Robert Mueller Quotes

To forgive is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness.”—Robert Mueller

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 determined attempt to discredit Robert Mueller, the FBI and the Justice Department is an endeavor to protect the fervent saber rattlers themselves. You see, all this commotion kicked into overdrive once the Special Counsel sought information from Deutsche Bank.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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,

Even more egregious is the media’s characterization of the Robert Mueller investigation. The president rightly calls this fiasco a “witch hunt,” while the media would have you believe that any day it will conclusively prove the outlandish Russiagate conspiracy theory to be true. Headline after headline uses the words “closing in” to describe the special counsel’s progress.

In a way, Robert Mueller had come to accept the dialectical premise of Donald Trump—that Trump is Trump. It was circular reasoning to hold the president’s essential character against him. Put another way, confronted by Donald Trump, Bob Mueller threw up his hands. Surprisingly, he found himself in agreement with the greater White House: Donald Trump was the president, and, for better or for worse, what you saw was what you got—and what the country voted for.

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.

Cheating in a game of cards can involve “stacking the deck”—arranging the cards in a way that advantages yourself while ensuring your opponent loses. It is almost certain that this is the way special counsel Robert Mueller approached his investigation. He chose to hire for his staff a group of lawyers who are Democrats and others, like Strzok and Page, who vented in their messages their hostility toward Trump. Factor into the equation Mueller and Rosenstein’s own disqualifying conflicts of interest, and you have an investigation that bears no resemblance to fairness.

May 11, Trump admitted to Lester Holt of NBC News that he was determined to fire Comey “regardless” of the recommendation from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in order to stop the investigation of the “Russia thing.” Trump isn’t the first president to attempt to obstruct justice. But he is the first to admit what he was doing on national TV, and his admissions led to the appointment of former FBI director Robert S. Mueller as a special counsel.

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.

My gratitude goes as well to the other data scientists I pestered and to the institutions that collect and maintain their data: Karlyn Bowman, Daniel Cox (PRRI), Tamar Epner (Social Progress Index), Christopher Fariss, Chelsea Follett (HumanProgress), Andrew Gelman, Yair Ghitza, April Ingram (Science Heroes), Jill Janocha (Bureau of Labor Statistics), Gayle Kelch (US Fire Administration/FEMA), Alaina Kolosh (National Safety Council), Kalev Leetaru (Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone), Monty Marshall (Polity Project), Bruce Meyer, Branko Milanović (World Bank), Robert Muggah (Homicide Monitor), Pippa Norris (World Values Survey), Thomas Olshanski (US Fire Administration/FEMA), Amy Pearce (Science Heroes), Mark Perry, Therese Pettersson (Uppsala Conflict Data Program), Leandro Prados de la Escosura, Stephen Radelet, Auke Rijpma (OECD Clio Infra), Hannah Ritchie (Our World in Data), Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (Google Trends), James X. Sullivan, Sam Taub (Uppsala Conflict Data Program), Kyla Thomas, Jennifer Truman (Bureau of Justice Statistics), Jean Twenge, Bas van Leeuwen (OECD Clio Infra), Carlos Vilalta, Christian Welzel (World Values Survey), Justin Wolfers, and Billy Woodward (Science Heroes). David Deutsch, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Kevin Kelly, John Mueller, Roslyn Pinker, Max Roser, and Bruce Schneier read a draft of the entire manuscript and offered invaluable advice.

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

although the evidence of contacts between Campaign officials and Russia-affiliated individuals may not have been sufficient to establish or sustain criminal charges, several U.S. persons connected to the Campaign made false statements about those contacts and took other steps to obstruct the Office’s investigation and those of Congress. This Office has therefore charged some of those individuals with making false statements and obstructing justice.

the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.

Applying that test here, we concluded that Congress can validly make obstruction-of-justice statutes applicable to corruptly motivated official acts of the President without impermissibly undermining his Article II functions.

The President has no more right than other citizens to impede official proceedings by corruptly influencing witness testimony. The conduct would be equally improper whether effectuated through direct efforts to produce false testimony or suppress the truth, or through the actual, threatened, or promised use of official powers to achieve the same result.

A general ban on corrupt action does not unduly intrude on the President’s responsibility to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” U.S. CONST. ART II, §§ 3.1090 To the contrary, the concept of “faithful execution” connotes the use of power in the interest of the public, not in the office holder’s personal interests. See 1 Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language 763 (1755) (“faithfully” def. 3: “[w]ith strict adherence to duty and allegiance”). And immunizing the President from the generally applicable criminal prohibition against corrupt obstruction of official proceedings would seriously impair Congress’s power to enact laws “to promote objectives within [its] constitutional authority,” Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. at 425—i.e., protecting the integrity of its own proceedings and the proceedings of Article III courts and grand juries.

the Office cannot rule out the possibility that the unavailable information would shed additional light on (or cast in a new light) the events described in the report.

the Special Counsel's Office considered a range of classified and unclassified information

Certain proceedings associated with the Office's work remain ongoing.

Those communications and other correspondence between the Office and the FBI contain information derived from the investigation, not all of which is contained in this Volume. This Volume is a summary.

The IRA conducted social media operations targeted at large U.S. audiences with the goal of sowing discord in the U.S. political system.

Trump Campaign affiliates promoted dozens of tweets, posts, and other political content created by the IRA.

WASHINGTON — President Trump has boasted at various points that he has “one of the great memories of all time” or even “the world’s greatest memory.” But the world’s greatest memory failed him repeatedly when prosecutors asked him those classic questions from decades of presidential scandals — what did he know and when did he know it? Mr. Trump refused for more than a year to be interviewed by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and in the end agreed to respond to questions only in writing. Even then, with the help of his lawyers, the president found it difficult to summon details from his presidential campaign in 2016 that might shed light on what happened. More than 30 times, he told the prosecutors that he had no memory of what they were asking about, employing several formulations to make the same point. 'I do not remember.' 'I do not recall.' 'I have no recollection.' 'I have no independent recollection.' 'I have no current recollection.

The third headline is that there are no sealed indictments and that there will be no more indictments directly emanating from the Mueller investigation.

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.

In 2007, US Attorney for South Florida Alex Acosta worked with the FBI, then headed by Robert Mueller, and Epstein’s lawyers, Alan Dershowitz (who went on to defend Donald Trump) and Ken Starr (who had previously prosecuted Bill Clinton), in a plea deal to give Epstein a mere eighteen-month sentence for soliciting, molesting, and raping underage girls. Epstein never spent a day of his sentence in prison, and in 2009, he was granted early “release” from his pseudo-confinement. He

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.

WikiLeaks revealed that Robert Mueller, as President Obama’s FBI Director, personally delivered a sample of highly enriched uranium to Moscow. Weapons grade uranium is a strategic commodity critical to our national security.

There’s nothing like a car ride with federal agents to make you question your life choices. That was exactly where I found myself the morning of July 18, 2018, winding through the streets of Washington, DC, heading toward an interview with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators.

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.

It may be an overstatement, though not much of one, to say that James Comey was responsible for both the election of Donald Trump and the appointment of Robert Mueller.

Red Sox fans will always remember Game 4 for three big moments: (1) Dave Roberts’s ninth-inning stolen base; (2) Bill Mueller’s single that tied the game; and (3) David Ortiz’s 12th-inning home run that won it.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

On October 7, 2016, the media released video of candidate Trump speaking in graphic terms about women years earlier, which was considered damaging to his candidacy. Less than an hour later, WikiLeaks made its second release: thousands of John Podesta’ s emails that had been stolen by the GRU in late March 2016.

The investigation continued under then-Director Comey for the next seven weeks until May 9, 2017, when President Trump fired Comey as FBI Director—an action which is analyzed in Volume II of the report.

we concluded that in the rare case in which a criminal investigation of the President’s conduct is justified, inquiries to determine whether the President acted for a corrupt motive should not impermissibly chill his performance of his constitutionally assigned duties. 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 Office learned that some of the individuals we interviewed or whose conduct we investigated—including some associated with the Trump Campaign—deleted relevant communications or communicated during the relevant period using applications that feature encryption or that do not provide for long-term retention of data or communications records. In such cases, the Office was not able to corroborate witness statements through comparison to contemporaneous communications or fully question witnesses about statements that appeared inconsistent with other known facts. Accordingly, while this report embodies factual and legal determinations that the Office believes to be accurate and complete to the greatest extent possible, given these identified gaps, the Office cannot rule out the possibility that the unavailable information would shed additional light on (or cast in a new light) the events described in the report.

The United States government’s claim that Russia is responsible for the hacking, while credible and probable, cannot be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. In the absence of sufficient evidence to establish Russia’s guilt in court, there was no way Special Counsel Robert Mueller could ever have proved Donald Trump, his campaign, or anyone else conspired with Russia.

Former director of National Intelligence Dan Coats testified in January 2019 that Russia was still sowing social, racial, and political discord in the United States through influence operations, and several months later, Robert Mueller said the same. “It wasn’t a single attempt,” he testified to Congress. “They’re doing it as we sit here. And they expect to do it during the next campaign.

On May 17, twelve days after FBI director Comey was fired, without consulting the White House or the attorney general, Rosenstein appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller to oversee the investigation of Trump’s, his campaign’s, and his staff’s ties to Russia.

For the Resistance, the only organizing principle is: Which position will be worse for Trump? Is Russia a colorful country with a noble history of giving socialism a try—or the most evil regime since Nazi Germany? Do I enjoy coarseness in popular culture—or am I a hothouse flower offended by dirty language? Am I enraged by the idea of the government secretly spying on American citizens—or is that a vital part of national security? Is it outrageous that private communications of the Democratic National Committee were publicly revealed (on WikiLeaks) during a campaign, or is it totally fantastic that a secret recording of Trump (the Access Hollywood tape) was blasted all over the world a month before the election? Is transparency in government something that I support, or do I think Trump has got to get off Twitter—a novel and independent thought that has occurred only to me? In that environment, we may give Trump more than the usual latitude if he acts as if he’s under siege. He is under siege. Is he unhinged? No, he’s hinged, fighting back against the left’s infantile, knee-jerk reaction to everything he does. Instead of governing, Trump is spending his presidency refuting questions like “Did you boil and eat a small child today?” It’s one ginned-up, fake story after another. And the people doing this are the most corrupt and conflicted in the history of the world—James Comey, Robert Mueller, Brian Williams, George Stephanopoulos, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, and on and on.

In the jungles of Vietnam, we used to refer to what Mueller is doing as the Invasion of Cambodia. I'll explain it to you someday.

We know who they are; we can name them; we can look at their pictures. But unfortunately, our government has made sure we cannot hold them accountable; they are untouchable unless you are willing to take the law into your own hands. Yes, we know them: Robert Mueller and James Comey, FBI Directors, Mary L. Schapiro and Mary Jo White, SEC Commissioners, Eric Holder and Lorretta Lynch, Attorney Generals, Senator Chuck Schumer, Congressmen Paul Ryan and all the directors and executives at a dozen Wall Street firms. We can see them;

Then President Obama puts in Eric Holder as Attorney General and Robert Mueller as FBI Director. The two of them were swimming in evidence regarding Wall Street. How disingenuous was our President? It takes a special kind of person to present himself as a Wall Street Crusader and then appoint people with apparent instructions to protect Wall Street.

This is very, very, very powerful technology, and it was created under Robert Mueller’s watch. The last person I would think that should be investigating Donald Trump is Robert Mueller, who was collecting information on Donald Trump ten years ago … Mueller has a huge conflict of interest, a huge conflict of interest.

Barr had just requested the appointment of a prosecutor in the passport matter only hours before the deadline. He had acted on the recommendation of the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, Robert S. Mueller III.

Crown [P]rosecutor of Russia

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.

Sections II and III describe the principal ways Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. Section IV describes links between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign. Section V sets forth the Special Counsel's charging decisions.

elsewhere or through non-criminal alternatives. See Justice Manual § 9-27, 220.

Recognizing that the President would not be interviewed voluntarily, we considered whether to issue a subpoena for his testimony. We viewed the written answers to be inadequate. But at that point, our investigation had made significant progress and had produced substantial evidence for our report. We thus weighed the costs of potentially lengthy constitutional litigation, with resulting delay in finishing our investigation, against the anticipated benefits for our investigation and report. As explained in Volume II, Section II.B., we determined that the substantial quantity of information we had obtained from other sources allowed us to draw relevant factual conclusions on intent and credibility, which are often inferred from circumstantial evidence and assessed without direct testimony from the subject of the investigation.

We received the President’s written responses in late November 2018.4 In December 2018, we informed counsel of the insufficiency of those responses in several respects.5 We noted, among other things, that the President stated on more than 30 occasions that he “does not ‘recall’ or ‘remember’ or have an ‘independent recollection’“ of information called for by the questions.6 Other answers were “incomplete or imprecise.”7 The written responses, we informed counsel, “demonstrate the inadequacy of the written format, as we have had no opportunity to ask follow-up questions that would ensure complete answers and potentially refresh your client’s recollection or clarify the extent or nature of his lack of recollection.

Robert Mueller, the stoic marine, had revealed himself over the course of the nearly two-year investigation to his colleagues and staff to be quite a Hamlet figure. Or, less dramatically, a cautious and indecisive bureaucrat. He had repeatedly traveled between a desire to use his full authority against Donald Trump and the nagging belief that he had no such authority. He could be, he knew, the corrective to the louche and corrupt president; at the same time, he asked himself, what right did he have to correct the country’s duly elected leader?

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.

McGahn said the President thought Comey was acting like “his own branch of government.”320

Comey also told the President that congressional leaders were aware that the FBI was not investigating the President personally.

Several features of the conduct we investigated distinguish it from typical obstruction-of-justice cases. First, the investigation concerned the President, and some of his actions, such as firing the FBI director, involved facially lawful acts within his Article II authority, which raises constitutional issues discussed below. At the same time, the President’s position as the head of the Executive Branch provided him with unique and powerful means of influencing official proceedings, subordinate officers, and potential witnesses—all of which is relevant to a potential obstruction-of-justice analysis.

reviewing the IRA-controlled Facebook group "Secured Borders," the author criticized the "lower number of posts dedicated to criticizing Hillary Clinton" and reminded the Facebook specialist "it is imperative to intensify criticizing Hillary Clinton."51

IRA employees also acknowledged that their work focused on influencing the U.S. presidential election. [REDACTED: Harm to Ongoing Matter]

During the U.S. presidential campaign, many IRA-purchased advertisements explicitly supported or opposed a presidential candidate or promoted U.S. rallies organized by the IRA (discussed below). As early as March 2016, the IRA purchased advertisements that overtly opposed the Clinton Campaign. For example, on March 18, 2016, the IRA purchased an advertisement depicting candidate Clinton and a caption that read in part, "If one day God lets this liar enter the White House as a president - that day would be a real national tragedy."57 Similarly, on April 6, 2016, the IRA purchased advertisements for its account "Black Matters" calling for a "flashmob" of U.S. persons to "take a photo with #HillaryClintonForPrison2016 or #nohillary2016."58 IRA-purchased advertisements featuring Clinton were, with very few exceptions, negative.59

The release of the documents was designed and timed to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election and undermine the Clinton Campaign. The Trump Campaign showed interest in the WikiLeaks releases and, in the summer and fall of 2016, [REDACTED: Harm to Ongoing Matter] After [REDACTED: Harm to Ongoing Matter] WikiLeaks's first Clinton-related release [REDACTED: Harm to Ongoing Matter], the Trump Campaign stayed in contact [REDACTED: Harm to Ongoing Matter] about WikiLeaks's activities. The investigation was unable to resolve [REDACTED: Harm to Ongoing Matter] WikiLeaks's release of the stolen Podesta emails on October 7, 2016, the same day a video from years earlier was published of Trump using graphic language about women.

Within approximately five hours of Trump's statement, GRU officers targeted for the first time Clinton's personal office. After candidate Trump's remarks, Unit 26165 created and sent malicious links targeting 15 email accounts at the domain [REDACTED: Personal Privacy] including an email account belonging to Clinton aide [REDACTED: Personal Privacy] The investigation did not find evidence of earlier GRU attempts to compromise accounts hosted on this domain. It is unclear how the GRU was able to identify these email accounts, which were not public.184

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

According to Gates, by the late summer of 2016, the Trump Campaign was planning a press strategy, a communications campaign, and messaging based on the possible release of Clinton emails by WikiLeaks.207 [REDACTED: Harm to Ongoing Matter]208 [REDACTED: Harm to Ongoing Matter] while Trump and Gates were driving to LaGuardia Airport. [REDACTED: Harm to Ongoing Matter], shortly after the call candidate Trump told Gates that more releases of damaging information would be coming.209

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

And then he delivered a scornful critique of Robert Mueller: “What an asshole.” And there, perhaps, Trump had something of a point. If this was the result—a pass on conspiracy and equivocation on obstruction—how could you not have hastened it along, or, worse, how could you have fostered the exact opposite impression?

The June 9 meeting became public in July 2017. In a July 9, 2017 text message to Emin Agalarov, Goldstone wrote “I made sure I kept you and your father out of [t]his story,”761 and “[i]f contacted 1 can do a dance and keep you out of it.”762 Goldstone added, “FBI now investigating,” and “I hope this favor was worth for your dad—it could blow up.”763

Unable to recall the Russian Ambassador’s name, Kushner emailed Dimitri Simes of CNI, whom he had consulted previously about Russia, see Volume I, Section IV.A.4, supra, and asked, “What is the name of Russian ambassador?”972 Kushner forwarded Simes’s response—which identified Kislyak by name—to Hicks.973 After checking with Kushner to see what he had learned, Hicks conveyed Putin’s letter to transition officials.974 Five days later, on November 14, 2016, Trump and Putin spoke by phone in the presence of Transition Team members, including incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

Ultimately, the investigation did not establish that the Campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities.

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.

Second, while the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign, the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges.

Further, the Office learned that some of the individuals we interviewed or whose conduct we investigated—including some associated with the Trump Campaign—deleted relevant communications or communicated during the relevant period using applications that feature encryption or that do not provide for long-term retention of data or communications records .

WILL

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.

By early 2017, several congressional committees were examining Russia's interference in the election. Within the Executive Branch, these investigatory efforts ultimately led to the May 2017 appointment of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III.

Sessions got the impression, based on calls he received from White House officials, that the President was very upset with him and did not think he had done his duty as Attorney General.

President had the authority to terminate Comey without cause.418

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.