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The Barr letter is a massive political victory for Trump (or, is it?)
Barr’s letter will define the narrative on the Mueller investigation — even if it’s wrong.
By Zack Beauchamp on March 24, 2019 5:54 pm
US Attorney General William Barr listens while President Trump speaks on February 15, 2019, in Washington, DC. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Attorney General William Barr’s summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russia and 2016 was delivered to Congress on Sunday afternoon. We still don’t know what the report itself says, but there’s no doubt that Barr’s summary is a huge win for President Donald Trump.
According to Barr’s letter, Mueller “did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia” during the 2016 campaign. Mueller apparently did not come to any firm conclusion on whether Trump’s interference with the investigation constituted obstruction of justice, instead asking Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to draw a conclusion based on their read of Mueller’s work. Barr and Rosenstein decided that “the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”
Bill Barr’s letter summarizing Mueller’s findings, explained
Substantively, this leaves a lot of big questions about the investigation unanswered. Barr doesn’t quote nearly enough of Mueller’s work on the 2016 election to support his brief summary. Nor does he explain in detail why he decided the evidence on obstruction wasn’t enough — something that is especially important since, prior to his Senate confirmation, Barr wrote a memo harshly criticizing the Mueller investigation and, in particular, its approach to the obstruction question.
But politically, Barr’s letter is a massive PR victory for the president. It allows Trump to claim victory on both substance of the investigation and the obstruction charges and to say that his oft-repeated mantra of “no collusion” is entirely accurate. This is the interpretation that will dominate cable news for the next few days, maybe even weeks, demoralizing Democrats and rejuvenating Republicans.
Barr says at the end of the letter that he wants to release Mueller’s full report, but that there are tricky legal issues surrounding what evidence detailed in the report can and can’t be made public. These issues are currently under review; Barr says that he will release the Mueller report “as soon as that process is complete,” but who knows how long the review will take.
It’s possible Barr’s summary is accurate and the report is as good as it seems for Trump. It’s also possible that it’s misleading, and that Barr’s decision on obstruction was influenced by the beliefs he held before becoming attorney general. We just don’t know at this point.
But what is clear is this: The president absolutely has to be thrilled today.
Barr’s letter is everything Trump could have asked for
The best way to understand the politics here is to look at this tweeted statement from Sarah Sanders, Trump’s press secretary:
The first two sentences in Sanders’ statement are essentially accurate summaries of what Barr wrote in his letter. The last one is more than a bit of a leap.
Barr does not say that Mueller proved Trump innocent on either collusion or obstruction, but merely that there was not sufficient evidence of his legal guilt on either count. The Mueller report, in Barr’s summary, doesn’t clear Trump or his campaign staff of any wrongdoing or shady ties to Russia — it just concludes what they found is not enough evidence to establish that what they did in 2016 was criminal.
And when it comes to obstruction, Mueller explicitly did not “exonerate” Trump. Barr himself is explicit on this point: “The Special Counsel states that ‘while the report does not conclude that the President has committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” Does the president’s handpicked attorney general making the final call on obstruction constitute “exoneration” when Mueller didn’t go that far?
But these are fine-grained and detailed distinctions that will likely be lost on a lot of people. On the face of it, Sanders’s spin that this vindicates the “no collusion, no obstruction” line seems right. The cable news summary of this report is “no charges for Trump, no evidence of crimes” — and that’s basically the message Sanders is hammering away at. As is her boss, in characteristically blunter fashion:
This version of events will be repeated over and over again for the next few days, on cable news and talk radio and congressional Republicans’ social media platforms. Twitter is full of them right now. All Democrats can say in response is “we need to see the full report” — which is true, as far as it goes, but not exactly a resounding response.
The report’s phrasing hands the president and his allies a victory in the spin wars before they even have begun. That’s true regardless of how accurate his summary is or how open the underlying report is to different interpretations. Since it’s still not clear when we’ll get to see the full report, or just how complete any version released to the public would be, Barr’s version of Mueller’s report will likely be the version that’s treated as authoritative for at least some time.
Democrats are already trying to push back on this. Rep. Jerry Nadler, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, is already threatening to haul Barr in for questioning.
Whether Nadler and other Democrats could get Barr to admit something damning under questioning — if there is indeed something damning to admit — is an open question. Without the full text of the report, demonstrating any discrepancies between it and Barr’s account will be hard. And it’s not clear, again, when the full report will be released.
So given how favorable Barr’s text is for the president, how easily it can be spun as complete and total vindication for Trump, that’s about as big a win as he could have hoped for.
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Does AG Barr’s summary of the Mueller report “exonerate” Trump? I asked 15 legal experts.:
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Does AG Barr’s summary of the Mueller report “exonerate” Trump? I asked 15 legal experts.
Not quite — but it’s mostly good news for the president.
By Sean Illing@seanillingsean.illing@vox.com Mar 24, 2019, 6:20pm EDT
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Special counsel Robert Mueller in Washington, DC, on March 24, 2019. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
dSpecial counsel Robert Mueller has finally completed his Trump-Russia report.
Attorney General Bill Barr made the announcement in a letter to congressional committee leaders on Friday. We’ve yet to see the full report, but on Sunday Barr released a summary of the report’s principal conclusions to Congress.
At first glance, it appears to be mostly good news for President Donald Trump. Barr’s summary explicitly states that “the Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election.”
On the question of obstruction of justice, the initial report is more ambiguous. The special counsel’s office, according to Barr, “did not draw a conclusion — one way or the other — as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction.” But Barr wrote that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded that there wasn’t sufficient evidence for obstruction charges.
That doesn’t necessarily exonerate Trump or anyone in his campaign, but it leaves a lot of room for speculation.
So, given what we now know, where does all this leave us? What is the legal significance of this report for Trump? Does it actually exonerate the president?
To get some answers, I reached out to 15 legal experts and asked them to react to Barr’s initial summary of Mueller’s findings. Their full responses, edited for clarity and length, are below.
Victoria Nourse, law professor, Georgetown University
This report indicates that the president did not conspire with the Russians and did not obstruct justice — or at least that obstruction would be difficult legally and factually to prove. The criminal law is a poor measure — a very low bar — for a president.
The Constitution, which is our highest law, provides that the president must faithfully execute the law and the Constitution. One did not need a criminal investigation to determine that Russians hacked our election. Legally, that is the most important part of the report, since it goes to the heart of our democracy.
This report is likely to make efforts by those who seek to impeach the president more difficult. Some people wrongly believe that impeachment requires an actual crime. The Constitution does not so provide. Political offenses are sufficient. The founders, in my opinion, created impeachment as a means to oust an incompetent or disloyal president, but hoped that it would be used rarely.
This report does nothing to other investigations, in the Southern District of New York and elsewhere, that may provide more light on election hacking and may implicate the president in other potential crimes (money laundering, fraud, tax crimes etc.).
Jessica Levinson, law professor, Loyola Law School
Bottom line — this is a huge victory for Trump and his supporters. The report takes the wind out of the sails of the congressional Democrats who wish to continue investigating Trump, his businesses, his charity, and his inauguration. I think the American public could soon have “investigation fatigue.”
Mueller’s conclusion on collusion charges is an enormous vindication for Trump, who has been chanting “no collusion” for years. It’s slightly less helpful for Trump that his attorney general, Bill Barr, instead of the special counsel, concluded that Trump should not be charged with obstruction of justice, but the headline for Trump is the same — vindication on both major questions Mueller was investigating.
It’s important to remember that it’s a high bar to charge obstruction of justice, and in particular it’s difficult to prove corrupt intent, but this likely isn’t what the public will remember. The public will remember that Trump will not be charged with either collusion or obstruction of justice.
Diane Marie Amann, law professor, University of Georgia
With his four-page letter on Mueller’s report, Attorney General William Barr drives the obstruction-of-justice ball firmly into Congress’s court.
Although the “‘report does not conclude that the President committed a crime,’” as Barr writes, quoting Mueller, “‘it also does not exonerate him.’” Barr continues that he and Rosenstein weighed the evidence presented in the report, and found it “insufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”
This may not end the matter, however. That’s because the conclusion turns on whether Barr and Rosenstein believed prosecutors could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump’s actions, in their words, “had a nexus to a pending or contemplated proceeding, and were done with corrupt intent.”
“Beyond a reasonable doubt” is indeed the standard of proof for conviction in a federal criminal court. But the same is not true for other forums. Most notably, conviction in an impeachment proceeding depends on the judgment of senators following a trial in the Senate — a trial that cannot take place unless the House of Representatives votes to send to the Senate articles of impeachment. Thus the ball now lies in Congress’s court.
But given another Barr quotation of the Mueller report — that the special counsel’s “‘investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities’”— the obstruction-of-justice ball well may languish there.
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, law professor, Stetson University
Russians were eager to offer help to the Trump 2016 campaign (from the Russian lawyer who showed up at Trump Tower in 2016 to meet Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort, to Alexander Torshin, who met Don Jr. at dinner at an NRA convention in Kentucky).
Barr’s characterization of the Mueller report is that no one in the Trump campaign came to an agreement with the Russian government to conspire with the Russian interference in the 2016 election.
This is reassuring to a point.
The fact that the Trump campaign did not report the Russian offers of help in real time in 2016 remains troubling at best. And this could be fertile ground for investigations by the Democratically controlled House. Moreover, to the extent that individuals lied to Congress during the course of House and Senate investigations into the 2016 election, this could still expose more people to liability on that perjury front.
The Barr letter also refers to ongoing matters including those that have been referred from the special counsel to other offices. This would clearly include the prosecution of Rick Gates, Roger Stone, and Michael Cohen. Another open question is whether the special counsel referred any other matter that is not yet public to another office for federal prosecution.
The Southern District of New York has already referred to President Trump as “Individual 1” and implicated him in Michael Cohen’s campaign finance crimes. One of the few times that Barr quotes the Mueller report is to state “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” Presumably that “no exoneration” would apply to the Southern District of New York’s own investigations of criminality.
In other words, while Barr has exonerated the president on the question of obstruction of justice, the question of whether the president violated campaign finance laws could remain a live issue for SDNY.
Christopher Slobogin, law professor, Vanderbilt University
If the summary is correct that the special counsel found no evidence that the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian attempt to influence our electoral process, then the claim that Trump obstructed the investigation into that attempt is significantly undercut. It is difficult to show a corrupt motive to obstruct an investigation into a crime that did not occur.
At the same time, if there is weak to no evidence of collusion or obstruction, then concerns about tainting the grand jury are minimal and the full report should be released.
Miriam Baer, law professor, Brooklyn Law School
To show obstruction, a prosecutor must demonstrate a nexus between the particular conduct and the “proceeding” it is corruptly intended to obstruct. On page three of his letter to Congress, Barr advises that Mueller declined to say, one way or the other, whether President Trump obstructed justice.
The attorney general then goes on to advise that he and Rosenstein have reached their own joint conclusion that the facts laid out in the report fail to establish a “nexus” between Trump’s behavior and any specific “proceeding.”
Moreover, Barr states as well that report fails to establish evidence of “corrupt intent.” The determination that corrupt intent is lacking rests, at least in part, on Mueller’s other conclusion — that the evidence fails to establish that Trump himself conspired with the Russians to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
Many observers will question Barr and Rosenstein’s conclusions that none of Trump’s actions (not all of which occurred in public) were “obstructive,” or lacked “corrupt intent.” The nexus element may be more complicated, however, since it is contingent on the specific factual conclusions contained in the special counsel’s report.
For all these reasons, it will be crucial for the attorney general to provide Congress as full a recitation of the facts contained in the special counsel’s report as possible. Moreover, because the underlying facts potentially indicate behavior warranting impeachment, many members of Congress are sure to demand a recitation of the Mueller report’s facts and its underlying documents.
Trump may say he feels vindicated by this report, but the summary itself falls far short of exonerating him.
Keith Whittington, politics professor, Princeton University
The letter is notable in several aspects. It is significant in stating clearly that all indictments from the special counsel’s office have already been publicly disclosed and that no new indictments are recommended.
That does not preclude the possibility of further indictments arising from related investigations by either federal or state prosecutors, but those will presumably not focus on either Russian activities relating to the 2016 election or possible obstruction of justice.
The letter is clear that the special counsel found no coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian actors to interfere with the 2016 election. It appears that we already know the extent of the relationship between the two, and moreover we already know the extent of the Russian meddling in the election. There are no new revelations here on actions that Russia took to affect the election or of actions that campaign officials took to shape Russian interference.
The letter is particularly interesting on the obstruction of justice question. The special counsel did not rely specifically on the view that a sitting president cannot be indicted and did not factor in the issue of whether the president’s use of his Article II powers could provide the basis for an obstruction of justice charge.
Instead, the special counsel refrained from reaching any legal conclusions about whether or not the president engaged in obstruction of justice and the attorney general is now determining that no obstruction charge would be appropriate.
It would seem that both the attorney general and the special counsel are leaning heavily on the notion that the president could not have been acting with corrupt intent if there was no underlying crime for the president to attempt to cover up.
Given ongoing state and federal investigations, the president and his associates are not entirely out of the legal woods, but the Russian collusion angle is at least done. If the special counsel’s report is consistent with the attorney general’s letter, this will presumably take the steam out of the sails of an impeachment effort based on Russian collusion or obstruction of justice.
Robert Weisberg, law professor, Stanford University
A comment on obstruction: Barr’s reference to what Mueller says, and his own conclusion that he would not (if he constitutionally could) charge Trump with obstruction — these are careful and a bit slippery. He leverages the no-conspiracy finding to say that this bears on the question of whether Trump obstructed — i.e., if Trump didn’t conspire, he’d lack the motive to obstruct.
I suppose that is a legitimate evidentiary factor, but Barr may be imputing more thoughtfulness or awareness to Trump than is warranted. Further, Barr’s ultimate conclusion treats obstructive conduct and corrupt intent as if they are separate elements. Anyone who tries to make sense of the clotted and obtuse language of the obstruction statutes and the utterly unhelpful court interpretations — especially the Aguilar case—would realize that it is a little disingenuous to label these as separate elements.
In any event, it would (will) help if Barr explained what he thinks the notoriously vague term “corruptly” means. Obviously we look to appellate opinions, not prosecutorial decimations, to help us understand criminal statutes — but Barr owes us some explanation of how he understands these laws.
Jimmy Gurulé, law professor, Notre Dame
The order appointing Mueller to investigate whether Trump or members of his presidential campaign colluded with the Russians to interfere with the 2016 presidential election also authorized Mueller to investigate any crimes arising from the Russia investigation, which includes whether Trump engaged in obstruction of justice.
By failing to reach a conclusion on that matter, Mueller failed to fulfill his mandate. Furthermore, referring the obstruction of justice issue to Barr, who had decided that Trump had not obstructed justice prior to being appointed to serve as attorney general was a serious mistake and undermines the public’s confidence in the outcome.
Stephen Legomsky, law professor, Washington University
However informative the Mueller report may be, my sense is that the vast bulk of the salient revelations will end up coming from other sources.
Much information is or soon will be available from earlier news reports, the unredacted allegations in the various Mueller indictments, even the redacted allegations that hopefully will be provided to Congress, the indictments and evidence in the actions brought by both the Southern District of New York and the New York state attorney general, the previous closed-door and public testimony of the witnesses before the various congressional committees, future information from cooperating witnesses, and future leaks from administration sources.
Hopefully, too, the evidence on which the Mueller report was based will be shared with the congressional committees and will prove even more valuable than the text of the report. And all of this will generate leads from which the congressional committees can ferret out still more facts. So the Mueller report, while critical, will prove to be just one piece in the larger investigation.
Frances Hill, law professor, University of Miami
Barr’s brief letter is likely to become the centerpiece of the Trump political message for the 2020 campaign. While the Democrats will, as they should, continue to press for the prompt release of the Mueller report and all of the underlying documents, this is likely to be overshadowed by the action taken today by Barr.
The controversy will center on the obstruction charge and why the special counsel did not conclude that he found obstruction but followed the guidelines of the DOJ and thus did not indict a sitting president. Why did the special counsel leave the operative legal conclusion based on his work to the attorney general? We may never know.
We are also left to wonder whether the constraints on the investigation relating to the conspiracy issue, especially the constraints in the investigation of Trump’s business dealings with confidants of Russian President Vladimir Putin, did or did not provide evidence that Trump was sufficiently compromised that it might (or might not) have been possible to conclude that he was engaged in a conspiracy to prevent disclosure of his prior business dealings.
While these questions will linger and while they should continue to be investigated by both Congress and federal prosecutors, such efforts are now likely to be seen as either not constructive or excessive, even if they are ultimately proved to be true.
It is possible to conclude that Mueller in fact wrote a report that left the issues in this matter in the hands of the American people in the 2020 election. Whether that was the special counsel’s intent, that is where the issues now will be decided.
It becomes now particularly important to do all that is possible to counter ongoing efforts of the Russians and others to wage cyberwar against the voters. It is also important to counteract efforts by domestic political actors to selectively suppress the right of all Americans to vote.
Ilya Somin, law professor, George Mason University
Barr’s summary states that the special counsel did not find that Trump or members of his campaign colluded with Russian government efforts to influence the 2016 presidential campaign. This crucial finding appears to exonerate Trump on the crucial issue of “collusion” with Russia.
On the question of obstruction of justice, Barr’s summary quotes the special counsel’s report as stating that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” Barr goes on to state that he and Rosenstein have concluded that the evidence “is not sufficient” to conclude that Trump committed obstruction of justice.
The equivocal nature of the obstruction finding emphasizes the importance of publicly revealing as much of the report as possible, so that Congress and the public can make an informed judgment. While Justice Department policy forbids prosecution of a sitting president, Congress can still pursue impeachment proceedings against him.
Unlike a criminal trial, impeachment does not necessarily require proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. In the view of most legal scholars across the political spectrum, impeachment is also possible in cases of illegal conduct or abuse of power that are not crimes.
Today’s revelations were beneficial to Trump’s cause. But he is not out of the woods yet. Multiple state and federal investigations into possible lawbreaking on his part are still ongoing. Congress would also do well to further investigate such technically non-criminal abuses of power as the president’s cruel “family separation” policy, which has been ruled unconstitutional by a federal court, in a June 2018 decision.
The administration continues to drag its feet on reuniting many of the separated migrant children with their families, and new separations still occur, even long after the court’s ruling.
The Barr letter is an important development. But it is far from the end of this particular road.
Jens David Ohlin, law professor, Cornell University
What strikes me as most important is the fact that Barr (not Mueller) made the determination not to indict the president for obstruction of justice. Based on just the evidence from the public record, even if the Mueller report added no new information, there was enough evidence to warrant a prosecution of the president for obstruction.
Incredibly, Barr states in his letter to Congress that his decision not to pursue an obstruction charge was based, in part, on the absence of evidence that Trump committed a crime related to Russian election interference.
It seems to me that this represents a major legal error on Barr’s part. Trump could still have a “corrupt intent” even if he didn’t personally conspire with the Russians, but nonetheless wanted to shut down an investigation that was threatening his close aides and associates — like former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
We’ll have to see if Congress is willing to rectify Barr’s legal error.
Ric Simmons, law professor, Ohio State University
The only possible conclusion to draw based on this summary is that the Mueller report is a complete exoneration of President Trump from any criminal activity regarding collusion with Russia or obstruction of justice. Robert Mueller has an unassailable reputation as a non-partisan professional law enforcement officer of the highest caliber, and he conducted an exhaustive, comprehensive investigation, leading a team of nearly sixty lawyers and investigators for almost two years, ultimately concluding that there was no coordination or collaboration between the Trump campaign and Russia.
It is true that Mueller did not explicitly exonerate the president on the obstruction of justice charges, but as the summary notes, the fact that there is no evidence of collusion on the part of the president makes it very unlikely that the president did in fact obstruct justice in this matter. More to the point, it would be nearly impossible to legally prove that Trump obstructed justice, since proving such a charge would require the prosecutor to establish intent, and it would be paradoxical to argue that the president intentionally obstructed justice when he was factually innocent of the underlying charge.
Peter Margulies, law professor, Roger Williams University School of Law
In declining to find that President Trump obstructed justice, Attorney General Barr ranked his view of the presidency as an institution over the unprecedented conduct of the White House’s current occupant. The matters that Special Counsel Robert Mueller described as “difficult” included whether Trump’s firing of FBI Director Jim Comey constituted obstruction. In deciding against obstruction charges, Barr had to weigh the disruption to the Russia probe caused by Comey’s dismissal against the president’s power to fire political appointees.
Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein apparently were concerned that criminalizing the Comey firing and other Trump actions that “took place in public view” would displace presidential accountability from the electoral and political realm to the courtroom. In the memo Barr wrote about the Mueller probe before becoming Attorney General, Barr worried that this shift in accountability might chill future presidents’ ability to make difficult decisions about policy and personnel.
But whether or not criminal prosecution proceeds now, Mueller’s statement that his report does not “exonerate” the President should give pause to Congress and to all citizens. Surely, the United States deserves a chief executive who is definitively free of the taint of obstruction. Mueller’s refusal to give the President that clean bill of health should spur further inquiry by Congress about the contents of Mueller’s report and the conduct of this particular president.
Russia is a threat to American democracy, with or without collusion
Robert Mueller was never going to end Donald Trump’s presidency.
© 2019 Vox Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
© 2019 Vox Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The report did not exonerate Trump except to the extent that it found no collusion with Russia on which to prosecute. However. Mueller investigated much else in addition to collusion with Russia, most notably obstruction of justice, which the DOJ may pursue and the House committees clearly will pursue.
“There also are all of the Trump organization and Trump’s business dealings that could expose Trump to criminal and/or civil liability… In other words, Trump may be vulnerable on many fronts to legal challenges.”
Again, the beat goes on, and conspiracy theories may have some work cut out for them particularly if those conlirracirs were deliberately set up by real actions, and Miller was advised from the get go how to play That reality show, from an expert who am.ist got an Emmy.
(Right?)
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Trump’s ‘delight’ and the discomfort of Democrats: How global media is reacting to the Mueller report
Holly Ellyatt | @HollyEllyatt
Published 5 Hours Ago Updated 52 Mins Ago
CNBC.com
Global media are reacting to the results of one of the most gripping investigations into a U.S. president in modern times and the somewhat unexpected result of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Donald Trump.
The investigation found that Trump did not collude with Russia to influence the 2016 election.
Global media are reacting to the results of one of the most explosive investigations in modern U.S. history.
Global media are reacting to the results of one of the most gripping investigations into a U.S. president in modern times — and the somewhat unexpected result of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether President Donald Trump colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election.
Attorney General William Barr summarized the results of Mueller’s investigation on Sunday by sayingit had not found that the Trump campaign had"conspired or coordinated with the Russian government" to influence the 2016 vote.
In addition, Barr said Mueller had not concluded one way or another as to whether Trump obstructed justice by trying to influence the investigation. Barr said Mueller’s evidence was not sufficient to establish that Trump committed a crime.
Trump tweeted that the report’s conclusions were a “total exoneration” of him. But in a letter to key members of Congress on Sunday, Barr noted that while Mueller’s report “does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
Disappointed by Barr’s summary of the investigation, Democrats have called Mueller’s report to be published in full. Meanwhile, much of the global media have focused on the shock result and whether or not Trump is really “exonerated.”
Here’s a selection of global media reaction and commentary to the results of the Mueller probe:
No conspiracy
The Washington Post is headlined Monday “Mueller finds no conspiracy,” attorney general says and notes in a separate article that “No collusion!” goes from defiant mantra to rallying cry for Trump’s re-election" but senior editor Marc Fisher also noted that Mueller’s report “contains enough fuel for both sides to cling to their version of the truth.”
The New York Times also headlined with Barr’s conclusions but noted that the report “stops short of exonerating Trump on obstruction of justice.” The paper said that “with no impeachment in view, Democrats push forward with an investigation.” Nonetheless, the paper’s White House correspondent Peter Baker notes that “a cloud over Trump’s presidency is lifted” and that the results will have “fortified the president for the battles to come, including his campaign for re-election.”
The Wall Street Journal said “Trump’s team sees political gold” in the results and that his team was already “crafting plans to use Robert Mueller’s findings as a line of attack against Democrats” in the 2020 election.
Democrats’ discomfort
Media outside the U.S. have also followed every twist and turn of Mueller’s 22-month long investigation and have eagerly anticipated the results of the probe that Trump often called a “witch hunt.”
U.K. newspapers largely focused on Trump’s jubilant and delighted reaction to Barr’s summary of the report and the Democrats’ disappointment at the result — and what it could mean for the 2020 election race.
The U.K.‘s Daily Mail noted that "Trump revels in “complete exoneration” and blasts "illegal’ probe" and reported the president’s happiness at the result, quoting an unnamed senior administration official as telling the paper that he hadn’t “seen Trump this happy in months. It’s like election night again.” The U.K.'s center-right Daily Telegraph newspaper said “The findings left the president and his allies delighted” and “amounted to a major victory for Mr. Trump after 22 months of Mr Mueller’s investigation.”
The paper also focused on Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer demanding the full confidential report be published and their joint statement in which they noted that “Attorney General Barr’s letter raises as many questions as it answers.”
The Telegraph’s U.S. editor, Ben Riley-Smith, and Washington editor, Nick Allen, noted in their reaction that “Democrats found themselves in a politically uncomfortable position, being asked during TV interviews whether they agreed there was no collusion and whether they trusted Mr Mueller — a man whose integrity they had repeatedly trumpeted in public.”
‘No respite’ for Trump
The Mueller report has also caught the attention of continental Europe, a region with its own conflicted relationship with Trump following threats from the president to impose import tariffs on European cars.
France’s Le Figaro said that while the Mueller report “clears” Trump and that the White House “triumphs” at the findings, the Democrats “wince.” Le Monde said the findings “reinforce Trump in upcoming battles.”
Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper said even though the report found “no proof (of collusion), the president is not absolved,” while Germany’s public broadcaster Deutsche Welle said on its website that the report actually gives “no respite” for Trump as other investigations into his administration and his business dealings will “continue unabated.”
Daniel Friedrich Sturm, Die Welt’s U.S. correspondent, wrote that “Sunday was a great day for the American president,” and that the Mueller findings were “perhaps Trump’s greatest triumph in the battle for power since his electoral victory two-and-a-half years ago.” However, he noted that although the White House had downplayed the question of whether Trump had obstructed the investigation, “that will not be the last word” on the subject.
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German business newspaper Handelsblatt said that “What remains after 3,000 subpoenas and more than 500 witnesses from the Mueller report (are) no conspiracy, no charges,” but it added that while the result of the Russia investigation is “mostly good news” for Trump “the report contains worrying findings” and that “many questions remain unanswered, as long as the report is only a summary.”
Trump’s “victory” has barely made a dint in Chinese newspapers that largely report on the world through the lens of the ruling Communist Party. The China Daily newspaper is focused on President Xi Jinping’s visit to France on Monday while the Mueller report’s findings are also absent from the South China Morning Post and Communist Party-run People’s Daily.
The view from Russia
Beyond Europe, Trump’s reactions to the report will be just as closely scrutinized as Russia’s. Russian President Vladimir Putin has not yet publicly commented on the Mueller findings.
Grigory Dukor | Reuters
President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands as they hold a joint news conference after their meeting in Helsinki, Finland July 16, 2018.
Despite an apparent mutual respect between Putin and Trump, U.S.-Russian relations have been frosty of late, particularly against a backdrop of continuing U.S. sanctions on Russian organizations and individuals it says meddled in the U.S. 2016 election, as well as sanctions for any entity deemed to have been involved in its 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
Russian newspapers Vedomosti, Kommersant and Komsomolskaya Pravda carried very little analysis of the Mueller findings but Rossiyskaya Gazeta, which is published by the Russian government, carried an opinion piece by Konstantin Kosachev, a senior Russian lawmaker and chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Kosachev was damning of the investigation, noting that “two years were not just lost for Russian-American relations (but were) simply crushing for them.” “Will someone answer for this damage or apologize?” he asked.
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Mueller report: Trump accuses enemies of ‘treasonous, evil things’ – live
President attacks unnamed adversaries in press conference day after summary of special counsel’s report is published
Trump threatens retaliation against ‘evil, treasonous’ opponents over Russia investigation – video
Ben Jacobs in Washington (now) and Erin Durkin in New York (earlier)
Mon 25 Mar 2019 15.01 EDT First published on Mon 25 Mar 2019 08.16 EDT
Key events
3.01pm
The American Enterprise Institute, a major conservative thinktank, just released the list of attendees at its retreat last month in Georgia.
It includes a number of Republican elected officials as well as New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger, former Vice President Dick Cheney and John Delaney, a former Democratic congressman running for President.
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2.50pm
The Wall Street Journal reports that celebrity lawyer Mark Geragos is the unnamed conspirator with Avenatti.
The Washington Post reports that Donald Trump is adamantly against further aid to Puerto Rico, which is still suffering 18 months after the island was devastated by hurricanes.
But at an Oval Office meeting on Feb. 22, Trump asked top advisers for ways to limit federal support from going to Puerto Rico, believing it is taking money that should be going to the mainland, according to senior administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of the presidents’ private remarks.
The meeting — an afternoon session focused on Housing and Urban Development grants — ended abruptly, and Trump has continued to ask aides how much money the island will get. Then, Trump said he wanted the money to only fortify the electric grid there.
Trump has also privately signaled he will not approve any additional help for Puerto Rico beyond the food stamp money, setting up a congressional showdown with Democrats who have pushed for more expansive help for the island.
A senior administration official with direct knowledge of the meeting described Trump’s stance: “He doesn’t want another single dollar going to the island.”
The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York has tweeted a chart that they are using to lay out the case against Avenatti.
Stormy Daniels has tweeted a statement about her former lawyer, Michael Avenatti.
Fred Malek, a longtime Republican activist and fundraiser died today at the age of 85.
The death was announced by the American Action Network, the Republican 501 (c)(4) he founded. Malek worked in both the Nixon and George H.W. Bush administrations. He gained notoriety after it was revealed that he counted the number of Jews working in the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the request of Nixon.
Senator Susan Collins of Maine will face a primary challenge to her right in 2020.
The moderate Republican will face Derek Levasseur, a conservative blogger upset with her vote to overturn Trump’s declaration of a national emergency. However, Levasseur has some baggage, being arrested in 2012 for assaulting four people, including his daughter at his own wedding reception.
Hillary Clinton has endorsed a candidate in the open race to be the next mayor of Dallas, Texas.
The former secretary of state endorsed Regina Montoya ahead of the city’s nonpartisan primary on May
Montoya, a lawyer, was a staffer in the Clinton White House and a major donor to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign
Updated at 2.50pm EDT
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2.01pm
Nancy Pelosi defended House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff after Donald Trump aides called for his resignation.
“Chairman Schiff has done an outstanding job and that’s the reason why he’s subject to these ridiculous attacks,” Pelosi spokeswoman Ashley Etienne told the Hill.
“Democrats aren’t going to be intimidated by the White House or Congressional Republicans, we’re not going to be distracted from securing the release of the full Mueller report and the underlying evidence, and we will continue to pursue legitimate oversight because that’s what the Constitution requires,” she said. “The days of Congress ignoring the mountain of legal and ethical misconduct by this President and Administration are over.”
Updated at 2.07pm EDT
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1.52pm
Attorney General William Barr is likely to testify before the House Appropriations Committee next month, the Washington Post reports.
The committee has tentatively scheduled a budget hearing for April 9 on the Justice Department’s budget. The attorney general typically testifies at such hearings.
Here’s the criminal complaint against Michael Avenatti in Los Angeles.
Prosecutors allege he “embezzled a client’s money in order to pay his own expenses and debts — as well as those of his coffee business and law firm — and also defrauded a bank by using phony tax returns to obtain millions of dollars in loans.”
From DOJ:
According to an affidavit filed with the criminal complaint in this case, Avenatti negotiated a settlement which called for $1.6 million in settlement money to be paid on January 10, 2018, but then gave the client a bogus settlement agreement with a false payment date of March 10, 2018. The affidavit states that Avenatti misappropriated his client’s settlement money and used it to pay expenses for his coffee business, Global Baristas US LLC, which operated Tully’s Coffee stores in California and Washington state, as well as for his own expenses. When the fake March 2018 deadline passed and the client asked where the money was, Avenatti continued to conceal that the payment had already been received, court documents said.
Avenatti also allegedly defrauded a bank in Mississippi by submitting to the lender false tax returns in order to obtain three loans totaling $4.1 million for his law firm and coffee business in 2014. According to the affidavit, Avenatti obtained the loans by submitting fabricated individual income tax returns (Forms 1040) for 2011, 2012, and 2013, reporting substantial income even though he had never filed any such returns with the Internal Revenue Service.
Updated at 2.07pm EDT
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1.39pm
Donald Trump Jr. is already taunting Michael Avenatti.
Michael Avenatti faces a separate set of charges in Los Angeles, where prosecutors allege “he embezzled a client’s money in order to pay his own expenses and debts — as well as those of his coffee business & law firm — and also defrauded a bank by using phony tax returns to obtain millions of dollars,” per NPR.
That’s in addition to the case in New York, where he’s charged with attempting to extort millions out of Nike.
Updated at 2.06pm EDT
Trump set to weaponize Mueller report in war on Democrats and media
What we learned from Barr’s summary of the Mueller report
William Barr: attorney general plays ‘It has proved what we already knew’
Russia on Mueller report: ‘It has proved what we already knew’
The key findings of the Mueller report
No collusion, plenty of corruption: Trump is not in the clear
Richard Wolffe
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Robert Mueller and the collapse of American trust
The reaction to AG William Barr’s Mueller letter reveals a disturbing truth about America.
By Zack Beauchamp on March 25, 2019 3:50 pm
The US Capitol pictured on November 7, 2018, in Washington, DC. Zach Gibson/Getty Images
Attorney General William Barr’s summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report has not resolved all of the disputes surrounding Donald Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 election. But the reaction to it has revealed one of the ways in which American politics is deeply and profoundly broken.
Democrats have responded to Barr’s summary by calling the attorney general’s impartiality into question (not entirely without reason). Leading members of Congress have raised the alarm about “very concerning discrepancies and final decision making at the Justice Department” and are pushing for the full release of Mueller’s report and for Barr to testify under oath.
Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, have responded by blasting “the biased media” for spreading “a collective scam and fraud.” The chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), even called for investigations into the FBI’s investigation itself, to see if the bureau’s pursuit of Trump and his allies was in any way improper.
A quick gander at social media shows this polarized reaction from partisan politicians is reflected in their parties’ respective media surrogates and rank-and-file voters. There’s not even a pretense of neutrality: Everyone is reading what they want into Barr’s letter, establishing a reality in which their side is right and the other side is making things up.
Barr’s document is particularly vague on some points, an ambiguity heightened by the fact that no one weighing in — from either side — has read the full report. But even the most unequivocal report would be subject to the deeper forces: the death of the neutral arbiter.
All in all, this reflects a collapse in trust in two core American institutions: politically independent federal law enforcement and the free press. This lack of faith, combined with a concomitant rise in partisanship, means that virtually every major political event is interpreted through a partisan lens. There’s no political institution widely accepted as being neutral anymore; instead, Americans judge the quality of the country’s leading institutions based on how favorable each one’s outputs are to their political interests.
The big problems haunting the Mueller debate
The fact of the decline in trust in core American institutions is well established and undeniable.
Two charts from a 2018 RAND Corporation report called “Truth Decay” tell the story elegantly. The first looks at long-term Pew data on Americans’ trust in government, finding a significant decline beginning in the mid-’60s. The data seems to track real-world government failures, such as the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the war in Iraq:
RAND Corporation -------- -------- ---------
The second chart looks at public confidence in Congress, specifically, as well as the media. Once again, it shows a pretty clear decline from peaks several decades ago.
Rand Corporation
The causes of these declines in faith in public institutions are complex. Some of it reflects actual policy and reporting failures, like the Iraq WMD debacle. Some of it reflects attempts by political actors to delegitimize these institutions, like the conservative campaign against the “liberal media” and Trump’s cries of “fake news.” It’s difficult — maybe even impossible — to separate out the relative causal power of these different events.
But this decline of faith intersects with a separate and equally important trend: rising partisanship. While people were losing faith in core institutions, the major political parties were becoming much more ideologically unified — with liberals sorting into the Democratic Party and conservatives becoming Republicans.
Like the decline in trust, the rise in polarization has complex and intertwined causes. The political aftermath of the civil rights movement, the politicization of evangelical Christianity, and the rise of the modern conservative movement all play major parts in this story. The result is that Americans have come to closely identify their social groups, like race or religion, with their political party. Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at New America, put it well in a Vox essay in September 2017:
Over the past half-century or so, partisan identities have become much more closely aligned with other social identities. Partisan divides now overlay religious divides, cultural divides, geographical divides, and racial divides. In the past, these identities used to cross-cut each other more often. Thirty years ago, you could be a culturally conservative Democrat, or culturally liberal Republican. These overlaps made the parties less distinct. They also made it easier to find common ground with opposing partisans based on other shared identities.
But as social sorting took place, we lost those potentially bridging ties. Moreover, our collective sense of cultural, regional, and ethnic status become more and more linked to the status of our two political parties, which came to represent these different identities. This made politics more emotional because it felt like even more was at stake with each election. It was not just the parties fighting each other, but also competing ways of life they represented.
As political scientist Lilliana Mason convincingly argues, “The more sorted we become, the more emotionally we react to normal political events.” And when emotions are heightened, everything becomes a threat to status. Politics becomes more about anger. And, here’s the warning from Mason that should give you goose bumps: “The angrier the electorate, the less capable we are of finding common ground on policies, or even of treating our opponents like human beings.”
When your partisan identity becomes so closely tied to your personal identity, information that challenges your political beliefs becomes a more existential threat — changing your mind or even admitting you might be wrong feels like a major betrayal. So partisans come to believe that their side has to be right — it just has to be — because the alternative is unthinkable.
Like polarization itself, the problem isn’t symmetrical on right and left. “Tribal epistemology,” as my colleague Dave Roberts terms it, is far more prevalent on the right, with media organizations like Fox News dedicated to selling comforting, often false, information to viewers.
But Democrats are hardly immune to confirmation bias. A number of laboratory experiments and surveys have shown that partisans on both sides of the political aisle work to fit facts into their existing narrative and beliefs. Polarization makes people interpret facts to fit their feelings.
This intersects with the decline of faith in political institutions in a particularly nasty way.
The less confidence people have in media and government institutions, the harder it is for information coming from one of these sources to override their partisan judgments. There are very few sources that are seen as politically neutral, and the quality of information is determined by the perceived political alignment of the source. A majority of Americans told Gallup pollsters in 2017 that they could not name a single news organization they would describe as “objective”; among those who could, Republicans named Fox News while Democrats typically cited one of several mainstream media outlets.
Every piece of information is evaluated less on the merits and more on its provenance. Court rulings are evaluated by whether the deciding judge was appointed by a Republican or a Democrat. Congressional reports are judged by which party controlled the committee that produced them. Media watchdogs on the left and right scrutinize every piece of work in the mainstream media for “bias.”
The reaction to the Barr letter was no exception. Democrats see the attorney general as a hackish Trump loyalist and evaluate the letter through that lens. Republicans see the media as in the tank for the Democrats and thus see the letter as confirmation that they were right to mistrust reporters on the Trump-Russia beat.
The result is that partisans, from politicians on down to rank-and-file voters, are living in two distinct worlds. One of those is more connected to reality than the other, to be sure, but hardly perfect. On complex political issues like Trump’s connection to Russia, where the truth of the matter is by its nature difficult to determine, people will interpret reality in a way that flatters their biases.
This leads me to be profoundly pessimistic about the future of the Mueller investigation. Even if Mueller’s full report is released in a timely fashion — and that’s still an “if” at this point, not a “when” — people will read it differently, in each case trying to vindicate their narrative of events. There will never be a shared sense of reality about what really happened in 2016 or whether Trump obstructed justice during the investigation. No authoritative document could overcome the deep systemic forces that produced this dispute.
All of this raises a series of disturbing questions: How much further can this political relativism be pushed? What happens when the subject of partisan dispute isn’t election interference, but the legitimacy of the vote counting itself?
And most broadly, how can American democracy work when there are essentially two polities living in two separate realities?
The progressive base is not as far left as you might think
Michael Avenatti has been arrested for allegedly trying to extort $20 million from Nike
Attorney General Bill Barr could wind up testifying in front of both the House and Senate
© 2019 Vox Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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Mueller report public
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has blocked a non-binding resolution put forth by Senator Chuck Schumer calling for the Mueller report to be made public
All charges dropped against actor Jussie Smollett. Watch CNN
Mueller told Justice Dept. three weeks ago he wouldn’t reach a conclusion on obstruction
By Laura Jarrett, CNN
Updated at 7:48 PM ET, Mon March 25, 2019
03:03
Barr delivers his summary of Mueller report to Congress
01:03
CNN reporter prediction: Look for pardons
00:51
Wolf Blitzer: Sounds like Russians got what they wanted
02:02
WH says Mueller report is ‘complete exoneration’ of Trump
02:42
Toobin: Total vindication of Trump on collusion
03:11
Giuliani responds to Mueller report summary
01:34
CNN reporter: This line is key
02:16
Barr: Mueller finds no Trump-Russia conspiracy
00:58
Ex-Trump aide: Trump will use report as political bludgeon
02:58
How the Mueller report stacks up with Watergate
01:54
Trump responds to AG summary of Mueller report
03:03
Nadler: Conclusions raise more questions than they answer
03:03
Barr delivers his summary of Mueller report to Congress
01:03
CNN reporter prediction: Look for pardons
00:51
Wolf Blitzer: Sounds like Russians got what they wanted
02:02
WH says Mueller report is ‘complete exoneration’ of Trump
02:42
Toobin: Total vindication of Trump on collusion
03:11
Giuliani responds to Mueller report summary
01:34
CNN reporter: This line is key
02:16
Barr: Mueller finds no Trump-Russia conspiracy
00:58
Ex-Trump aide: Trump will use report as political bludgeon
02:58
How the Mueller report stacks up with Watergate
01:54
Trump responds to AG summary of Mueller report
03:03
Nadler: Conclusions raise more questions than they answer
Washington (CNN) — Roughly three weeks ago the special counsel’s team told Attorney General Bill Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that Robert Mueller would not be reaching a conclusion on whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice, according to a source familiar with the meeting.
The source said that conclusion was “unexpected” and not what Barr had anticipated.
Barr released a four-page summary on Sunday of Mueller’s principal conclusions, writing that the special counsel “did not draw a conclusion – one way or another – as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction.”
“Instead,” Barr explained, “for each of the relevant actions investigated, the report sets out evidence on both sides of the question and leaves unresolved what the Special Counsel views as difficult issues of law and fact concerning whether the President’s actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction.”
News of Mueller’s decision to punt on the crucial question of whether the President’s actions amounted to obstruction of justice was particularly notable given that he never received a sit down interview with Trump to assess his state of mind.