Attorney General William Barr sent Congress a letter Sunday summarizing the findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report into the 2016 presidential election, and found there was no collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian government, “despite several efforts” by Russian agents or intermediaries.
The letter, released to the press and the public, effectively exonerates the president and destroys one of the major attacks by Democrats and the media against the Trump administration.
In part, the letter reads:
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 US. presidential election. As the report states: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
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The Special Counsel found that Russian government actors successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons affiliated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations, and publicly disseminated those materials through various intermediaries, including WikiLeaks. Based on these activities, the Special Counsel brought criminal charges against a number of Russian military officers for conspiring to hack into computers in the United States for purposes of influencing the election. But as noted above, the Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.
Barr notes that the investigation included information from 13 foreign governments and 500 witnesses.
The letter also explains that the question of obstruction of justice into the investigation “did not draw a conclusion one way or the other” and merely presented arguments for both sides of the question.
Attorney General Barr notes: “The Special Counsel states that while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” However, he says, that after consulting with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, “the evidence developed during the Special Counsel?s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”
Barr noted, finally, that he had asked the Special Counsel to help determine how much of the material could be made public without violating federal grand jury protections.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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