WASHINGTON: In a deeply conflicted report, the redacted version of which was made public on Thursday, FBI Special Counsel has said he did not find evidence of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and Russia amid a broad acknowledgement that interfered with the US elections that brought President Trump to office.
“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. Among other things, the evidence was not sufficient to charge any Campaign official as an unregistered agent of the Russian government or other Russian principal,” the special counsel report stated.
Much of the conflict in the report centered on the obstruction of justice matter that swirled around President Trump — that he has sought to stall or subvert the probe. The Mueller report washed its hands of the issue.
“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,” the report said, adding “Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
The ambivalence allowed both Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, to spin the 448-page report to their preference even as partisans are parsing through it to pick out passages to suit their narrative.
President Trump tweeted a meme of the hit television serial Game of Thrones with the caption GAME OVER, preceded by subtitles “No Collusion, No Obstruction…for the haters and the radical left Democrats.”
https://t.co/222atp7wuB
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
Democrats raged against what they saw as premature and partisan conclusions derived from the report, indicating the issue will be part of the political debate well into the 2020 elections.
“Attorney General Barr has confirmed the staggering partisan effort by the Trump Admin to spin public’s view of the #MuellerReport – complete with acknowledgment that the Trump team received a sneak preview. It’s more urgent than ever that Special Counsel Mueller testify before Congress,” said House Speaker , the Democratic leader.
Largely lost in the political skirmish was the fact that Russia did interfere and subvert the 2016 US Presidential election in which made his way to the White House on the basis of winning three states by less than 80,000 combined while losing the nationwide popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. To what extent Russian interference put its thumb on the scales to tilt the result may never be known, since the focus of the probe was on whether there was collusion (there wasn’t) and whether there was obstruction of justice (can’t say).
Although the report as presented by Barr gave Trump a clean chit, the most colorful excerpt/anecdote contained in the report showed President Trump was scared witness about the probe. In May 2017, after Trump learned from his then Attorney General Sessions about the special counsel probe, the President, the report revealed, “slumped back in his chair and said, ‘Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m f*****.”
“You were supposed to protect me,” Trump raged against Sessions amid a meltdown.
This is by no means the end of one of the greatest controversies in U.S political history. Democrats demanded that Special Counsel Mueller testify before Congress. Barr said he had no objection to that even as he defended the President in what critics said was a blatantly partisan manner.
“After carefully reviewing the facts and legal theories outlined in the report, and in consultation with the Office of Legal Counsel and other department lawyers, the deputy attorney general and I concluded that the evidence developed by the special counsel is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense,” Barr told reporters.
Barr also said the Special Counsel did not find any evidence that the Trump campaign conspired or coordinates with Russians in the hacking of Hillary Clinton’s emails or its dissemination through Wikileaks, although it would not have been illegal to do so.