Access to Robert Mueller interviews could be limited The special counsel
WASHINGTON — Special counsel Robert Mueller and three congressional committees have spent the last year conducting dozens, if not hundreds, of witness interviews in their investigations into Russian meddling and gathering thousands upon thousands of pages of documents. But in the end, the public may only get a glimpse of what investigators know.
As in all criminal investigations, Mueller doesn’t have to reveal any of what he has found unless he brings charges or goes to trial. The congressional investigations are meant to inform the public, but they have been plagued by Republican and Democratic infighting and disagreements over what should be released — meaning the public may have to rely on partisan interpretations of the facts.
A look at what we might know when the investigations are over — and what we might not.
Mueller’s investigation into Russian ties to President Donald Trump’s campaign and possible obstruction of justice is by far the most wide-ranging of all of the probes, and it also carries the weight of possible criminal charges, unlike Congress. But it could also be the most closed off in terms of what the public finds out.
Information has already trickled out, and will likely to continue to, in indictments and guilty pleas that the special counsel has released. A recent indictment of 13 Russians and three companies extensively detailed an effort to undermine the 2016 U.S. presidential election through a hidden social media propaganda effort.
But Mueller may only release information to support criminal charges, meaning much of what his team finds could remain out of the public eye.
The house intelligence committee
Democrats on the House intelligence committee have said they want to release transcripts of the more than 50 interviews they have done in the last year. Those include Trump associates, White House officials and members of the intelligence community. But Republicans who lead the committee say they are not planning to release them in full.
Republicans unexpectedly announced Monday that they had finished interviewing witnesses and had already completed a draft of their final report, which finds that there was no coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. Texas Rep. Mike Conaway, the Republican leading the probe, said details from interviews and documents would come in hundreds of footnotes, not whole transcripts.
Senate judiciary committee
The Senate Judiciary Committee has so far been the most transparent of the panels investigating the ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, with Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, promising to release transcripts from all of the panel’s interviews with people who attended a June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower.
That meeting between Russians and Trump campaign aides has attracted scrutiny from Mueller and Congress.