheduled a meeting with Simes.657

President had the authority to terminate Comey without cause.418

Victims included U.S. state and local entities, such as state boards of elections (SBOEs), secretaries of state, and county governments, as well as individuals who worked for those entities.186 The GRU also targeted private technology firms responsible for manufacturing and administering election-related software and hardware, such as voter registration software and electronic polling stations.187 The GRU continued to target these victims through the elections in November 2016. While the investigation identified evidence that the GRU targeted these individuals and entities, the Office did not investigate further. The Office did not, for instance, obtain or examine servers or other relevant items belonging to these victims. The Office understands that the FBI, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the states have separately investigated that activity. By at least the summer of 2016, GRU officers sought access to state and local computer networks by exploiting known software vulnerabilities on websites of state and local governmental entities. GRU officers, for example, targeted state and local databases of registered voters using a technique known as "SQL injection," by which malicious code was sent to the state or local website in order to run commands (such as exfiltrating the database contents).188 In one instance in approximately June 2016, the GRU compromised the computer network of the Illinois State Board of Elections by exploiting a vulnerability in the SBOE's website. The GRU then gained access to a database containing information on millions of registered Illinois voters,189 and extracted data related to thousands of U.S. voters before the malicious activity was identified.190 GRU officers [REDACTED: Investigative Technique] scanned state and local websites for vulnerabilities. For example, over a two-day period in July 2016, GRU officers [REDACTED: Investigative Technique] for vulnerabilities on websites of more than two dozen states.

The conflicting accounts provided by Bannon and Prince could not be independently clarified by reviewing their communications, because neither one was able to produce any of the messages they exchanged in the time period surrounding the Seychelles meeting. Prince’s phone contained no text messages prior to March 2017, though provider records indicate that he and Bannon exchanged dozens of messages.1094 Prince denied deleting any messages but claimed he did not know why there were no messages on his device before March 2017.1095 Bannon’s devices similarly contained no messages in the relevant time period, and Bannon also stated he did not know why messages did not appear on his device.1096

He informed Gerson that Putin and President Trump would speak by phone that Saturday, and noted that that information was “very confidential.”1121

Cohen recalled conversations with Trump in which the candidate suggested that his campaign would be a significant "infomercial" for Trump-branded properties.329

President tried to use Sessions to restrict and redirect the Special Counsel’s investigation when Sessions was recused and could not properly take any action on it.