Today, Explained - The report on the report
Episode Date: March 25, 2019Robert Mueller's investigation has ended and Attorney General William Barr has furnished a four-page summary. Vox's Andrew Prokop says this is far from over. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit po...dcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Before we get to the show, a quick note about KiwiCo.
Their projects are designed to spark creativity, tinkering, and learning in kids of all ages.
They make learning about STEAM fun.
KiwiCo is offering today Explained listeners the chance to try them out for free.
To redeem the offer and learn more about their projects for kids of all ages, visit KiwiCo.com slash Explained.
Can you hear me now?
Wait, should I unmute both of them?
No, you're good. I hear you.
No collusion, no collusion.
Welcome back. The president and his allies are celebrating Robert Mueller's report on Russia's interference in the 2016 election.
Mueller findings released, no collusion.
No collusion.
No collusion. Well, happy no collusion. No collusion. No collusion.
Well, happy no collusion day, Tucker.
Happy no collusion day. That's a good point.
That's a good point.
After nearly two years,
finally the answer to that number one
question.
No collusion.
Andrew Prokop, you've been covering the Mueller
investigation for Vox, and the special
counsel finally turned in his homework assignment on Friday.
Who did he turn it into?
Mueller completed his work in the form of a report,
and he gave it to Attorney General William Barr.
And what did he turn in?
How long was this thing?
How many citations did it have?
Was it footnoted?
Do we have any idea?
We have no idea at all.
We have seen maybe a few dozen words of the report that were picked out by Barr, but the length of the report remains a mystery.
We do know that the report is called Report on the Investigation into Russian Inter interference in the 2016 presidential election.
And we know that it's divided into two parts, Russian interference and obstruction of justice.
And so what does Bill Barr do when he gets this thing on Friday?
The report was filed Friday afternoon, and then the Justice Department
announced that Mueller would not be bringing any more indictments
and that his work was over.
The report will now be reviewed by Barr,
who has said that he will write his own account communicating Mueller's findings to Congress and the American public.
Bill Barr said that he wanted to disclose what he could of Mueller's findings
or a summary of Mueller's main findings
as soon as possible. So on Saturday and the first half of the day, Sunday, Barr and Deputy Attorney
General Rod Rosenstein were at the Justice Department basically working on what became a four-page letter that they sent to key committee chairs and ranking members in the House and the Senate.
And what's in this four-page letter?
So this is Barr basically summarizing what he says are Mueller's main conclusions.
And he says that, you know, it was an extremely thorough investigation.
There were 19 lawyers, 40 FBI agents, 2,800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants, 230 orders for communication records, and interviews of about 500 witnesses.
So, like, starts off by saying this was an extremely serious investigation, basically.
Okay.
Then Barr goes on to say that there have been a number of indictments and convictions that Mueller attained.
Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates have been told to surrender to authorities this morning.
But all of them have been publicly disclosed.
There are no more sealed indictments that have yet to be made public. So that's basically throwing cold water on some conspiracy theories that were popular out there
that, you know, Mueller had a bunch of sealed indictments filed against Trump
and Trump's family members and all that.
Barr is saying, no, nothing like that is the case.
Okay, and what about the conclusions from these two sort of chapters of the investigation?
So, first is about Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election,
what is popularly referred to as collusion.
And Barr explains that Mueller looked into, seriously,
whether anyone in the Trump campaign conspired or
coordinated with the Russian government in its efforts to influence the 2016 presidential
election.
And the findings at the end were, to quote Mueller's report itself, the investigation
did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.
Okay.
So Mueller doesn't find any hard evidence that that happened.
Yeah.
And I think there's a little bit of mystery about what exactly is behind this finding. I think what is very clear is that Mueller did not find hard,
chargeable evidence of Trump or anyone associated with Trump
conspiring with Russia to interfere with the election.
Does that mean that he found no evidence?
Does that mean that he has affirmatively concluded that such a thing did not happen?
That's not entirely clear.
And it's a bit difficult to say until we get to see the fuller report.
Okay, so the Steele dossier and all of those sort of like stronger conspiracies have sort of been deflated by Mueller's conclusions here, at least what the summary says from Bill Barr. What about obstruction of justice,
where, you know, we all saw the tweets and saw the president fire James Comey?
What do the conclusions there mean? So, Mueller essentially decided not to reach a specific
conclusion on obstruction of justice. According to Barr, after making a, quote,
thorough factual investigation, end quote, into these matters, the special counsel decided whether to evaluate the conduct under department standards governing prosecution and declination decisions, but ultimately determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment.
The special counsel, therefore, did not draw a conclusion one way or the other as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction.
Instead, 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, that's a quote, of law and fact concerning whether the president's actions and
intent could be viewed as obstruction.
So there's a lot that Mueller was looking into about obstruction.
There were the circumstances around Trump's firing of National Security Advisor Michael
Flynn.
There was Trump's conversations with then-FBI Director Jim Comey about letting go of the
Flynn investigation and then eventually firing Comey. There was Trump's pressures on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to unrecuse himself or to
interfere with the Russia investigation somehow. There were all these other public statements and
perhaps some private pressures as well regarding other Justice Department and intelligence
officials. There was the question of whether Trump may have been hinting at or offering pardons to people who wouldn't flip on him.
There was the testimony to congressional committees.
A couple of Trump associates testified falsely, and there was a question of whether the president was involved in that. And then there was Trump's own involvement
in crafting a false public story
about his son's meeting with the Russian lawyer
at Trump Tower.
So that's the sort of stuff that we would expect Mueller
to be laying out the evidence on in this.
But in the end, he decided not to make a call here.
And this is Mueller's exact language quoted by Barr.
While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.
There was no obstruction and none whatsoever.
And it was a complete and total exoneration.
So the president's assessment from yesterday
that he's totally exonerated by the Mueller report
and at least Barr's summary of it is totally false.
Well, so what happened is that
Mueller didn't make a call on obstruction.
So then Bill Barr stepped in
and decided that he was going to make
that call. And he did so over the weekend. And there was apparently consultation with the Justice
Department through Rod Rosenstein beforehand. So he says that, you know, leaving aside the
question of whether a president can be indicted while he's in office. Just going to put that aside.
His determination with Rod Rosenstein was that the evidence that Mueller found was not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense.
So it is true that the Justice Department concluded that Trump's conduct did not rise
to the level of criminal obstruction of justice.
Now, Mueller didn't conclude that.
The question of what Mueller found and why he was hesitant to let Trump
off the hook on obstruction of justice entirely,
while also being hesitant to say he outright obstructed justice, is a big loose end here.
But is it all working out for him? Was this a big win for President Trump, who's been claiming that there was no collusion and no obstruction from the jump? I think it was a big
win. I think it's clear that Trump's legal jeopardy over the Mueller probe has lifted. He no longer
has this extremely empowered investigation trying to flip his close associates and get them to talk and say what they know.
And in the end, Mueller didn't file any charges on collusion.
And he punted on the obstruction of justice issue.
And Barr and Rosenstein said the evidence on obstruction wasn't strong enough. So I think that is a pretty good outcome for the president after 22 months of this investigation seeming to really threaten the future of his presidency.
So is this whole thing over? I do think that Trump's legal jeopardy from the Mueller probe is over, but we still have not seen Mueller's fuller report,
and Trump's legal jeopardy from other issues are also not over.
What comes next for President Trump and for the Mueller investigation?
That's coming next on Today Explained.
What's your kid doing right now?
Staring at a screen?
Let's hope not, because that can't be good for them all day, right? But KiwiCo creates these super cool hands-on projects for kids that make learning
about math and science fun. Right now they got one about Steam. The KiwiCo projects are designed
to spark creativity and tinkering and learning in kids of all ages. And I really mean the all
ages part. Last year they sent me one of their projects. And I really mean the all ages part.
Last year, they sent me one of their projects,
and I showed it to one of the youngest members of our team,
Luke Vanderplug, and he really enjoyed it.
Isn't that right, Luke?
Yes.
I just think that it was a fun little educational experience that held my interest, even as a 27-year-old.
You can try KiwiCo for free right now at KiwiCo.com slash explained.
Go there to redeem the offer and learn more about their projects for kids of all ages.
Once more, that's KiwiCo.com slash explained. Earlier today, I received a four-page letter from Attorney General Barr outlining his summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report while making a few questionable legal arguments of his own.
Andrew, Congressman Jerry Nadler, who's the House Judiciary Chairman, said he's going to call Barr to testify before Congress.
What does Nadler want to know?
He basically wants as much information as possible and does not think that Barr's letter was satisfactory in explaining what this investigation concluded.
And it was a very vague letter. It did not really explain
Mueller's reasoning at all on either the decision not to file charges on collusion or the decision
to punt on obstruction. Given these questions, it is imperative that the attorney general release
the full report and the underlying evidence.
We cannot simply rely on what may be a hasty, partisan interpretation of the facts.
Have any Republicans asked to see the whole report,
or are they pretty happy that their president has been cleared on collusion?
For the most part, Republicans have been taking a victory lap. Senator Lindsey Graham writing on Twitter, the cloud hanging over President Trump has been removed by this report.
Republican leader Kevin McCarthy saying in a statement, quote, this case is closed.
They've been saying Trump was right. No collusion, at least no criminal collusion charged by Mueller. I mean, they're sort of proven wrong about this being a witch hunt in that Mueller
did not, in the end, go after the president based on weak evidence or bad information.
And I think you have seen some on the right saying it would be nice to see the full report
for transparency purposes, but I don't think that the demands to see it are going to be as
loud from the GOP. Will we, the people, ever get to see this report?
Do we know yet?
We probably won't get to see the full unredacted report.
The question is how much of the report we will get to see.
Yeah.
Because there are a few issues with making it public.
One that Barr pointed to in his letter is there are laws about secrecy, about information obtained by grand juries.
And Mueller used a grand jury to obtain much of his information, especially about the collusion part of the investigation.
Now, that doesn't definitively mean we'll never see the grand jury information.
But there might be some more legal fights over it and so on.
It's just not a straightforward thing.
There are also other potential questions with making it public.
One is that Mueller handed off several topics he was investigating to other Justice Department offices.
So any investigation that's still active,
that stuff would have to be blacked out from a public report.
Could we just take a moment to recap all of the charges
that came out of this investigation really quickly?
Yeah, so Mueller's team has either indicted or got guilty pleas from 34 people already.
34 people.
And three companies have been charged.
They are six former Trump advisers, 26 Russian nationals, three Russian companies, a guy from California, and a lawyer who's based in London.
And all of the people who have showed up to actually face charges have pleaded guilty except for Roger Stone.
So you had George Papadopoulos, Trump foreign policy advisor,
pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with people tied to Russia
about dirt they had on Hillary Clinton during the campaign.
You have Paul Manafort, who was charged with a whole host of financial crimes and lobbying crimes, convicted at trial, and then pleaded guilty to avert a second trial.
Rick Gates, another Trump campaign former aide, was Paul Manafort's right-hand man,
charged alongside Manafort and then flipped and struck a plea deal.
Michael Flynn, former national security advisor to Trump,
pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.
Then you have 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies charged relating to the social media propaganda operation, online trolling and Twitter and Instagram posts.
Then you have Alex Vandersvahn, who is a London lawyer who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI for making false statements about his work with Rick Gates and Manafort
based on Ukraine.
Konstantin Kalimnik, he is Manafort's longtime Russian associate.
He was charged with attempting to obstruct justice with tampering with witnesses.
But like the other Russians indicted, he is in Russia and will likely never come to face charges.
A bunch of those other Russians, 12 GRU officers, were charged with crimes related to the hacking and leaking of Democrats' emails.
Then you have Michael Cohen, Trump's longtime lawyer, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about the Trump Tower Moscow talks, and Roger Stone, who was charged with lying to Congress
about his efforts to get in touch with WikiLeaks during the campaign
and trying to tamper with a witness.
I mean, that list is comically long.
How could anyone look at that list and wonder whether this investigation was a waste of
time or resources or be parading around on a victory lap saying like, look, we were right
the whole time. So many people the president came into contact with during his 2016 campaign have
been charged and implicated in this investigation. Yeah, and a lot of these are major figures.
Trump's former campaign chairman, Trump's former national security advisor,
Trump's longtime political guru, Trump's lawyer and fixer for many years.
So I guess you can interpret it in a couple of ways.
One is that there was just a lot of shady stuff going on that Mueller ended up surfacing and a lot of lies.
But in the end, it didn't add up to criminal collusion.
But you also have some people on the right saying that a lot of these crimes were about lying to the FBI on the part of Trump officials.
So all of these crimes, they say, were basically birthed by the investigation itself.
What about all of the ancillary investigations
that are ongoing because of the Mueller investigation?
So this definitely isn't the end of President Trump's legal woes.
You have a series of investigations that Mueller referred
to other Justice Department offices to handle.
One of them related to Michael Cohen and various financial offenses by Michael Cohen.
And it has now become an investigation of hush money payments that Cohen helped arrange
to women who had had affairs with Trump.
So that's being handled by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York,
and it is still very much active.
That office is also investigating Trump's inaugural committee for various financial potential offenses relating to donations and spending.
Then House Democrats and their committees have launched a bunch of investigations into
the Russia scandal generally, into obstruction of justice, also into
how the White House gave out security clearances. And there may be an effort to get Trump's tax
returns as well. Andrew, this investigation started like, what, 22 months ago, way back in
May of 2017. You've been covering it ever since. What surprised you most about what we found out this weekend?
I think the biggest surprise is that Mueller did not end up making a call on the obstruction of justice issue.
Yeah.
Specifically said this doesn't exonere Trump but just said I am not deciding about this.
That probably indicates some serious disagreements, perhaps within his office.
Everyone is calling it a punt, and that's what it is, essentially.
He investigated this, probed it so deeply, and then in the end did not make a call one way or the other.
I'm really still waiting to see what Mueller says in his report,
whatever does end up getting released, whatever information does come out.
He's been investigating this so long
and in so much detail,
and basically none of that detail is present
in the four-page William Barr letter.
The question about what actually happened in 2016, that's something you need to know.
You need to know a little more detail about why Mueller didn't bring those charges to really feel that this story is resolved. Andrew Prokop is a senior correspondent at Vox.
I'm Sean Ramos for him.
This is Today Explained.
Irene Noguchi is the executive producer.
Bridget McCarthy, Luke Vanderplug,
and Noam Hasenfeld make the show.
Afim Shapiro is our engineer,
and Siona Petros is our intern.
Anna Altman helped make the show this week.
The mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder
provides music every week.
And Today Explained is produced
in association with Stitcher.
We're part of the Vox
Media Podcast Network.