'My Presidency Is Over | Loungtastic
Atty. Gen. William Barr has released it amid pressure from the Democrats...
Here's what the report says:
Mueller declined to prosecute some close to Trump: The special counsel declined to prosecute “several” people on a range of charges, including Donald Trump Jr. and then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Mueller looked into the tapes: The special counsel examined whether President Trump learned during the presidential campaign of the rumored existence of compromising tapes made of him years earlier when he visited Moscow.
About Trump's written answers: Mueller considered Trump’s written responses “inadequate” and sought an interview with Trump — but ultimately decided not to issue a subpoena for the interview.
This is who financed the effort to get Clinton's emails: Security contractor Erik Prince, who is the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, helped finance an effort to obtain Hillary Clinton's deleted emails in 2016.
"I was very surprised to see that because that was not the reaction of the President that day," Conway said while speaking to reporters outside the White House today.
"I was there," she added.
According to the report, Trump "slumped back in his chair and said, 'Oh my God. This is terrible,'" when he learned that a special counsel had been appointed, adding, "This is the end of my Presidency.
"I'm fucked."
Democrats angered
Leading Democrats on Capitol Hill are already taking issue with how Barr has handled the report.
Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said on Wednesday that Barr "appears to be waging a media campaign on behalf of President Trump, the very subject of the investigation at the heart of the Mueller report."
Nadler also said "a central concern" is that Barr "is not allowing the facts of the Mueller report to speak for themselves."
Those comments were followed Thursday morning by a statement from Congress' two top Democrats.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that Barr's "regrettably partisan handling of the Mueller report ... [has] resulted in a crisis of confidence in his independence and impartiality."
Pelosi and Schumer added that "the only way to begin restoring public trust in the handling" of the Mueller investigation is for Mueller himself to testify publicly before the House and Senate "as soon as possible."
The Justice Department has declined to comment on the calls by Pelosi, Schumer and others for Mueller to testify publicly before Congress.
The possibility of Mueller testifying before Congress is one that Nadler had raised Wednesday and earlier this month when both he and Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, expressed a desire to have Mueller testify before their committee.
Barr said on Thursday that he didn't object to Mueller testifying, although no hearing is now scheduled. Barr himself is expected to appear before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees in a few weeks.
The top-line conclusions of the investigation already were public: Mueller's office did not establish that Donald Trump's 2016 campaign conspired with the Russians who attacked the election, Barr wrote to Congress on March 24.
The attorney general included these conclusions in a four-page letter to Congress about the Mueller report, but the full, nearly 400-page document will not be made public until Thursday.
Barr recently told lawmakers that he would excise sensitive material from it, including grand jury information and foreign intelligence, before providing the full document to Capitol Hill and the public.
Democrats have said that isn't good enough: They want to see everything that Mueller developed, including the underlying information.
Barr has said he is open to negotiations with the leaders of the House and Senate judiciary committees about showing them more from Mueller's work than the public may see.
Nadler argues that lawmakers' access to Mueller's work product does not depend on the discretion of the attorney general and that Congress is entitled to it under law.
Key House committee chairs demanded that work product from Barr in a letter, and the House Judiciary Committee voted on April 3 to authorize the issuance of a subpoena to compel him to provide Mueller's material to Congress.
The redactions
Barr explained to Congress on April 9 why his office was excising material from Mueller's report. He said it would fall into four categories:
— those involving grand jury material, which is kept secret by law;
— those involving foreign intelligence, which is sensitive when it reveals the sources or methods by which it was obtained;
— those that implicate ongoing cases, including the investigations or prosecutions that have spun out of Mueller's investigation;
— and those that would violate the privacy of people whom Barr called peripheral players to the main story.
Barr told lawmakers that the document would include explanations for each area that had been redacted.
According to the rules, Robert Mueller had to submit a confidential report to the attorney general "at the conclusion of the special counsel's work." A senior law enforcement official told NBC News that once the report has been submitted, it means Mueller has finished his investigation. That doesn't necessarily spell the end of criminal jeopardy for some of the people around President Donald Trump who have not been charged. It's been well-documented that Mueller farmed out investigative leads to other parts of the Justice Department, and that New York prosecutors are investigating individuals in the Trump Organization. JUST IN: Special counsel Robert Mueller has finished his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Report is "comprehensive," Justice official said
A Department of Justice official says the department let the White House know it had the report at roughly 4:35 p.m. ET.
The report was delivered earlier this afternoon, per a Justice official. It was delivered to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's office and, within minutes, to Attorney General William Barr.
The official described the report as “comprehensive."
Mueller’s confidential report has been delivered to Attorney General William Barr, the Justice Department announced Friday.
Roger Stone, veteran Republican Party operative and a long-time confidant of President Donald Trump, has been indicted on seven felony charges in connection with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
Trump's advisor Stone is accused of obstructing the House Intelligence Committee's Russia investigation
The indictment notes, "After the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence ("HPSCI"), the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence ("SSCI"), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI") opened or announced their respective investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which included investigating STONE's claims of contact with Organization 1."
3) Organization 1 in the indictment is believed to be WikiLeaks
The indictment of Stone specifically mentions an organization that is identified as "Organization 1," and Organization is widely believed to be WikiLeaks—a major target of Mueller's probe. In 2016, a hacker who went by Guccifer 2.0 stole the e-mails of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Democrat Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta, and those stolen e-mails were published online by WikiLeaks. Stone is suspected of knowing, in 2016, that the hacking had occurred and that the Democratic e-mails would be published online. Although Mueller believes that Guccifer 2.0 is a Russian intelligence official based in Moscow, Stone has claimed that there is no proof that Guccifer was part of the Russian government.
The indictment of Stone states, "By in or around May 2016, the Democratic National Committee ("DNC") and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ("DCCC") became aware that their computer systems had been compromised by unauthorized intrusions and hired a security company ("Company 1") to identify the extent of the intrusions…. On or about June 14, 2016, the DNC—through Company 1—publicly announced that it had been hacked by Russian government actors."
4) Stone is accused of discussing WikiLeaks' activities with ‘senior Trump campaign officials' in 2016
The indictment of Stone states, "During the summer of 2016, STONE spoke to senior Trump Campaign officials about Organization 1 and information it might have had that would be damaging to the Clinton Campaign. STONE was contacted by senior Trump Campaign officials to inquire about future releases by Organization 1.... By in or around early August 2016, STONE was claiming both publicly and privately to have communicated with Organization 1."
5) The head of ‘Organization 1' is believed to be Julian Assange
The person described as the head of "Organization 1" in the indictment is widely believed to be WikiLeaks' Julian Assange. The indictment states, "By in or around June and July 2016, STONE informed senior Trump Campaign officials that he had information indicating Organization 1 had documents whose release would be damaging to the Clinton Campaign. The head of Organization 1 was located at all relevant times at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, United Kingdom."
London's Ecuadorian Embassy, of course, is where Assange has been seeking refuge. The indictment of Stone goes on to allege that in 2016, "STONE also corresponded with associates about contacting Organization 1 in order to obtain additional e-mails damaging to the Clinton Campaign."
Prosecutors said Wednesday that documents special counsel Robert Mueller provided to the company's lawyers had been "altered and disseminated as part of a disinformation campaign," this time aimed at discrediting the investigation of Russian election interference. That led the FBI to investigate a disinformation campaign about the investigation of the Russian disinformation campaign.
Mueller's office said in a court filing that the FBI had determined their computers had not been hacked. Instead, they said documents posted illegitimately on the web had been provided to one of the defendants in the case, Concord Management and Consulting, LLC.
The prosecutors said the incident was "intended to discredit the investigation in this case" and with documents that were subject to a court order meant to limit their disclosure.
The twist came as prosecutors and lawyers for Concord spar over whether people who work for the Russian company should be allowed to see some of the evidence the government has gathered against the firm. Prosecutors urged U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich not to force sharing sensitive documents with the defense team because sending sensitive documents "to the Russian Federation unreasonably risks national security interests of the United States."
Lawyers for Concord Management didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
They had protested that it was unfair for prosecutors to limit how much information they could share with their client. "Could the manner in which (Mueller) collected a nude selfie really threaten the national security of the United States?" they said in a court filing last year.
The case began in February 2018, when a federal grand jury indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities including Concord Management with conspiracy to defraud the United States. The defendants allegedly created false personas and social-media pages to influence the 2016 election.
Defense lawyers requested access to sensitive prosecution documents Dec. 20, in order to prepare for trial. The lawyers characterized the case as a "make-believe crime" and said Russian defendants deserved the same access to documents as Americans.
But prosecutors described in their Wednesday filing how a new Twitter account boasted on Oct. 22 that it had hacked into Mueller's database and was offering access to documents about the case.
"We've got access to the Special Counsel Mueller's probe database as we hacked Russian server with info from the Russian troll case Concord LLC v. Mueller," the tweet said. "Enjoy the reading!"
The FBI found no evidence that hackers intruded on Mueller's computers. But the FBI reviewed 300,000 files on the web portal linked from the tweet, posted by a now-suspended account with the name "HackingRedstone," and found that the files and folders were similar to those prosecutors had provided to Concord Management's defense lawyers. The documents included information about search warrants and contained tracking numbers used by the special counsel.
Concord Management lawyers told prosecutors the next day that the documents could have been hacked from the company's computers in 2014.
But prosecutors rejected the explanation, saying the documents carried the same names and folders as the current case, which began in February 2018.
"The use of the file names and file structure of the discovery to create a webpage intended to discredit the investigation in this case described above shows that the discovery was reproduced for a purpose other than the defense of this case," prosecutors said in the 18-page filing.
Strange Twist