By Glynn Wilson –

In stark contrast to the fearless federal prosecutor President Donald J. Trump has worried about for the past two years and a majority of the American people have expected to hear from when Special Counsel Robert Mueller issued his investigative report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, the nearly full but redacted report released by Attorney General William Barr on Thursday lets Trump off the legal hook for conspiracy in spite of a mountain of evidence of collusion, and punts a decision on obstruction of justice to Congress in spite of enough evidence to convince the most skeptical grand jury in Virginia of the president’s guilt.

While the Mueller report details many facts we have known for months about multiple contacts between Trump campaign officials with Russian actors trying to influence the election and curry favor with Trump, about the only thing it concludes definitely is that Russia interfered in the election.

“… the Special Counsel’s investigation established that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election principally through two operations. First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Second, a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working on the Clinton Campaign and then released stolen documents,” the report concludes.

“The investigation also identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign,” the report states. “Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

This is consistent with the key findings released by Attorney General Barr in March.

“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 said in his letter, and again on Thursday, when he held a press conference in advance of the report’s release.

“… the Special Counsel’s investigation was to determine whether members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, or any individuals associated with that campaign, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election. Volume I of the Special Counsel’s report describes the results of that investigation. As you will see, the Special Counsel’s report states that his ‘investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities’.”

While the Mueller report summarizes all the indictments, guilty pleas and other specifics of the investigation, most of which has already been reported in great detail including charges against two sets of Russian nationals for their roles in perpetrating the “computer-intrusion operations” and social media “active-measures,” in the end the special counsel’s team determined that the contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russia-linked individuals “either did not involve the commission of a federal crime or, in the case of campaign-finance offenses … our evidence was not sufficient to obtain and sustain a criminal conviction.”

In plain language, the investigation “failed” to find and document the legal case against Trump in a conclusive fashion.

Obstruction of Justice

In the second part of the report on questions about obstruction of justice, which details how the president repeatedly tried to undermine the investigation, Mueller’s team at first concludes they “had a valid basis for investigating the conduct at issue in this report” and that “no person in this country is so high that he is above the law,” but in the end, the report punted a decision on whether this president is above the law to a divided Congress.

“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,” the report concludes, seemingly leaving the door open to an obstruction of justice investigation. “Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment.”

“With respect to whether the president can be found to have obstructed justice by exercising his powers under Article II of the Constitution, we concluded that Congress has authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice,” the report ultimately concludes.

Even the New York Times and other news outlets point out that the Mueller report does provide “evidence of a climate of deceit … (by) a president and his top aides not seen since the days of Richard M. Nixon,” yet the special prosecutor walked away from his Constitutional responsibility and failed to engage in the necessary legal action to take down this clearly corrupt president.

Rather than coming off as a fearless prosecutor in the report, Mueller’s language comes out seeming like he is afraid of the president, unwilling to hold him accountable for his words, deeds and actions. Mueller says that Trump had the authority as president to take many of the actions he took, including firing FBI director James Comey and his first Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

“… we considered whether to evaluate the conduct we investigated under the Justice Manual standards governing prosecution and declination decisions, but we determined not to apply an approach that could potentially result in a judgment that the president committed crimes,” Mueller writes. “The threshold step under the Justice Manual standards is to assess whether a person’s conduct ‘constitutes a federal offense’.”

It is hard to see how anyone could look at the facts and not conclude that what Trump has done and is doing would constitute a federal offense. The job of a prosecutor under the law is to put that decision in front of a jury. Instead, Mueller is going to leave it up to the highly partisan court of public opinion, where no one is happy with the results. If part of the purpose of this exercise was to restore public trust in the justice system and the courts, this report falls short.

Jeff Sessions

As for Sessions, the arch-conservative from Alabama who jumped on Trump’s presidential bandwagon before anyone else in Washington, Mueller lets him off the hook for lying about his contacts with Russians to Congress during his confirmation hearing as attorney general. He never called on Sessions to testify and excuses his lies as a matter of “context.”

Senator Jeff Sessions struts onto the stage at the Trump victor tour rally in Mobile, Alabama, basking in the celebrity glow of Donald Trump: Glynn Wilson

“Although the investigation established that Sessions interacted with (Russian ambassador Sergey) Kislyak on the occasions described above and that Kislyak mentioned the presidential campaign on at least one occasion, the evidence is not sufficient to prove that Sessions gave knowingly false answers to Russia-related questions in light of the wording and context of those questions,” Mueller concludes. “Accordingly, the Office concluded that the evidence was insufficient to prove that Sessions was willfully untruthful in his answers and thus insufficient to obtain or sustain a conviction for perjury or false statements. Consistent with the Principles of Federal Prosecution, the Office therefore determined not to pursue charges against Sessions and informed his counsel of that decision in March 2018.”

The report does recount an extraordinary event that occurred in May, 2017, when Sessions informed Trump that Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had just appointed Mueller as special counsel. Trump slumped back in his chair, according to notes from Jody Hunt, Sessions’s then-chief of staff.

“Oh my God, this is terrible. This is the end of my presidency,” Trump said. “I’m fucked.”

After berating Sessions again and trying to get him to rescind his decision to recuse himself in the investigation because of his contacts with Russians and his leading role in the Trump campaign, Trump went on, “Everyone tells me if you get one of these independent counsels it ruins your presidency. It takes years and years and I won’t be able to do anything. This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

Unfortunately for the country and the world, Trump was not fucked. He’s still running the country, celebrating his “victory” in remarks and on Twitter.

pic.twitter.com/222atp7wuB

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 18, 2019

“After three years of lies and smears and slander, the Russia hoax is finally dead,” Mr. Trump told thousands of his supporters at a Michigan rally days after Mr. Barr’s summary letter was made public. “Robert Mueller was a god to the Democrats. He was a god to them until he said ‘no collusion.’ They don’t like him so much now.”

At that time, with the release of Barr’s letter containing the report’s key findings, any momentum on Capitol Hill to bring up impeachment charges in regards to Trump were off the table, and the contents of the fuller Mueller report are unlikely to change that, although there is still fire in the belly of a few Democrats in the House who chair committees with ongoing investigations of Trump.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York, is already demanding that Mueller appear to testify about the report to the committee “no later than May 23.”

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This is a quick draft of our story on the report. More will be added as we continue to wade through all the details of the investigation.

The full redacted report is available here for any members of the public who want to read it in its redacted entirety.