Russia’s Foreign Ministry falsely claimed on April 19 that U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller "admitted" his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election did not find evidence of Russian meddling.
A redacted version of Mueller’s report, sent to Congress and published online on April 18, painstakingly details evidence about Russian election meddling and confirms the previous findings of the U.S. intelligence community of a two-pronged Russian strategy to manipulate U.S. public opinion through e-mail hacking and a disinformation campaign."The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion,” the Mueller report said.
"After nearly two years of investigation, thousands of subpoenas, hundreds of warrants and witness interviews the special counsel confirmed that the Russian government sponsored efforts to illegally interfere with the 2016 presidential election but did not find that the Trump campaign or other Americans colluded in those efforts," U.S. Attorney General William Barr said on April 18.
Nevertheless, in remarks on April 19 that dismissed the findings of the long-awaited Mueller report, a Russian Foreign Ministry official told journalists in Moscow that Mueller “admitted having no proof” of Russian interference.
"There is nothing there to catch attention. In fact, it confirms the absence of any arguments proving Russia's alleged interference in the U.S. election,” said Georgy Borisenko, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s North America Department. “There is not a single piece of evidence. In fact, the report’s authors have admitting having no proof,” Borisenko claimed.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on April 19 also dismissed the evidence contained in the Mueller report, saying the Kremlin does not accept the meddling accusations.
“As a whole, the report as before does not present any reasonable proof at all that Russia allegedly meddled in the electoral process in the United States,” Peskov told journalists in Moscow a day after the publication of a redacted version of the document.
"We regret documents of this sort are causing direct influence on the development of Russian-U.S. relations whose condition leaves much to be desired," Peskov said.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on April 19 that it is "completely impossible for Russia to interfere in internal political processes not only in the United States but in any other country."
Ryabkov said Russian's foreign policy is "based on unconditional respect for international law, including the principle of noninterference in the affairs of other states."
In the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, Information Committee Chairman Aleksei Pushkov on April 19 mocked the Mueller probe for spending millions of dollars of taxpayers' money without proving there was any collusion between Trump and the Kremlin.
Most of Russia's state-controlled media on April 18 and 19 also rejected the well-documented findings about Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
The state-owned Rossia television channel said in coverage on the Vesti Economy program late on April 18 that the Mueller report is not credible because it did not release the content of hacked e-mails or "specific files."
"The Mueller probe was an attempt to threaten the current government and influence U.S. foreign policy without offering any specific evidence," Rossia said.
Among the most pointed allegations leveled earlier by Mueller regarding Russian interference was the indictment of a dozen Russian military intelligence officers who, he said, were behind the hacking and theft of Democratic Party e-mails, e-mails that were released in the heat of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
While the Mueller report concluded there wasn’t sufficient evidence to prove President Donald Trump or members of his team colluded with Russia's state-sponsored meddling campaign, it said Trump and at least 17 of his campaign officials and advisers did have more than 100 contacts with Russians during the 2016 election campaign.
Mueller report strengthens resolves on both sides of political spectrum
After months as volunteer activists demanding that U.S. President Donald Trump be impeached, Eileen and Michael O’Brien sat on their couch on Thursday, cracked open a laptop and began to read the 448-page special counsel report that liberals have dreamed would make impeachment a reality.
“Hmm, seems like there’s a lot of grey area here,” said Eileen O’Brien, 65, of Clearwater, Florida, reading aloud a line about the findings falling short of a criminal case. “Legally wrong and morally wrong are two different things.”
The release of the long-anticipated report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller on his inquiry into Russia’s role in the 2016 election landed in a stridently divided America: one side convinced Trump acted improperly, the other adamant that the investigation was a politically driven farce.
Mueller built an extensive case that Trump committed obstruction of justice but stopped short of concluding he had committed a crime, though he did not exonerate the president.
For those like the O’Briens who have been pining for impeachment, the report renewed resolve to oust the president. For those who want to see the president reelected, there was a sense of vindication.
“The White House is going to put out their own version of things, which is basically fish wrapper,” said Michael O’Brien, formerly a service technician who now works on houses. His wife, who a day earlier delivered a can of “impeaches” peaches to a lawmaker, looked up with a quizzical expression.
“It’s worthless,” he explained. “You can use it to wrap fish.”
“ONE BATTLE IN A WAR”
Lee Mueller and his wife, Michele Mueller, no relation to Robert Mueller, also paused their Thursday to read through the special counsel’s report. They printed out the table of contents for both volumes along with the executive summaries.
“I view the Mueller report as being one battle in a war against the United States of America’s founding principles and against Donald Trump,” Michele Mueller, 61, said in a suburb of Las Vegas.
After Attorney General William Barr released his four-page summary of the Mueller report late last month, Americans were dug in on their views.
So far, the full report does not appear to have convinced many to change their opinions about the president’s conduct.
A Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll conducted Thursday afternoon to Friday morning found among those respondents of who said they were familiar with the Mueller report, 70 percent said the report had not changed their view of Trump or Russia’s involvement in the U.S. presidential race.
Only 15 percent said they had learned something that changed their view of Trump or the Russia investigation, and a majority of those respondents said they were now more likely to believe that “Trump or someone close to him broke the law.” Trump’s approval ratings, however, dipped 3 percentage points after the release of the report, the poll found.
Ahead of Thursday’s release of the Mueller report, Trump ramped up his insistence that he was the victim, not the perpetrator, of crimes.
James Stratton, 65, of Clearwater, Florida, caught snippets of the news about the report from conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. He looked up Barr’s news conference, held Thursday morning before the report was released online, on YouTube.
“Nobody on our side is going to change,” the Republican president of the local Tampa Bay Trump Club said in a phone interview, adding that liberals will grow tired of hearing predictions about Trump’s downfall that never materialize. “We stay focused on the issues. How do we stop socialism? How do we protect our borders?”
“Hmm, seems like there’s a lot of grey area here,” said Eileen O’Brien, 65, of Clearwater, Florida, reading aloud a line about the findings falling short of a criminal case. “Legally wrong and morally wrong are two different things.”
The release of the long-anticipated report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller on his inquiry into Russia’s role in the 2016 election landed in a stridently divided America: one side convinced Trump acted improperly, the other adamant that the investigation was a politically driven farce.
Mueller built an extensive case that Trump committed obstruction of justice but stopped short of concluding he had committed a crime, though he did not exonerate the president.
For those like the O’Briens who have been pining for impeachment, the report renewed resolve to oust the president. For those who want to see the president reelected, there was a sense of vindication.
“The White House is going to put out their own version of things, which is basically fish wrapper,” said Michael O’Brien, formerly a service technician who now works on houses. His wife, who a day earlier delivered a can of “impeaches” peaches to a lawmaker, looked up with a quizzical expression.
“It’s worthless,” he explained. “You can use it to wrap fish.”
“ONE BATTLE IN A WAR”
Lee Mueller and his wife, Michele Mueller, no relation to Robert Mueller, also paused their Thursday to read through the special counsel’s report. They printed out the table of contents for both volumes along with the executive summaries.
“I view the Mueller report as being one battle in a war against the United States of America’s founding principles and against Donald Trump,” Michele Mueller, 61, said in a suburb of Las Vegas.
After Attorney General William Barr released his four-page summary of the Mueller report late last month, Americans were dug in on their views.
So far, the full report does not appear to have convinced many to change their opinions about the president’s conduct.
A Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll conducted Thursday afternoon to Friday morning found among those respondents of who said they were familiar with the Mueller report, 70 percent said the report had not changed their view of Trump or Russia’s involvement in the U.S. presidential race.
Only 15 percent said they had learned something that changed their view of Trump or the Russia investigation, and a majority of those respondents said they were now more likely to believe that “Trump or someone close to him broke the law.” Trump’s approval ratings, however, dipped 3 percentage points after the release of the report, the poll found.
Ahead of Thursday’s release of the Mueller report, Trump ramped up his insistence that he was the victim, not the perpetrator, of crimes.
James Stratton, 65, of Clearwater, Florida, caught snippets of the news about the report from conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. He looked up Barr’s news conference, held Thursday morning before the report was released online, on YouTube.
“Nobody on our side is going to change,” the Republican president of the local Tampa Bay Trump Club said in a phone interview, adding that liberals will grow tired of hearing predictions about Trump’s downfall that never materialize. “We stay focused on the issues. How do we stop socialism? How do we protect our borders?”
“IT WILL ONLY AFFIRM”
For the most invested, though, Mueller’s report offered hope for further investigation, but by Democrats in Congress this time.
Tom Steyer, a billionaire activist who has spent millions of his own dollars directing pressure at Congress to impeach Trump, said while he thinks the contents of the report implicate the president, he acknowledges the findings alone are unlikely to convince Americans to change their minds.
“I think the only way to get voters to notice is to directly publicize, televised hearings,” Steyer said. “We’re all for public hearings so the American people can see and can react themselves.”
In Florida, Margo Hammond, 69, who considers herself an independent voter, gleaned highlights by toggling through the coverage of MSNBC, CNN and Fox News. She was unimpressed with Barr.
“It’s kind of an insult to the American people that we can’t decide for ourselves,” she said while in an art class. She planned to read as much as she could of the report.
“I think it will only affirm what I originally thought,” she said. Then she repeated something she had heard earlier from a news commentator: “There was a whole lot of cheating going on.”
Trump approval drops 3 points to 2019 low after release of Mueller report
The number of Americans who approve of President Donald Trump dropped by 3 percentage points to the lowest level of the year following the release of a special counsel report detailing Russian interference in the last U.S. presidential election, according to an exclusive Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll.
The poll, conducted Thursday afternoon to Friday morning, is the first national survey to measure the response from the American public after the U.S. Justice Department released Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report that recounted numerous occasions in which Trump may have interfered with the investigation.
According to the poll, 37 percent of adults in the United States approved of Trump’s performance in office, down from 40 percent in a similar poll conducted on April 15 and matching the lowest level of the year. That is also down from 43 percent in a poll conducted shortly after U.S. Attorney General William Barr circulated a summary of the report in March.
In his report, Mueller said his investigation did not establish that the Trump campaign had coordinated with Russians. However, investigators did find “multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations.”
While Mueller ultimately decided not to charge Trump with a crime, he also said that the investigation did not exonerate the president, either.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English throughout the United States. It gathered responses from 1,005 adults, including 924 who were familiar with the Mueller report. It has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of 4 percentage points.
To see the entire Reuters/Ipsos poll, click here: tmsnrt.rs/2DjEq3R
SHARP SPLIT
The poll found that 50 percent of Americans agreed that “Trump or someone from his campaign worked with Russia to influence the 2016 election,” and 58 percent agreed that the president “tried to stop investigations into Russian influence on his administration.”
Forty percent said they thought Trump should be impeached, while 42 percent said he should not.
The poll responses were sharply split along party lines, with Democrats much more critical of Trump than his fellow Republicans.
The Mueller investigation had previously charged 34 other people and three Russian entities, netting convictions or guilty pleas from several Trump associates including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, White House national security adviser Michael Flynn and longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen.
So far, the report does not appear to have convinced many to change their opinions about the president’s conduct during a bitter presidential campaign, whether his inner circle improperly engaged with Russian agents, or if he tried to interfere with federal investigators afterward.
Among those respondents who said they were familiar with the Mueller report, 70 percent said the report had not changed their view of Trump or Russia’s involvement in the U.S. presidential race. Only 15 percent said they had learned something that changed their view of Trump or the Russia investigation, and a majority of those respondents said they were now more likely to believe that “Trump or someone close to him broke the law.”
The poll, conducted Thursday afternoon to Friday morning, is the first national survey to measure the response from the American public after the U.S. Justice Department released Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report that recounted numerous occasions in which Trump may have interfered with the investigation.
According to the poll, 37 percent of adults in the United States approved of Trump’s performance in office, down from 40 percent in a similar poll conducted on April 15 and matching the lowest level of the year. That is also down from 43 percent in a poll conducted shortly after U.S. Attorney General William Barr circulated a summary of the report in March.
In his report, Mueller said his investigation did not establish that the Trump campaign had coordinated with Russians. However, investigators did find “multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations.”
While Mueller ultimately decided not to charge Trump with a crime, he also said that the investigation did not exonerate the president, either.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English throughout the United States. It gathered responses from 1,005 adults, including 924 who were familiar with the Mueller report. It has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of 4 percentage points.
To see the entire Reuters/Ipsos poll, click here: tmsnrt.rs/2DjEq3R
SHARP SPLIT
The poll found that 50 percent of Americans agreed that “Trump or someone from his campaign worked with Russia to influence the 2016 election,” and 58 percent agreed that the president “tried to stop investigations into Russian influence on his administration.”
Forty percent said they thought Trump should be impeached, while 42 percent said he should not.
The poll responses were sharply split along party lines, with Democrats much more critical of Trump than his fellow Republicans.
The Mueller investigation had previously charged 34 other people and three Russian entities, netting convictions or guilty pleas from several Trump associates including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, White House national security adviser Michael Flynn and longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen.
So far, the report does not appear to have convinced many to change their opinions about the president’s conduct during a bitter presidential campaign, whether his inner circle improperly engaged with Russian agents, or if he tried to interfere with federal investigators afterward.
Among those respondents who said they were familiar with the Mueller report, 70 percent said the report had not changed their view of Trump or Russia’s involvement in the U.S. presidential race. Only 15 percent said they had learned something that changed their view of Trump or the Russia investigation, and a majority of those respondents said they were now more likely to believe that “Trump or someone close to him broke the law.”
Radiofarda, With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, TASS, and Interfax
No comments