Yes, links to Russians but no collusion
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation found several connections between members of President Trump’s election campaign and Russia — but no collusion.
“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,” reads the report released Thursday.
Across hundreds of pages, Mueller’s report digs into communications among people with ties to the Kremlin and Trump’s team — including campaign manager Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner.
The probe established that the Russian government “perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome” — while Trump’s campaign also expected to reap the rewards of Moscow’s efforts to hack and release e-mails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
But “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” reads the report.
Mueller has already indicted a dozen Russian intelligence officers behind the e-mail hacking — as well as a Kremlin-tied troll farm that worked on social media to influence the election.
The investigation details how the Russian spooks shared those stolen e-mails with WikiLeaks, which then dumped the documents online.
But the section on whether the Trump campaign then coordinated the documents’ release with WikiLeaks is heavily redacted.
What is visible says former campaign adviser Rick Gates told investigators that “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 e-mails by WikiLeaks.”
Gates also claimed that, at one point, Trump said to him “that more releases of damaging information would be coming.”
Attorney General William Barr said Thursday that Mueller didn’t find anyone from Trump’s side “illegally participated” in circulating the e-mails — but noted that publishing the documents would be a crime only if that person was also involved in stealing them.
Also examined at length in the report is the now-infamous June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower involving Trump Jr., Manafort, Kushner and a Kremlin-linked lawyer promising “information that would incriminate Hillary.”
During the 20-minute sitdown, lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya claimed illicit Russian funds had been given to the Clinton campaign, but when Trump Jr. asked for evidence, she couldn’t provide it — and Trump’s campaign ceased contact after the encounter, according to the report.
Mueller’s team examined if it was a campaign-finance violation to agree to accept something of value from a foreign source — but “decided not to pursue criminal charges” due to the “high burden” of proving that participants knew their conduct was illegal — and that the intel had monetary value.
The probe also found no “documentary evidence” that Trump himself was aware of the meeting ahead of time.
Several Trump associates who met with Russians were ultimately hit with unrelated charges in the investigation — including the since-convicted Manafort, Gates, attorney Michael Cohen and advisers George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn.