Washington: US lawmakers waited Sunday for details of a confidential report into an investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election that has cast a pall over Donald Trump’s presidency and raised questions about possible collusion between the Republican’s campaign and Moscow.
Attorney General William Barr was expected to give Congress and the public a summary of the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who conducted a 22-month-long Russia investigation.
Barr, the top US law enforcement official, spent nine hours Saturday studying the report. He had said he hoped to hand over a summary of its “principal conclusions” by the end of the weekend.
There appeared to be initial good news for Trump and his inner circle, as Mueller did not bring any additional indictments when he handed the report over to Barr Friday.
That signals there might be no more criminal charges against Trump associates on the issue of whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to help the real estate magnate beat Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 White House race.
It was not immediately known what Mueller’s report says about another strand of inquiry: whether Trump committed obstruction of justice to hinder the Russia investigation by acts such as firing FBI Director James Comey in 2017.
Mueller brought charges against 34 people and three companies during his investigation, with prison sentences for some of Trump’s former aides such as campaign chairman Paul Manafort and longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen.
None of those charges, however, directly related to whether Trump’s campaign worked with Moscow. Mueller, a former FBI director, did not interview Trump in person for his probe. Instead, Trump sent written answers to some questions about contacts with Russia.
US intelligence agencies concluded shortly before Trump took office in January 2017 that Moscow meddled in the election with a campaign of email hacking and online propaganda aimed at sowing discord in the United States, hurting Clinton and helping Trump.
Meanwhile, Trump, at his resort in Palm Beach, Florida, for the weekend, remained uncharacteristically silent about the completion of the Mueller investigation, which he has regularly derided as a “witch hunt.”
“Good morning. Have a Great Day!” was all he wrote on Twitter on Sunday morning, along with his campaign slogan “Make America Great Again!”
Reuters
