The Mueller Report is officially over, and the reaction has been mixed to say the least. The Republicans are rejoicing and the Democrats are trying to get more information. This article is going to lay out all that the Special Counsel Investigation has done. It will also examine all information that the public knows about the results of the Investigation.

Investigation Background

The Mueller Investigation started when the Office of the Deputy Attorney General’s Order No. 3915-2017 was released. This document appointed Robert S. Mueller III to lead the investigation. It outlines what the scope of the Investigation is. Mueller was allowed to investigate any links between the Trump Campaign and the Russian Government, and any other matters that may arise.

Indictments and Charges

The Mueller Investigation indicted a little over 30 people and a few Russian Troll Groups. Here is a list of them.
• Former Campaign Adviser George Papadopoulos: Lying to the FBI about interactions with Russian officials.
• Former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort: Conspiracy to launder money, failure to report foreign bank accounts, failure to register as a foreign agent, lying, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
• Former Trump Campaign Official Rick Gates: Conspiracy to launder money, failure to report foreign bank accounts, failure to register as a foreign agent, and lying,.
• Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn: Lying to the FBI.
• Richard Pinedo: Selling American bank accounts to Russians.
• Three Russian Troll Groups: Conspiracy to defraud the United States.
• 12 Russian Intelligence Research Agency Employees: Conspiracy to defraud the United States.
• Yevgeny Prigozhin: Conspiracy to defraud the United States.
• Alex van der Zwaan: Lying to the FBI.
• Konstantin Kilimnik: obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
• 12 Russian Military Officers: conspiracy to commit computer crimes, identity fraud, and money laundering.
• Former Trump Campaign Adviser Roger Stone: Obstruction, false statements, and witness tampering.

There also were a few people who were not charged by the Special Counsel Investigation, but were cooperating with the Special Counsel Investigation.

• Former Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen: financial crimes, making false statements to Congress.
• Lobbyist Sam Patten: acting as an unregistered foreign lobbyist.

The Attorney General Summary

The Investigation officially ended on March 22, 2019 when Robert Mueller submitted his final report to Attorney General William Barr. Barr sent a four page summary of the report to the Chairman and Ranking Member of both the House and Senate Judiciary Committee. This summary was released to the public.

Russian Interference

According to the summary, the report was split into two parts with the first part being about the Russian Interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election and the second being about Obstruction of Justice by the President. There were some notable parts but the main one was when the Attorney General quoted the report directly when saying “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian Government in its election interference activities.”

Obstruction of Justice

The second part of the summary addresses the investigation by the Special Council into Obstruction of Justice by the President. The Special Council laid out in his report the evidence for Obstruction of Justice, but “The Special Counsel… did not draw a conclusion-one way or the other-as whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction.” Since the Special Council did not make a call on the Obstruction of Justice by the President it was put in the hands of the Attorney General to decide whether the President committed a crime. The summary states that “Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Council’s investigations is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offence.” To give more reasoning to the decision the Attorney General later stated in the summary that “Generally speaking, to obtain and sustain an obstruction conviction, the government would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person, acting with corrupt intent, engaged in obstructive conduct with a sufficient nexus to pending or contemplated preceding.”

Conclusion of Summary

Last but certainly not least, the Attorney General put in the summary an excerpt from the report which I find very intriguing. It is “The Special Counsel states that ‘while this report does not concluded that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.’” I see this as the Special Counsel saying that although his work is done with his investigation, President Trump is still not fully out of the woods. There is probably still going to be Congressional Investigations, and there are investigations ongoing in New York. Although the Special Counsel Investigation is over it looks like it was only a chapter in the novel of the Trump Presidency and it’s constant drama.

Disclaimer

By the time you are reading this artical it is probably out of date, and some big piece of news has come out about the Mueller Report.