Attorney General Barr goes to great lengths to state 'no collusion' findings in Mueller report
Attorney General William Barr, during a press conference on Thursday on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's much-awaited report, reiterated multiple times that the report had found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in an attempt to influence the 2016 presidential elections.
The findings of the Mueller report are set to be finally public shortly after Barr's conference released it on Thursday. The Justice Department will issue a redacted version of the report.
"The president was frustrated and angered by his sincere belief that the investigation is undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents and fuelled by illegal leaks. Nonetheless, the White House provided unfettered access to the Trump campaign and White House documents to complete the investigation," Barr said that during the conference.
He added that the president did not have any "corrupt" intent during the length of the investigations and stressed that he is releasing the Mueller report with "limited" redactions.
Barr had met with the White House just before the press conference to discuss the Mueller report.
Mueller and his team produced the final report to Barr last month, marking an end to the two-year-long extensive investigation. The AG, in turn, released a four-page-long summary of the 400-pages report, emphasizing that the special counsel found no evidence of collusion. Barr’s summary, however, left the Congress dissatisfied with the little information produced in it as they demanded a public release of the full document.
Multiple people on the Special Counsel’s investigative team have since come out — on conditions of anonymity — to suggest that Mueller's final report has a lot more damning content than was revealed in the Trump-appointed AG's cursory summary presented to the Congress.
Barr stated that the Mueller report consisted of two parts: one detailing Russia's interference efforts, which included a rundown of Russian contacts with Trump's campaign officials, and the other consisting of evidence of alleged obstruction of justice by the president. The AG had also said that some information from the report — which is officially titled Report on the Investigation Into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election — will be redacted for security reasons.