 |
| Special Counsel Robert Mueller |
The Justice Department notified Congress late Friday that it had received Mueller’s report but did not describe its contents. Barr is expected to summarize the findings for lawmakers in coming days.
In a letter to the leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary committees, Barr wrote that Mueller “has concluded his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and related matters.”
The submission of Mueller’s report marks the culmination of his closely held inquiry, a case that has engulfed the Trump administration since its inception and led to multiple guilty pleas from former advisers to the president. With the closing of his investigation, Congress and the newly empowered Democratic House majority will soon assess his findings — and determine what steps to take next.
Barr wrote that Mueller submitted a report to him explaining his prosecution decisions. The attorney general told lawmakers he was “reviewing the report and anticipate that I may be in a position to advise you of the Special Counsel’s principal conclusions as soon as this weekend.”
The attorney general wrote he would consult with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and Mueller “to determine what other information from the report can be released to Congress and the public consistent with the law, including the Special Counsel regulations, and the Department’s long-standing practices and policies.”
Barr said there were no instances in the course of the investigation in which any of Mueller’s decisions were vetoed by his superiors at the Justice Department.
“I remain committed to as much transparency as possible, and I will keep you informed as to the status of my review,” Barr wrote.
After a week of growing expectation that Mueller’s long-awaited report would soon arrive, a security officer from Mueller’s office delivered it Friday afternoon to Rosenstein’s office at Justice Department headquarters, according to spokeswoman Kerri Kupec. Within minutes of that delivery, the report was transmitted upstairs to Barr.
Around 4:35, White House lawyer Emmet Flood was notified that the Justice Department had received the report. About a half-hour after that notification, a senior department official delivered Barr’s letter to the relevant House and Senate committees and senior congressional leaders, officials said.
One official described the report as “comprehensive,” but added that very few people have seen it.
Even with the report’s filing, Mueller is expected to retain his role as special counsel for a wind-down period, though it is unclear how long that may last, officials said. A small number of his staff will remain in the office to help shut down the operations.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the next steps “are up to Attorney General Barr, and we look forward to the process taking its course. The White House has not received or been briefed on the Special Counsel’s report.”
Two of the president’s lawyers, Rudolph Giuliani and Jay Sekulow, said in a joint statement: “We’re pleased that the Office of Special Counsel has delivered its report to the Attorney General pursuant to the regulations. Attorney General Barr will determine the appropriate next steps.”
Well before its completion, Mueller’s report was a hotly debated issue. Lawmakers sought to wrest guarantees from the Justice Department that the special counsel would give a complete public accounting of what he found in the two-year inquiry.
According to Justice Department regulations, the special counsel’s report should explain Mueller’s decisions — who was charged, who was investigated but not charged, and why.
Mueller’s work has consumed Washington and at times the country, as the special counsel and his team investigated whether any Trump associates conspired with Russian officials to interfere in the election.
It is unclear how much of what Mueller found will be disclosed in Barr’s summary for Congress. Congressional Democrats, anticipating an incomplete accounting, have already sent extensive requests to the Justice Department for documents that would spell out what Mueller discovered.
Mueller’s work has led to criminal charges against 34 people, including six former Trump associates and advisers.
Five people close to the president have pleaded guilty: Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort; former deputy campaign manager Rick Gates; former national security adviser Michael Flynn; former personal attorney Michael Cohen; and former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos.
A sixth, Trump’s longtime friend Roger Stone, was indicted in January and accused of lying to Congress. He has pleaded not guilty.
More than two dozen of the people charged by Mueller are Russians, and because the United States does not have an extradition treaty with Russia, they are unlikely ever to see the inside of a U.S. courtroom.
None of the Americans charged by Mueller is accused of conspiring with Russia to interfere in the election — the central question of Mueller’s work. Instead, they pleaded guilty to various crimes including lying to the FBI.
The special counsel’s investigation was launched May 17, 2017, in a moment of crisis for the FBI, the Justice Department and the country.
Days earlier, President Trump had fired FBI Director James B. Comey. The purported reason was Comey’s handling of the 2016 investigation of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, but Trump said in an interview with NBC News shortly after the firing that he was thinking about the Russia inquiry when he decided to remove Comey.
Read the rest of the story from Washington post
No comments