Barr releases redacted Mueller report

Attorney General William Barr on Thursday released a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on his sprawling investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The release of the report comes just over three weeks after Barr laid out what he described as Mueller’s core findings in a four-page letter that effectively cleared President Trump of allegations of criminal coordination between his campaign and Moscow, and just over an hour after Barr held a press conference reiterating there was no “collusion.”

{mosads}The report is redacted to conceal grand jury material, classified information, details about ongoing investigations and information that could implicate the privacy of “peripheral” third parties.

The report’s public release also comes as lawmakers on Capitol Hill are out of Washington on a 2 1/2 week recess around the Easter holiday.

House Democrats have been clamoring for the release of Mueller’s full report — absent redactions — to Congress, threatening to subpoena it if Barr does not meet their demands. They have accused the attorney general of bias in his handling of Mueller’s final report, which was delivered confidentially to him on March 22.

Barr wrote a letter on March 24 revealing that the special counsel did not find sufficient evidence to charge members or associates of the Trump campaign with conspiring with the Russian government. Barr also said Mueller did not come to a conclusion on whether Trump obstructed justice, but that the attorney general added that he and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, later reviewed the evidence and found it insufficient to accuse the president of an obstruction offense.

Mueller was appointed special counsel to investigation Russian interference and possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Moscow in May 2017, shortly after Trump fired James Comey as FBI director.

In the course of his near two-year probe, Mueller indicted more than two dozen Russians for participating in two prongs of Moscow’s interference campaign: a plot to feed divisive content to Americans on social media ahead of the 2016 election and the theft and release of Democratic emails meant to damage the presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton.

Mueller’s probe also ensnared six Trump associates, a number of whom pleaded guilty to making false statements and other charges and agreed to cooperate in the investigation, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn and onetime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.

Mueller’s prosecutors secured a conviction against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was sentenced in March to a total of 7 1/2 years in prison for financial and other crimes linked to his foreign lobbying on behalf of pro-Russian forces in Ukraine.

Mueller’s investigation concluded with no recommendation of further indictments. However, several cases that spun off from the special counsel’s investigation are ongoing.