What's Next After Mueller? Lawsuits, Investigations And More

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., stands beside a chart during a newss conference following the back-to-back hearings with former special counsel Robert Mueller who testified about his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, July 24, 2019. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

BY MARY CLARE JALONICK

WASHINGTON (AP) — After months of anticipation, Congress finally heard testimony from former special counsel Robert Mueller. So what now?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Mueller’s appearance was “a crossing of a threshold,” raising public awareness of what Mueller found. And Democrats after the hearing said they had clearly laid out the facts about the Mueller report, which did not find a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia but detailed extensive Russian intervention in the 2016 election. Mueller also said in the report that he couldn’t clear President Donald Trump on obstruction of justice.

But it remains to be seen how the testimony will affect public views of Trump’s presidency and the push for impeachment. Mueller said some of the things that Democrats wanted him to say — including a clear dismissal of Trump’s claims of total exoneration — but he declined to answer many of their questions, and he spoke haltingly at times. Trump claimed victory, saying Mueller did “a horrible job.”

Democrats say they will continue to hold Trump to account. A look at the ways they will try to do that in the coming months:

INVESTIGATIONS CONTINUE

Democrats have struggled to obtain testimony from some of the most crucial figures in Mueller’s report, including former White House counsel Donald McGahn. And the few people they have interviewed, such as former White House aide Hope Hicks, have failed to give them new information beyond what’s in Mueller’s report.

But Democrats have multiple investigations of the president ongoing that don’t require cooperation from the White House or Justice Department. The House intelligence and Financial Services committees are probing Trump’s finances, an area that Mueller appears to have avoided. And the intelligence panel is investigating Trump’s negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow before the campaign.

THEIR DAY IN COURT

To obtain the testimony from McGahn and others, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said Wednesday that his panel will file lawsuits this week.

Democrats will seek to obtain secret grand jury material from Mueller’s report that has so far been withheld from Congress by the Justice Department. They will also try to force McGahn to provide documents and testimony.

As part of the suits, the House is expected to challenge the White House’s claim of “absolute immunity,” which has been used to block McGahn and others who worked in the White House from testifying.

While going to court can be a lengthy process, Democrats believe it will be their best chance of obtaining information after Trump declared he would fight “all of the subpoenas.”

CALLS FOR AN IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY

Almost 90 House Democrats have called for an impeachment inquiry, and more are certain after Mueller’s testimony. Those who support opening proceedings say it would bolster Democrats’ court cases and show the American people that they are moving decisively to challenge what they see as Trump’s egregious behavior.

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn’t there, not yet. And a majority of the caucus is siding with her, for now.

Pelosi said Wednesday that she wants “the strongest possible hand” by waiting to see what happens in court.

AUGUST RECESS

The House is expected to leave town for a five-week August recess on Friday, so some of the Democrats’ efforts will be on hold until September.

During that time, they’ll be at home listening to their constituents and judging how urgently voters want them to act. Those conversations and town halls could inform next steps in the fall.

Still, not everyone will be taking a break. Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline said Wednesday that members might fly back in August if witnesses are available for testimony. He said the Judiciary panel understands “the urgency of the moment and are prepared to do whatever is necessary to secure the attendance of witnesses and documents.”

ELECTION SECURITY

Democrats in both the House and the Senate want to move forward with legislation to make elections more secure after Mueller extensively detailed Russian interference.

House Democrats have passed legislation to secure state election systems and try to prevent foreign meddling, but bipartisan legislation in the Senate has stalled. Democrats tried to bring up an election security bill in the Senate on Wednesday, but Republicans objected.

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT REVIEWS

The Justice Department isn’t done with its own investigations into what happened before the 2016 election.

There are two ongoing reviews into the origins of the Russia probe that Mueller eventually took over — one being conducted by the Justice Department’s inspector general and another by U.S. Attorney John Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General William Barr to examine surveillance methods used by the Justice Department.

Republicans have said the department, then led by Obama administration officials, was biased against Trump. They are eagerly anticipating the results of those probes.

REPUBLICANS SAY IT’S OVER

Republicans say that nothing should be next, at least when it comes to investigations of the president. They have strongly defended Trump, who has called Mueller’s probe a hoax, and have said the country wants to move on.

“Today was day we closed the book on this investigation,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy after Mueller’s hearing.

Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the Judiciary panel, said at the hearing that “we’ve had the truth for months — no American conspired to throw our elections.”

Said Collins: “What we need today is to let that truth bring us confidence and closure.”

Associated Press writer Matthew Daly contributed to this report.

Mueller: No Russia Exoneration For Trump, Despite His Claims

Former special counsel Robert Mueller arrives to testify before the House Intelligence Committee hearing on his report on Russian election interference, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Wednesday, July 24, 2019. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

BY ERIC TUCKER, MARY CLARE JALONICK,  MICHAEL BALSAMO

WASHINGTON (AP) — Robert Mueller, the taciturn lawman at the center of a polarizing American drama, bluntly dismissed President Donald Trump’s claims of “total exoneration” Wednesday in the federal probe of Russia’s 2016 election interference. In a long day of congressional testimony, Mueller warned that Moscow’s actions represented — and still represent — a great threat to American democracy.

Mueller’s back-to-back Capitol Hill appearances, his first since wrapping his two-year Russia probe, carried the prospect of a historic climax to a rare criminal investigation into a sitting American president. But his testimony was more likely to reinforce rather than reshape hardened public opinions on impeachment and the future of Trump’s presidency .

With his terse, one-word answers, and a sometimes stilted and halting manner, Mueller made clear his desire to avoid the partisan fray and the deep political divisions roiling Congress and the country.

He delivered neither crisp TV sound bites to fuel a Democratic impeachment push nor comfort to Republicans striving to undermine his investigation’s credibility. But his comments grew more animated by the afternoon, when he sounded the alarm on future Russian election interference. He said he feared a new normal of American campaigns accepting foreign help.

He condemned Trump’s praise of WikiLeaks, which released Democratic emails stolen by Russia. And he said of the interference by Russians and others: “They are doing it while we sit here. And they expect to do it during the next campaign.”

His report, he said, should live on after him and his team.

“We spent substantial time assuring the integrity of the report, understanding that it would be our living message to those who come after us,” Mueller said. “But it also is a signal, a flag to those of us who have some responsibility in this area to exercise those responsibilities swiftly and don’t let this problem continue to linger as it has over so many years.

Trump, claiming vindication despite the renewal of serious allegations, focused on his own political fortunes rather than such broader issues.

“This was a devastating day for the Democrats,” he said. “The Democrats had nothing and now they have less than nothing.”

Mueller was reluctant to stray beyond his lengthy written report, but that didn’t stop Republicans and Democrats from laboring to extract new details.

Trump’s GOP allies tried to cast the former special counsel and his prosecutors as politically motivated. They referred repeatedly to what they consider the improper opening of the investigation.

Democrats, meanwhile, sought to emphasize the most incendiary findings of Mueller’s 448-page report and weaken Trump’s reelection prospects in ways Mueller’s book-length report did not.

They hoped that even if his testimony did not inspire impeachment demands — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has made clear she will not pursue impeachment, for now — Mueller could nonetheless unambiguously spell out questionable, norm-shattering actions by the president.

The prosecutor who endured nearly seven hours of hearings was a less forceful public presencethan the man who steered the FBI through the Sept. 11 attacks and the 12 years after that. But Mueller, 74, was nonetheless skilled enough in the ways of Washington to avoid being goaded into leading questions he didn’t want to answer.

Mueller frequently gave single-word answers to questions, even when given opportunities to crystallize allegations of obstruction of justice against the president. He referred time and again to the wording in his report.

Was the president lying when he said he had no business ties to Russia? “I’m not going to go into the details of the report along those lines,” Mueller said.

Did you develop any sort of conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia? “Again,” Mueller said, “I pass on answering.”

But he was unflinching on the most-critical matters, showing flashes of personality and emotion.

In the opening minutes of the Judiciary Committee hearing, Chairman Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, asked about Trump’s multiple claims of vindication by the investigation.

“Did you actually totally exonerate the president?” Nadler asked.

“No,” Mueller replied.

When Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House intelligence committee, asked, “Your investigation is not a witch hunt, is it?”

“It is not a witch hunt,” Mueller flatly replied.

He gave Democrats a flicker of hope when he told Rep. Ted Lieu of California that he did not charge Trump because of a Justice Department legal opinion that says sitting presidents cannot be indicted. That statement cheered Democrats who understood him to be suggesting he mightd otherwise have recommended prosecution on the strength of the evidence.

But Mueller later walked back that statement, saying: “We did not reach a determination as to whether the president committed a crime.” His team, he said, “never started the process” of evaluating whether to charge Trump.

Though Mueller described Russian election interference as among the most serious challenges to democracy he had encountered in his decades-long career, Republicans focused on his conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.

“Those are the facts of the Mueller report. Russia meddled in the 2016 election. The president did not conspire with Russians. Nothing we hear today will change those facts,” said Rep. Doug Collins, the Judiciary Committee’s top Republican.

Mueller, pressed as to why he hadn’t investigated a “dossier” of claims that the Republicans insist helped lead to the start of the probe, said that was not his charge. That was “outside my purview,” he said repeatedly.

Mueller mostly brushed aside Republican allegations of bias, but in a moment of apparent agitation, he said he didn’t think lawmakers had ever “reviewed a report that is as thorough, as fair, as consistent as the report that we have in front of us.”

And when he was pressed on the fact that multiple members of his team had made contributions to Democratic candidates, Mueller bristled at the implication his prosecutors were compromised.

“I have been in this business for almost 25 years, and in those 25 years I have not had the occasion to ask somebody about their political affiliation,” Mueller said. “It is not done. What I care about is the capability of the individual to do the job and do the job quickly and seriously and with integrity.”

Wednesday’s first hearing before the Judiciary Committee focused on whether Trump obstructed justice by attempting to seize control of Mueller’s investigation. The special counsel examined nearly a dozen episodes, including Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey and his efforts to have Mueller himself removed.

The afternoon hearing before the House intelligence committee dove into ties between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

On that question, Mueller’s report documented a trail of contacts between Russians and Trump associates, including a Trump Tower meeting at which the president’s eldest son expected to receive dirt on Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Associated Press writer Jonathan Lemire in New York contributed to this report.

For more of AP’s coverage of the Trump investigation: https://apnews.com/TrumpInvestigations

Mueller To Testify Publicly Before House Committees July 17

The letter from House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff to special counsel Robert Mueller that was sent with subpoenas to compel Mueller's testimony to the committees on July 17, is photographed in Washington, Tuesday, June 25, 2019. Mueller has agreed to testify publicly before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees after both panels issued subpoenas to him Tuesday evening. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)

BY MARY CLARE JALONICK, ERIC TUCKER AND LISA MASCARO

WASHINGTON (AP) — Special counsel Robert Mueller has agreed to testify publicly before Congress on July 17 after Democrats issued subpoenas to compel him to appear, the chairmen of two House committees announced Tuesday.

Mueller’s unusual back-to-back testimony in front of the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees is likely to be the most highly anticipated congressional hearing in years, particularly given Mueller’s resolute silence throughout his two-year investigation into Russian contacts with President Donald Trump’s campaign. Mueller never responded to angry, public attacks from Trump, nor did he ever personally join his prosecutors in court or make announcements of criminal charges from the team.

His sole public statement came from the Justice Department podium last month as he announced his departure, when he sought to explain his decision to not indict Trump or to accuse him of criminal conduct. He also put lawmakers on notice that he did not ever intend to say more than what he put in the 448-page report.

“We chose those words carefully and the work speaks for itself,” Mueller said May 29. “I would not provide information beyond what is already public in any appearance before Congress.”

Those remarks did little to settle the demands for his testimony. The two committees continued negotiations that had already been going on for weeks, saying they still wanted to hear from Mueller no matter how reluctant he was.

“When you accept the role of special counsel in one of the most significant investigations in modern history you’re going to have to expect that you’re going to be asked to come and testify before Congress,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told reporters shortly after the announcement.

Trump himself simply tweeted, “Presidential Harassment!”

In the report issued in April, Mueller concluded there was not enough evidence to establish a conspiracy between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia, which was the original question that started the investigation. But he also said he could not exonerate Trump on obstruction of justice. The report examined several episodes in which Trump attempted to influence the investigation.

Democrats say it is now the job of Congress to assess the report’s findings. Lawmakers are likely to confront Mueller on why he did not come to a firm conclusion on obstruction of justice. They are also likely to seek his reaction to a drumbeat of incessant criticism from the president and ask for his personal opinion about whether Trump would have been charged were he not the commander-in-chief.

Schiff and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said they issued the subpoenas Tuesday, and Mueller agreed to testify pursuant to those subpoenas. In a letter to Mueller accompanying the subpoenas, the committee chairmen said “the American public deserves to hear directly from you about your investigation and conclusions.”

Schiff said there will be two hearings “back to back,” one for each committee, and they will also meet with Mueller’s staff in closed session afterward.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

Republicans have criticized Democrats for their continuing investigations of the president. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., questioned why they would still want to hear from Mueller after the lengthy report was issued. “He said he didn’t want to talk to us anymore, didn’t he?”

But Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the Judiciary panel, has said he has no objections to Mueller’s testimony.

“May this testimony bring to House Democrats the closure that the rest of America has enjoyed for months, and may it enable them to return to the business of legislating,” Collins said.

____

Associated Press writer Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.

Mueller's Public Statement Fuels Calls For Trump Impeachment

Special counsel Robert Mueller speaks at the Department of Justice Wednesday, May 29, 2019, in Washington, about the Russia investigation. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

BY LISA MASCARO; MARY CLARE JALONICK

WASHINGTON (AP) — Special counsel Robert Mueller’s first — and possibly last — public statement on the Russia investigation is fueling fresh calls on Capitol Hill to begin impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, a step that Democratic leaders have so far resisted.

Surprising Washington with brief remarks Wednesday, Mueller indicated it’s up to Congress to decide what to do with his findings. The special counsel reiterated that, bound by Justice Department policy, charging a sitting president with a crime was “not an option.” But he also stressed he could not exonerate Trump. Instead, he cited that same policy to say, “The Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system.”

With Mueller closing his office and not expected to comment further, it all amounted, for some, to an open invitation for Congress to launch impeachment proceedings.

“He’s asking us to do what he wasn’t allowed to — hold the president accountable,” said Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., a member of the House Judiciary Committee, the panel with impeachment power.

“We have one remaining path to ensure justice is served,” said Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, a Democratic presidential candidate. “It’s clear that the House must begin impeachment proceedings. No one is above the law.”

But top Democrats, with almost no support from Republicans, are hesitant to go it alone on an impeachment inquiry that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has warned would be divisive for the nation. They prefer to continue the work of investigating the president and building, as Pelosi said Wednesday, a case that’s “very compelling to the American people.”

“We are legislating, we’re investigating and we are litigating,” Pelosi said at an event in San Francisco.

“Nothing is off the table,” she said. “We want to do what is right and what gets results.”

Staying the course, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, at a news conference in New York stopped short of calling for an impeachment inquiry.

“All options are on the table and nothing should be ruled out,” Nadler said Wednesday.

Nadler’s committee is among six in the House that are conducting dozens of probes in the Democratic-controlled House into subjects such as Trump’s tax returns, the handling of the Russia probe and the running of government.

“Given that special counsel Mueller was unable to pursue criminal charges against the President, it falls to Congress to respond to the crimes, lies and other wrongdoing of President Trump - and we will do so,” Nadler said in a written statement issued immediately after Mueller’s remarks.

Before Mueller’s unexpected appearance, Democratic leaders had tamped down increasingly vocal voices calling for an impeachment inquiry. Pelosi sent lawmakers home for a weeklong recess brushing back the pro-impeachment faction, urging her caucus to stick with the step-by-step approach of investigations. They hoped to hear directly from Mueller in a high-profile hearing that could help focus public attention.

But now that Mueller has made clear the work ahead won’t likely include him — announcing his office is closing and he’s resigning his position — it’s igniting new urgency on Capitol Hill to pick up where the special counsel left off.

Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, another Democratic presidential hopeful, said, “Mueller did his job. Now it’s time to do ours. Impeachment hearings should begin tomorrow.”

While some Democrats want to focus on investigating Trump, building the record in the public, as happened during the Watergate era with Richard Nixon, others, including some new voices Wednesday, say Mueller has all but punted the issue to Congress. They believe opening a formal impeachment proceeding would strengthen their hand in the legal battles over documents and testimony.

“It is very clear that President Trump is engaging in a cover-up, obstructing of justice and betraying his oath of office,” said Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn. “I fully expect the responsible House committees to expedite their investigations and, as soon as possible, formally draft articles of impeachment.”

Mueller’s report did not establish a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign to sway the outcome of the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor. Investigators examined nearly a dozen episodes involving the president for potential obstruction of justice but ultimately reached no conclusion on whether Trump had illegally tried to stymie the probe.

Mueller made clear his desire to avoid testimony, declaring the report his final word on the matter. He said it wouldn’t be “appropriate” for him “to speak further about the investigation.”

Nadler would not say whether he would compel Mueller to testify, as he has threatened to do. But he hinted that he may not pursue an aggressive approach against the special counsel, saying, “Mr. Mueller told us a lot of what we need to hear today.”

Republicans, as they have done since Mueller’s report was released, called for Congress to move on.

The GOP chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said that Mueller “has decided to move on and let the report speak for itself. Congress should follow his lead.”

Graham has said his committee doesn’t need Mueller to testify. Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the House Judiciary panel, had supported Democratic requests for Mueller’s House testimony but appeared to be satisfied by the special counsel’s comments Wednesday.

“While I had hoped he would come before the committee and answer questions from lawmakers, Robert Mueller has led an extraordinary life of public service and is entitled to his life as a private citizen once again,” Collins said.

But at least one Republican isn’t ready to move on: Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, who has become the sole GOP voice in Congress urging impeachment proceedings.

“The ball is in our court, Congress,” Amash tweeted.

Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman and Elana Schor in Washington contributed to this report.

House Democrats To Read Mueller Report Aloud In Capitol Hearing Room

The Mueller Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election is pictured in New York, New York, U.S., April 18, 2019. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo

BY AMANDA BECKER

WASHINGTON (REUTERS) - Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives will read aloud on Thursday the redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Representative Mary Gay Scanlon, one of the top Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, will, along with nearly two dozen of her colleagues, begin reading the Mueller report at 12 p.m. (1700 GMT) in a Capitol hearing room.

“We have a Constitutional duty to share that truth with the American people,” Scanlon said in a release, adding the report’s conclusions could not be adequately “summarized in a tweet.”

Mueller’s report, which contained redactions, described numerous links between President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and various Russians but did not find sufficient evidence to establish here was a criminal conspiracy with Moscow.

The report also described numerous attempts by Trump to impede Mueller’s probe, but stopped short of declaring that the president committed a crime.

Democrats, who control the House, are sparring with the White House over numerous probes into Trump and his campaign’s ties to Russia, the president’s business dealings and administration policies.

Democrats have requested a full, unredacted version of Muller’s report, six years of Trump’s individual and business tax returns and background on decisions made by the administration on security clearances and the separation of migrant families along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The deadline for the administration to respond to a subpoena for the unredacted report passed without being met. Trump has sued to block a congressional subpoena for financial records from his accounting firm. The White House has directed key staff not to cooperate with various House probes.

Democrats are now considering contempt resolutions against top administration officials, with votes expected as early as June.


Reporting by Amanda Becker; Editing by Peter Cooney
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

There’s Nothing Trump Can Do To Stop Mueller From Testifying

Image: Mediaite, LLC

BY ALBERTO LUPERON

WASHINGTON (LAW & CRIME) -- Can President Donald Trump keep Special Counsel Robert Mueller from testifying before Congress? He says it shouldn’t happen, but that’s a different issue from whether he can do anything about it.

We spoke about this with Frank O. Bowman, a law professor at the University of Missouri. The long and short of it is that the executive branch can attempt to limit what Mueller would say to Congress, but it’s unlikely they could stop the special counsel from appearing. The most they can do is stall, since any challenge could take time to sort out.

Before we get any further into the topic, let’s be clear that it’s uncertain if and when Mueller may testify. Rep. David Cicilline (D-Rhode Island, 1st District), who serves on the House Judiciary Committee, said that they are trying to schedule this for May 15, and hope that the special counsel will agree to it. Mueller spokesman Peter Carr declined to comment when Law&Crime asked if the special counsel will face Congress.

So with that out of the way, let’s get to the legal analysis.

There’s no plausible way to stop such testimony, said Bowman. Take executive privilege. The point of this power is not to hide information from Congress, but to provide limited protection for advice given to the president, said Bowman. The idea is that a POTUS could get candid advice.

Privilege can’t cover what Mueller might say, said Bowman. The special counsel didn’t give Trump information. It was the other way around. Hypothetically, the president could assert privilege if Mueller were a confidential adviser who resigned, but that’s not the case here, said Bowman.

The White House has no legal way to stop this testimony. They’re unlikely to succeed based on allegations of the House overreach, said Bowman. He pointed to the 1927 Supreme Court case McGrain v. Daugherty. This ruling said a congressional investigation be given the presumption that it has a legislative purpose, and that Congress could look into prosecutorial decisions made by the Department of Justice.

From the opinion by Justice Willis Van Devanter [emphasis ours]:

It is quite true that the resolution directing the investigation does not in terms avow that it is intended to be in aid of legislation; but it does show that the subject to be investigated was the administration of the Department of Justice — whether its functions were being properly discharged or were being neglected or misdirected, and particularly whether the Attorney General and his assistants were performing or neglecting their duties in respect of the institution and prosecution of proceedings to punish crimes and enforce appropriate remedies against the wrongdoers, specific instances of alleged neglect being recited. Plainly the subject was one on which legislation could be had and would be materially aided by the information which the investigation was calculated to elicit.

The only legitimate object the Senate could have in ordering the investigation was to aid it in legislating, and we think the subject matter was such that the presumption should be indulged that this was the real object.

On top of that, Bowman said the White House would have to yield as soon as the House of Representatives requested Mueller’s testimony as part of an impeachment inquiry, though he noted that Democrats are reluctant to do so. (Their leadership definitely is.)

One thing that could happen is that Barr could order the special counsel not to testify. (Mueller still serves as special counsel, Carr told Law&Crime on Sunday.) Bowman said that Barr could fire the special counsel if rebuffed, but that’s not a meaningful barrier.

Executive branch officials can try to limit what Mueller says. For example, they could make claims that what the special counsel might say is classified, said the professor. They can only do so much, though. There is no absolute right for the executive to withhold information from Congress, said Bowman.

AP FACT CHECK: Mueller Interviewed Many Close To President

President Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, April 22, 2019, during the annual White House Easter Egg Roll. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
BY ERIC TUCKER

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is falsely suggesting that the people “closest” to him weren’t called to testify before special counsel Robert Mueller and his team because investigators didn’t want to hear the “good things” those people would want to share about the president. Plenty of people close to Trump, or who worked closely with him, were interviewed by investigators or invited to do so.

TRUMP: “Isn’t it amazing that the people who were closest to me, by far, and knew the Campaign better than anyone, were never even called to testify before Mueller. The reason is that the 18 Angry Democrats knew they would all say ‘NO COLLUSION’ and only very good things!” Tweet on Monday.

THE FACTS: The president is wrong on multiple counts here.

Plenty of people close to him, including in his own family, interviewed with Mueller’s team or were at least asked to appear. And of those who did, some said not very good things about their interactions with the president.

Among the advisers and aides who spoke with Mueller was his former White House counsel, Don McGahn, who extensively detailed Trump’s outrage at the investigation and his efforts to curtail it. McGahn told Mueller’s team how Trump called him at home and urged him to press the Justice Department to fire the special counsel, then told him to deny that the entire episode had taken place once it became public.

Others who were interviewed by Mueller include two former White House chiefs of staff, Reince Priebus and John Kelly, former White House communications director Hope Hicks, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders and former strategist Steve Bannon.

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer who once said he was so close to the president that he’d “take a bullet” for him, also cooperated with Mueller and delivered unflattering details.

Mueller certainly wanted to hear from Trump’s family too, even if not all relatives were eager to cooperate. His oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., declined to be voluntarily interviewed by investigators, according to Mueller’s report. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, spoke multiple times to Mueller’s team. And one of the president’s daughters, Ivanka Trump, provided information through an attorney.

The White House has not yet said to whom Trump was referring in his tweet.

Find AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd and follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

Fake news? Mueller isn't buying it

Photojournalists photograph four pages of report by special counsel Robert Mueller on the witness table in the House Intelligence Committee hearing room on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Thursday, April 18, 2019. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

BY DAVID BAUDER

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump and his team love to deride unfavorable stories as “fake news,” but it’s clear from Robert Mueller’s report that the special counsel isn’t buying it.

While there are a few exceptions, Mueller’s investigation repeatedly supports news reporting that was done on the Russia probe over the last two years and details several instances where the president and his team sought to mislead the public.

“The media looks a lot stronger today than it did before the release of this report,” Kyle Pope, editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, said Friday.

Trump’s supporters believe that Mueller’s determination that there was not enough evidence to show that the president or his team worked with the Russians to influence the 2016 election delegitimizes the attention given to the story.

Fox News Channel’s Laura Ingraham message to the news media: “You owe us an apology.”

But the news stories were, for the great part, accurate.

For instance, Mueller’s report shows The New York Times and The Washington Post were correct when they reported in January 2018 that Trump ordered White House counsel Don McGahn to make sure Mueller was fired, and that McGahn decided to resign rather than carry that out. When the Times first reported the story, Trump described it as “fake news, folks, fake news.”

The Mueller report also showed that Trump directed a series of aides to ask McGahn to publicly deny the story, and ultimately asked himself, too. McGahn refused, saying the story was accurate, the report found.

In a July 2017 story, the Times reported that the president personally wrote a statement in which he falsely said that an election year meeting between some Russians and his son, Donald Jr., was about the adoption of Russian children, rather than about obtaining potentially damaging information on Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Trump’s counsel repeatedly responded that the president had no role in writing the statement, yet months later testified under oath to investigators that Trump had dictated it.

Special counsel Robert Mueller's redacted report on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election is photographed Thursday, April 18, 2019, in Washington. The pages deal with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks(AP Photo/Jon Elswick)

Mueller’s report also backed up the newspaper’s stories, which the administration denied at the time, that Trump demanded loyalty from then-FBI Director James Comey at a private dinner, and that Trump had asked Comey to end an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

“The Mueller report confirmed again and again that stories in The New York Times for the past two years were the opposite of ‘fake news,’” said Elisabeth Bumiller, the paper’s Washington bureau chief. “They were meticulously reported, carefully sourced and accurate stories that told readers what was really going on at the White House.”

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reported before Trump’s inauguration that Flynn had talked to Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak about sanctions placed on Russia by the outgoing Obama administration. Mueller said that Trump put out word that he wanted Flynn to kill the story, and that Flynn ordered aide K.T. McFarland to deny it to the Post, “although she knew she was providing false information.”

Others in the administration, including Vice President Mike Pence, also denied it. Flynn resigned when the truth became evident.

Trump repeatedly said during the 2016 campaign that he had no business dealings in Russia when, even as he uttered the words, his company was seeking to build a Trump Towers office building in Moscow. When Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, privately pointed out that the denial was untrue, the future president said “why mention it if it is not a deal?” the report said.

Mueller also determined that a statement by White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders that Comey had been unpopular with rank-and-file members of his agency “was not founded on anything.” Sanders said on ABC Friday that her statement was “a slip of the tongue.”

Mueller, however, did shoot down a BuzzFeed News report that Trump had directed Cohen to lie to Congress about the timing of the Moscow project. Mueller said that while it appeared Trump knew Cohen was lying to Congress, “the evidence available to us does not establish that the president directed or aided Cohen’s false testimony.”

BuzzFeed News editor-in-chief Ben Smith said the organization’s sources, who were federal law enforcement officials, “interpreted the evidence Cohen presented as meaning that the president ‘directed’ Cohen to lie. We now know that Mueller did not.”

Smith said BuzzFeed will continue to pursue the story through Freedom of Information requests and in court.

Mueller also contradicted a McClatchy news service story alleging that Cohen had traveled to Prague, in the Czech Republic, in summer 2016 to meet with Russians involved in the effort to influence the election. Mueller’s report said that Cohen had not gone to Prague.

McClatchy attached an editor’s note to its story reporting Mueller’s conclusion but adding that his report “is silent on whether the investigators received evidence that Mr. Cohen’s phone pinged in an area near Prague, as McClatchy reported.”

CJR’s Pope said so many of the stories surrounding Trump had been made foggy by denials and “fake news” claims over the past two years. He said he was surprised so much of Mueller’s report backed up journalists, although it’s too soon to tell whether the findings will influence two very divided political camps.

“I think it casts the coverage of him in a much different light,” he said.

Former Counsel May Have Saved Trump From Himself

U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., chair of the House Judiciary Committee, speaks during a news conference, Thursday, April 18, 2019, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

BY LISA MASCARO

WASHINGTON (AP) — Don McGahn was barely on speaking terms with President Donald Trump when he left the White House last fall. But special counsel Robert Mueller’s report reveals the president may owe his former top lawyer a debt of gratitude.

McGahn, who sat with Mueller for about 30 hours of interviews, emerged as a central character in Mueller’s painstaking investigation into whether Trump obstructed justice and impeded the years-long Russia investigation. In one striking scene , Mueller recounts how Trump called McGahn twice at home and directed him to set Mueller’s firing in motion. McGahn recoiled and threatened to resign instead.

Mueller concluded that McGahn and others effectively halted Trump’s efforts to influence the investigation, prompting some White House officials and outside observers to call him an unsung hero in the effort to protect the president.

John Marston, a former Washington, D.C. assistant United States attorney, said McGahn appeared to help Trump “both in real time with his actions and then as well as being forthcoming.”

McGahn’s relationship with the president was turbulent. A prominent Washington attorney, he joined Trump’s campaign as counsel in 2015 and followed him to the White House, but the two men never developed a close rapport. His departure last fall came as little surprise.

Still, it was McGahn who Trump turned to on June 17, 2017, when he wanted to oust Mueller. According to the special counsel report, McGahn responded to the president’s request by calling his personal lawyer and his chief of staff, driving to the White House, packing up his belongings and preparing to submit his letter of resignation. He told then-White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus that the president had asked him to “do crazy s---.”

Mueller said McGahn feared Trump was setting in motion a series of events “akin to the Saturday Night Massacre,” the Nixonian effort to rein in the Watergate investigation.

William Alden McDaniel, a lawyer who represented targets and witnesses in the Ken Starr investigation, as well as high-ranking officials in the Iran-Contra scandal, said McGahn appeared to be “one of the few people in the administration to stand up to the president” and that “takes a certain amount of principle.”

Mueller’s report shows there were a handful of other aides who rebuffed orders and suggestions from the president, helping save him from the consequences. Former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski resisted an effort by Trump to convince Attorney General Jeff Sessions to un-recuse himself from the investigation and to limit the scope of Mueller’s probe. Priebus and McGahn repeatedly resisted Trump efforts to force out Sessions so that Trump could replace him and install a new person to oversee Mueller’s work.

McGahn also tried in other ways to keep the president in line, advising him that he should not communicate directly with the Department of Justice to avoid the perception or reality of political interference in law enforcement and reminding him that their conversations were not protected by attorney-client privilege.

Trump responded by questioning McGahn’s tendency to take notes and draft memoranda outlining his advice to the president for the historical record.

“Why do you take notes? Lawyers don’t take notes. I never had a lawyer who took notes,” Trump said, according to Mueller’s report. The special counsel said McGahn responded that he keeps notes “because he is a ‘real lawyer’ and explained that notes create a record and are not a bad thing.”

Exchanges like those appear to have led Mueller to conclude that McGahn was “a credible witness with no motive to lie or exaggerate given the position he held in the White House.”

McGahn did not respond to a request for comment Thursday and nearly a dozen friends and former colleagues mostly spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid upsetting him, describing him as a private person.

They largely characterized McGahn’s time in the White House as unhappy and defined by his frequent clashes with the president.

“Don is an experienced lawyer who’s dealt with difficult clients in the past,” said Jason Torchinsky, an election law attorney who has known McGhan for 20 years.

The White House declined comment.

In a campaign and White House staffed largely by novices and bootlickers, McGahn was a rare establishment figure, despite his longer hair and 80s cover band dabbling. He served as commissioner and chairman of the Federal Election Commission and had deep roots with the Republican party, including spending a decade as general counsel of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

At the White House, he earned praise from conservatives for helping confirm a series of conservative judges, including, in his final act, shepherding Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation. He was also instrumental in fulfilling long-held conservative priorities, including leading the White House’s systematic effort to cut government regulations and weaken the power of administrative law judges.

Follow Miller and Colvin on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ZekeJMiller and https://twitter.com/colvinj

Mueller Report: Trump Largely Failed To Derail Russia Probe

Special counsel Robert Mueller's redacted report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election as released on Thursday, April 18, 2019, is photographed in Washington. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)

BY NANCY BENAC, CHAD DAY, ERIC TUCKER & MICHAEL BALSAMO

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump sought the removal of special counsel Robert Mueller, discouraged witnesses from cooperating with prosecutors and prodded aides to mislead the public on his behalf, according to a hugely anticipated report from Mueller that details multiple efforts the president made to curtail a Russia probe he feared would cripple his administration.

Trump’s attempts to seize control of the investigation, and directions to others on how to influence it, “were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests,” Mueller wrote in a two-volume, 448-page redacted report that made for riveting reading.


In one particularly dramatic moment, Mueller reported that Trump was so agitated at the special counsel’s appointment on May 17, 2017, that he slumped back in his chair and declared: “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m f---ed.”

With that, Trump set out to save himself.

In June of that year, Mueller wrote, Trump directed White House Counsel Don McGahn to call Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversaw the probe, and say that Mueller must be ousted because he had conflicts of interest. McGahn refused — deciding he would sooner resign than trigger a potential crisis akin to the Saturday Night Massacre of firings during the Watergate era.

Two days later, the president made another attempt to alter the course of the investigation, meeting with former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and dictating a message for him to relay to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The message: Sessions would publicly call the investigation “very unfair” to the president, declare Trump did nothing wrong and say Mueller should limit his probe to “investigating election meddling for future elections.” The message was never delivered.

The report’s bottom line largely tracked the findings revealed in Attorney General William Barr’s four-page memo released a month ago — no collusion with Russia but no clear verdict on obstruction — but it added new layers of detail about Trump’s efforts to thwart the investigation. Looking ahead, both sides were already using the findings to amplify well-rehearsed arguments about Trump’s conduct, Republicans casting him as a victim of harassment and Democrats depicting the president as stepping far over the line to derail the investigation.

The Justice Department released its redacted version of the report about 90 minutes after Barr offered his own final assessment of the findings at a testy news conference. The nation, Congress and Trump’s White House consumed it voraciously online, via compact disc delivered to legislators and in loose-leaf binders distributed to reporters.

The release represented a moment of closure nearly two years in the making but also the starting bell for a new round of partisan warfare.

A defiant Trump pronounced it “a good day” and tweeted “Game Over” in a typeface mimicking the “Game of Thrones” logo. By late afternoon, he was airborne for his Mar-a-Lago private club in Florida with wife Melania for the holiday weekend.

Top Republicans in Congress saw vindication, too.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said it was time to move on from Democrats’ effort to “vilify a political opponent.” The California lawmaker said the report failed to deliver the “imaginary evidence” incriminating Trump that Democrats had sought.

Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said Republicans should turn the tables and “investigate the liars who instigated this sham investigation.”

But Democrats cried foul over Barr’s preemptive press conference and said the report revealed troubling details about Trump’s conduct in the White House.

In a joint statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer wrote that “one thing is clear: Attorney General Barr presented a conclusion that the president did not obstruct justice while Mueller’s report appears to undercut that finding.”

House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler added that the report “outlines disturbing evidence that President Trump engaged in obstruction of justice and other misconduct.” He sent a letter to the Justice Department requesting that Mueller himself testify before his panel “no later than May 23″ and said he’d be issuing a subpoena for the full special counsel report and the underlying materials.

Signaling battles ahead, Nadler earlier called the investigation “incredibly thorough” work that would preserve evidence for future probes.

Barr said he wouldn’t object to Mueller testifying.

Trump himself was never questioned in person, but the report’s appendix includes 12 pages of his written responses to queries from Mueller’s team.

Mueller deemed Trump’s written answers — rife with iterations of “I don’t recall” — to be “inadequate.” He considered issuing a subpoena to force the president to appear in person but decided against it after weighing the likelihood of a long legal battle.

In his written answers, Trump said his comment during a 2016 political rally asking Russian hackers to help find emails scrubbed from Hillary Clinton’s private server was made “in jest and sarcastically” and said he did not recall being told during the campaign of any Russian effort to infiltrate or hack computer systems.

But Mueller said that within five hours of Trump’s comment, Russian military intelligence officers were targeting email accounts connected to Clinton’s office.

Mueller evaluated nearly a dozen episodes for possible obstruction of justice, and said he could not conclusively determine that Trump had committed criminal obstruction. The episodes included Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, the president’s directive to subordinates to have Mueller fired and efforts to encourage witnesses not to cooperate.

Sessions was so affected by Trump’s frequent criticism of him for recusing himself from the investigation that he kept a resignation letter “with him in his pocket every time he went to the White House,” Mueller said.

The president’s lawyers have said Trump’s conduct fell within his constitutional powers, but Mueller’s team deemed the episodes deserving of scrutiny for potential criminal acts.

As for the question of whether the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign, Mueller wrote that the campaign “expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”

But Mueller said investigators concluded, “While the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign, the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges.”

Workers at a Russian troll farm contacted Trump’s campaign, claiming to be political activists for conservative grassroots organizations, and asked for signs and other campaign materials to use at rallies. While volunteers provided some of those materials — and set aside a number of signs — investigators don’t believe any Trump campaign officials knew the requests were coming from foreign nationals, Mueller wrote.

Mueller wrote that investigators “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Josh Blackman, a professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston, stressed that Mueller didn’t think the president’s obligations to run the executive branch entitled him to absolute immunity from prosecution. But to find that the president obstructed justice, he said, Mueller would have needed much clearer evidence that the president acted solely with “corrupt intent.”

“The evidence was sort of muddled,” Blackman said, adding that the president’s actions had multiple motivations.

The report laid out some of Mueller’s reasoning for drawing no conclusion on the question of obstruction.

Mueller wrote that he would have exonerated Trump if he could, but he wasn’t able to do that given the evidence he uncovered. And he said the Justice Department’s standing opinion that a sitting president couldn’t be indicted meant he also couldn’t recommend Trump be criminally charged, even in secret.

Trump’s written responses addressed no questions about obstruction of justice, as was part of an agreement with Trump’s legal team.

He told Mueller he had “no recollection” of learning in advance about the much-scrutinized Trump Tower meeting between campaign officials and a Russian lawyer. He also said he had no recollection of knowledge about emails setting up the meeting that promised dirt on Clinton’s Democratic campaign.

He broadly denied knowing of any foreign government trying to help his campaign, including the Russian government. He said he was aware of some reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin had made “complimentary statements” about him.

It wasn’t just Trump under the microscope. But Mueller wrote that he believed prosecutors would be unlikely to meet the burden of proof to show that Donald Trump Jr. and other participants in the Trump Tower meeting “had general knowledge that their conduct was unlawful.” Nor did Mueller’s probe develop evidence that they knew that foreign contributions to campaigns were illegal or other particulars of federal law.

Barr’s contention that the report contained only “limited redactions” applied more to the obstruction of justice section than its look at Russian election meddling. Overall, about 40 percent of the pages contained at least something that was blocked out, mostly to protect ongoing investigations. Barr had said that he would redact grand jury information and material related to investigations, privacy and intelligence.

AP writers Zeke Miller, Mary Clare Jalonick, Lisa Mascaro, Dustin Weaver, Deb Riechmann, Susannah George, Michael R. Sisak, Stephen Braun, Jill Colvin, Jonathan Lemire, Darlene Superville, Jessica Gresko, Mark Sherman, Julie Pace and Elizabeth Kennedy contributed to this report.

For complete coverage of the Mueller report, go to https://www.apnews.com/TrumpInvestigations

Congress Plunges Into Mueller Report, Subpoena Upcoming

Delegates, from left, U.S. Congressman Brendan Boyle, Irish Education Minister Joe McHugh, U.S. Congressman Richard Neal and US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi, cross the Irish border from Northern Ireland into the Republic of Ireland, at Bridgened in Co Donegal, Thursday April 18, 2019. Pelosi and other members of the U.S. delegation made the symbolic border crossing, that is the contentious Brexit border, between North and southern Ireland Thursday, as part of her four-day visit to Ireland and Northern Ireland. (Niall Carson/PA via AP)

BY LISA MASCARO

WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s now up to Congress to decide what to do with special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings about President Donald Trump.

While the special counsel declined to prosecute Trump on obstruction of justice, he did not exonerate him, all but leaving the question to Congress. Mueller’s report provides fresh evidence of Trump’s interference in the Russia probe, challenging lawmakers to respond. The risks for both parties are clear if they duck the responsibility or prolong an inquiry that, rather than coming to a close, may be just beginning.

“The responsibility now falls to Congress,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which has the power to launch impeachment proceedings.

Attorney General William Barr sent Congress a redacted version of the report, blacking out several types of material, including classified information, material pertaining to ongoing investigations, and grand jury evidence.

Nadler told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Friday that he expects to issue a subpoena within “a couple of hours” for the full report, including the normally secret grand jury evidence. That would likely spark a lengthy legal and political battle over whether that material can be released.

How far lawmakers will go, though, remains unclear. Republicans are eager to push past what Trump calls the “witch hunt” that has overshadowed the party and the presidency. And while Democrats say Mueller’s findings are far more serious than initially indicated in Barr’s four-page summary, they’ve been hesitant to pursue the ultimate step, impeachment proceedings, despite pressure from the left flank of the party to begin efforts to try to remove the president from office.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, traveling Thursday on a congressional trip to Ireland, said in a joint statement with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer only that Mueller’s report revealed more than was known about the obstruction question.

“As we continue to review the report, one thing is clear: Attorney General Barr presented a conclusion that the president did not obstruct justice while Mueller’s report appears to undercut that finding,” they said.

Later, in a letter to House Democrats, Pelosi vowed: “Congress will not be silent.”

Biding their time, Democrats are putting the focus on their next investigative steps. Nadler summoned Mueller to testify and the chairman said Thursday he will be issuing subpoenas for the full report. And next week, both the House and Senate are scheduled to hear from Barr, whom Democrats accuse of distorting the report’s contents to Trump’s benefit.

But it’s unlikely that the full Mueller report or the public testimony will untangle the dilemma that Democrats face. Mueller laid out multiple episodes in which Trump directed others to influence or curtail the Russia investigation after the special counsel’s appointment in May 2017, and Trump made clear that he viewed the probe as a potential mortal blow — “the end of my presidency.”

The special counsel wrestled with what to do with his findings, unable to charge or exonerate, and sided with the department’s guideline that indicting a sitting president would impair the ability of the executive branch to function.

“We concluded that Congress has authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice,” the report said.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said the acts described in the report “whether they are criminal or not, are deeply alarming in the president of the United States. And it’s clear that special counsel Mueller wanted the Congress to consider the repercussions and the consequences.”

Schiff, the California Democrat, said, “If the special counsel, as he made clear, had found evidence exonerating the president, he would have said so. He did not. He left that issue to the Congress of the United States.”

Republicans sought to portray Democrats as unwilling to let go of the idea that Trump colluded with Russia to swing the election. “What you’re seeing is unprecedented desperation from the left,” tweeted Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., a top Trump ally. “There was no collusion. It’s over.”

Other Republicans were more measured. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is one of the few members of Congress mentioned in the report, told reporters in Kentucky, “It’s too early to start commenting on portions of it.”

McConnell was among several people the report said former White House Counsel Don McGahnhad reached out to on behalf of the president when Trump was trying to stop then Attorney General Jeff Sessions from recusing himself at the start of the Russia probe.

In all, the report revealed 10 areas of potential obstruction, from Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey to his attempts to thwart Mueller’s investigation. In many cases, the additional details show a president restrained only by aides and others around him.

“If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state,” the report says. “However, we are unable to reach that judgment. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred.”

Mueller’s team hewed to department guidelines. “We recognized that a federal criminal accusation against a sitting President would place burdens on the President’s capacity to govern,” the report said. “We determined not to apply an approach that could potentially result in a judgment that the President committed crimes.”

For Democrats, those pages amount to a green light to finish what Mueller started.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the Judiciary Committee, said his reading of the report shows that Trump “almost certainly obstructed justice” and it was only his staff intervened to prevent certain actions.

“We have a very serious situation on our hands,” he said. “It’s an awesome and solemn responsibility that Congress has now to try to deal with the crisis that’s contained in this report.”

But what comes next may not be any more conclusive, especially as Democrats say they are unwilling to consider impeachment without bipartisan support from Republicans. The investigations may provide a steady stream of revelations that damage the president while also firing up his supporters to his defense as he gears up for re-election. Or the probes could push Congress farther than many now are willing to go.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Thursday that she takes “no pleasure in discussions of impeachment. I didn’t campaign on it, & rarely discuss it unprompted.” But she said, “the report squarely puts this on our doorstep.”

Associated Press reporters Mary Clare Jalonick, Padmananda Rama, Jennifer Peltz in New York and Dylan Lovan in LaGrange, Kentucky contributed to this report.

For complete coverage of the Mueller report, go to https://www.apnews.com/TrumpInvestigations

Dems Run From Impeachment Post-Mueller

“Based on what we have seen to date, going forward on impeachment is not worthwhile at this point,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told CNN. Image Alex Edelman/Getty

BY HEATHER CAYGLE, SARAH FERRIS & JOHN BRESNAHAN

WASHINGTON (POLITICO) -- Robert Mueller’s report reveals a stunning array of new allegations against President Donald Trump. But one thing remains the same: House Democrats are ducking any talk of impeachment.

After interviews with 15 lawmakers Thursday, it’s clear Democrats think the report is severely damaging to the president, with substantial evidence that he attempted to derail the Russia probe. But it’s still not enough to pull the trigger on the most consequential — and politically risky — action Democrats could take in their new majority: trying to forcibly eject Trump from office.

“Election time is when you beat Trump,” said Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), a senior member of the party’s progressive wing who was an early supporter of impeachment efforts in the previous Congress.

“Right now, he’s got enough protection around him from the top lawyer in the country to keep him in office,” Grijalva added, referring to Attorney General William Barr, who has come under a barrage of criticism from Democrats over his handling of the report’s release.

For two years, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and top Democrats deferred impeachment questions until after the special counsel’s investigation concluded. But after Mueller showed at least 10 instances in which Trump may have committed obstruction of justice — and ostensibly met the “high crimes and misdemeanors” threshold previously laid out by several Democrats — Pelosi and her top deputies were notably restrained. They issued short statements and made few, if any, media appearances.

“Based on what we have seen to date, going forward on impeachment is not worthwhile at this point,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the No. 2 Democrat, told CNN. “Very frankly, there is an election in 18 months, and the American people will make a judgment.”

Yet that stance only further exposes the divide between the party’s liberal base, eager to oust the president, and a seasoned leadership team fearful that such a move could cost the party the House.

Several lawmakers, including Pelosi, used the first leg of the two-week congressional recess to travel overseas, avoiding the political storm in Washington after the report’s release Thursday.

And even some of the most fervent supporters of Trump’s ouster said the Mueller report’s explosive findings have done little to move Democrats closer to launching the impeachment process — particularly when the GOP-controlled Senate is unlikely to join Democrats and remove the president from office.

“I think that Speaker Pelosi doesn’t think it’s worth going forward politically when there will not be a conviction. ... For a lot of people in swing districts and all, it’s probably easier for them to take that position,” said Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), who previously introduced articles of impeachment against Trump.

“I don’t know that we’d have a majority, anywhere near a majority, willing to stand up and oppose the speaker and take a position that could be adverse to maintaining the House,” he added.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), who was first to file articles of impeachment against Trump in 2017, said he felt “vindicated” that Mueller cited several examples where Trump obstructed justice. But he conceded that the political will to oust Trump still isn’t there in Congress.

“A lot of progressives are saying what’s the matter with you guys, what’s it going to take?” Sherman said. “The legal case is there. The political case is still to be made.”

Pelosi on Thursday night issued a letter to Democratic lawmakers in which she said the Democratic Caucus would hold a conference call on Monday “to discuss this grave matter,” adding that “Congress will not be silent.“

The speaker effectively took impeachment off the table earlier this year, saying impeaching Trump was “just not worth it.” And she and other top Democrats notably avoided any nod to impeachment in statements released after Mueller’s report went live on Thursday.

Rank-and-file lawmakers were also quick to stress that the Mueller report is useful for the sprawling investigations Democrats have launched of Trump’s administration, personal finances and business interests in a half-dozen committees. But, they said, the conclusion of the Mueller report is not an automatic trigger for impeachment.

“A systematic effort to obstruct justice would clearly be an impeachable offense. The Republicans impeached Bill Clinton for obstructing justice over one lie," said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, where impeachment would begin. “But I don’t think we’re there yet. We are still in the assembling-of-facts phase.”

Another member of the Judiciary Committee, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), said Democrats “have to engage in our own report and investigation” stemming from Mueller’s findings. But she said those efforts weren’t specifically in pursuit of impeaching Trump.

“We are not going to close in on the i-word,” Jackson Lee said in an interview. “We’re going to close in on the most detailed investigation possible and that means individuals who may have been interviewed by Mueller, and those who may have not.”

Among outside groups on the left, the release of the Mueller report was akin to a starter pistol signaling the race to impeach Trump should begin now — a totally different message from the one coming from Democrats on Capitol Hill.

“Despite Attorney General Bill Barr’s redactions and spin, it is clear that the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller should be considered an impeachment referral for obstruction of justice by the President of the United States, akin to Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski’s ‘road map’ detailing troubling actions by President Richard Nixon,” said the Moscow Project at the Center for American Progress.

At least one Democrat said her mind was also changed by the Mueller report. Rep. Norma Torres of California said in an interview she is now backing impeachment calls for the first time, saying she “absolutely” believes the president obstructed justice.

“We need to move forward with an impeachment,” Torres said. “This is a big deal for me.”

But Torres, a member of the more moderate New Democrat Coalition, also said she understands why some of her colleagues would be apprehensive to move in that direction, given the huge political risks.

“We are so close to the election. It’s a very difficult place to be,” Torres said.

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most high-profile Democrats in the caucus, tweeted Thursday that she would be signing onto an impeachment resolution introduced by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).

But other key progressives were more reserved. Rep. Mark Pocan, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said “everything should be on the table” but doesn’t believe it will require removing Trump from office before November 2020.

“I am certain that Congress has additional action we need to take, but we need to follow the proper processes,” Pocan said. “It doesn’t have to be impeachment, it can be other hearings.”

For most Democrats interviewed, the next obvious step is hearing from Mueller himself. Democrats have been quick to rip Barr for his handling of the report — first for issuing a four-page summary last month and then holding a press conference hours before the probe was made public — which they said was misleading and a clear attempt to protect Trump.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) sent a letter Thursday requesting Mueller testify before his panel within the next month.

“It’s too early to talk about that,” Nadler told reporters Thursday when asked about impeachment. “That’s one possibility. There are others.”

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee who has previously supported impeachment, said there is “no question” in her mind that Mueller and his team helped prove that Trump has committed crimes.

“I think it potentially does rise to that standard, but again, I want to interview Mueller,” Speier said, when asked about impeachment. She also declined to say what specific evidence should prompt Democrats to begin that process.

“If we’re doing our job, being a check and balance on the president, the special counsel has laid out a road map for us,” Speier said.

Melanie Zanona contributed to this report.

A beleaguered Trump feared 'the end of my presidency'

President Donald Trump arrives for a Wounded Warrior Project Soldier Ride event in the East Room of the White House, Thursday, April 18, 2019, in Washington. Also pictured is Wounded Warrior Project CEO Michael Linnington, right. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

BY CALVIN WOODWARD

WASHINGTON (AP) — At the moment two years ago when Donald Trump learned a special counsel had been appointed to investigate his campaign and Russia, the president responded with profane fury — and something resembling panic.

He feared his presidency, then only a few months old, was over. He berated aides for not protecting him. His cocky assurance was nowhere in sight.

The Oval Office scene that day is vividly reconstructed in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, released Thursday. Mueller traces how, at perilous turns in the Russia episode, aides took the brunt of Trump’s rage yet acted to save the president from himself — at times by letting his orders go unheeded and, at least in one instance, declining an entreaty to lie on his behalf.

On May 17, 2017, Trump was in the Oval Office with his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, Sessions’ chief of staff Jody Hunt and White House lawyer Don McGahn, conducting interviews for a new FBI director to replace James Comey, whom Trump had fired eight days earlier. Sessions left the room to take a call from his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, and returned to tell the president that Rosenstein had informed him of the special counsel appointment.

“The President slumped back in his chair,” Mueller wrote in his report, “and said, ‘Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m f---ed. This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.’” (Mueller quotes the full profanity.)

“The President became angry and lambasted the Attorney General for his decision to recuse from the investigation, stating, ‘How could you let this happen, Jeff?’”

The reconstruction was based primarily on accounts from Hunt, with Sessions also supplying detail to Mueller’s team. Sessions said Trump asked for his resignation but when he brought him a letter of resignation the next day, the president had changed his mind.

Trump adviser Hope Hicks, describing the aftermath of that meeting to Mueller’s team, said she had only seen Trump that upset once before — when the “Access Hollywood” tape came out in the campaign, revealing Trump’s coarse comments about imposing himself on women.

Sessions had stepped away from Russia matters because his work on the Trump campaign raised questions of conflict of interest. He withstood searing heat from Trump over that move and pressure, both public and private, to reverse his recusal until he was finally forced out late last year.

Some other aides, too, refused to be compliant at major moments.

The report states that in the days after Mueller’s appointment, Trump opened an effort to discredit the special counsel, but ran into a wall from senior advisers such as McGahn, Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus, who was then chief of staff.

“The President told senior advisors that the Special Counsel had conflicts of interest,” the report says, “but they responded that those claims were ‘ridiculous’ and posed no obstacle to the Special Counsel’s service.”

Then, a month into Mueller’s work, Trump moved to get him fired.

The report says that on June 17, 2017, Trump called McGahn at home and directed him to contact Rosenstein and tell him the special counsel must be removed.

“You gotta do this,” Trump told McGahn, according to the lawyer’s recollection to Mueller’s team.

“McGahn was perturbed by the call and did not intend to act on the request,” the report says.

Trump pressed the point with a follow-up call.

“Mueller has to go,” McGahn recalled Trump saying. Then: “Call me back when you do it.”

McGahn never did it.

And when early 2018 came around, Trump wanted McGahn to issue a denial that he’d ever been asked to press for Mueller’s removal in the first place. He summoned the lawyer to the Oval Office.

Again, no luck.

“McGahn refused to back away from what he remembered happening,” the report says, “and perceived the President to be testing his mettle.”

Analysis: Mueller Paints A Damning Portrait Of The President

President Donald Trump gives a 'thumbs-up' as he prepares to board Air Force One, Thursday, April 18, 2019, at Andrews Air Force Base, Md. President Trump is traveling to his Mar-a-lago estate to spend the Easter weekend in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

BY JULIE PACE

WASHINGTON (AP) — To Donald Trump, the start of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation looked alarmingly like the end of his presidency. So he tried to stop it.

His months-long effort pushed the boundaries of presidential powers and the law, revealing a commander in chief consumed by self-interest and intent on having his top lieutenants lie or obfuscate on his behalf. The fact that many refused to do so may have helped save Trump from being charged with obstructing justice.

Those advisers effectively served as the guardrails in a White House that often seems to have none. A White House counsel who told the president he would rather resign than oust Mueller. A senior West Wing aide who quietly ignored a request to pass messages to the attorney general, who had already recused himself from the investigation.

“The incidents were often carried out through one-on-one meetings in which the president sought to use his official power outside of usual channels,” Mueller wrote in his redacted 448-page report.

The episodes detailed by the special counsel paint a damning portrait of a president consumed by the investigation. Even after more than two years of revelations about Trump’s willingness to lie or press others to do so, Mueller’s report put into sharp focus the president’s disregard for governing norms and his willingness to challenge both legal and political limits.

Trump and his advisers can herald the fact that two years of investigation ended without criminal charges for the president, not only on obstruction but also on criminal conspiracy with Russia to help him win the 2016 election. Though numerous people with ties to Trump — including former national security adviser Michael Flynn and ex-campaign chairman Paul Manafort — did plead guilty to crimes, no Americans were indicted for colluding with Moscow.

“His greatest rebuttal will be he’s in office, he’s going to remain in office and he’ll get re-elected because the Democrats have nothing,” Kellyanne Conway, a senior White House adviser, said of the president.

Indeed, the Democrats’ next steps are unclear. Some lawmakers will likely continue to press for impeachment proceedings, though party leaders are skeptical of that approach. House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler has requested that Mueller testify before his committee within weeks and plans to subpoena for the full report and underlying evidence.

Yet the end of Mueller’s investigation did more than answer questions about whether Trump and his associates committed crimes. The probe underscored just how far Trump has gone in pushing the limits of the presidency and encouraging others to help him do so.

Rep. Adam Schiff, Democratic chair of the House intelligence committee, said that while Trump’s actions may not have been criminal, they were “dishonest, unethical, immoral and unpatriotic.”

Trump’s actions were in line with his behavior as a businessman, when he employed a team of lawyers and fixers to protect him from legal trouble. One of those longtime confidants, lawyer Michael Cohen, was brought down in an investigation stemming from Mueller’s probe, centering on hush money payments he made during the 2016 campaign to women who alleged sexual relationships with Trump.

In other facets of his administration, Trump has also pressed legal bounds. He has repeatedly directed immigration advisers to take actions they deemed illegal, including blocking all migrants from seeking asylum. When it became clear in recent weeks that those advisers would not follow his orders, he ordered an overhaul of the top echelons of the Department of Homeland Security.

There were clear echoes of that behavior throughout Mueller’s report.

The most startling episode came in June 2017, when Trump directed White House Counsel Don McGahn to call Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversaw the probe, and say that Mueller must be ousted because he had conflicts of interest. McGahn refused — deciding he would rather resign than trigger a potential constitutional crisis.

Two days later, the president tried another avenue to alter the investigation. During a meeting with former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, he dictated a message for Lewandowski to relay to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Though Sessions had already recused himself from the investigation, Trump was ordering him to publicly call the probe “very unfair” to the president, declare Trump did nothing wrong and say that Mueller should limit his probe to “investigating election meddling for future elections.”

Lewandowski didn’t want to deliver the message, according to Mueller, so he asked senior White House official Rick Dearborn to do so. Dearborn was uncomfortable with the request, Mueller writes, and did not follow through.

Most of the advisers who blocked Trump’s requests have since left his administration.

EDITOR’S NOTE — AP Washington Bureau Chief Julie Pace has covered the White House and politics since 2007. Follow her at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

For complete coverage of the Mueller report, go to https://www.apnews.com/TrumpInvestigations

Mueller Report Release Spirals Into Political Gamesmanship

Special counsel Robert Mueller drives away from his Washington home on Wednesday, April 17, 2019. Outstanding questions about the special counsel's Russia investigation have not stopped President Donald Trump and his allies from declaring victory. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

BY CHAD DAY, ERIC TUCKER AND MICHAEL BALSAMO

WASHINGTON (AP) — After nearly two years of waiting, America will get some answers straight from Robert Mueller— but not before President Donald Trump’s attorney general has his say.

The Justice Department on Thursday is expected to release a redacted version of the special counsel’s report on Russian election interference and Trump’s campaign, opening up months, if not years, of fights over what the document means in a deeply divided country.

Even the planned release of the nearly 400-page report quickly spiraled into a political battle Wednesday over whether Attorney General William Barr is attempting to shield the president who appointed him and spin the report’s findings before the American people can read it and come to their own judgments.

Barr will hold a 9:30 a.m. news conference to present his interpretation of the report’s findings, before providing redacted copies to Congress and the public. The news conference, first announced by Trump during a radio interview, provoked immediate criticism from congressional Democrats.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Barr had “thrown out his credibility & the DOJ’s independence with his single-minded effort to protect” Trump. And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “The process is poisoned before the report is even released.”

“Barr shouldn’t be spinning the report at all, but it’s doubly outrageous he’s doing it before America is given a chance to read it,” Schumer said.

A Justice Department official confirmed Barr’s plan to speak and answer questions about his “process” before the report’s public release. He will be accompanied by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversaw the investigation after Mueller’s appointment in May 2017. Mueller and other members of his team will not attend, special counsel spokesman Peter Carr said.

After the news conference, the report will be delivered to Congress on CDs between 11 a.m. and noon and then be posted on the special counsel’s website, said the official, who wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Barr formulated the report’s roll-out and briefed the White House on his plans, according to a White House official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The White House declined to comment on an ABC News report that it had been briefed on the contents of Mueller’s report beyond what Barr has made public.

At a later date, the Justice Department also plans to provide a “limited number” of members of Congress and their staff access to a copy of the Mueller report with fewer redactions than the public version, according to a court filing Wednesday.

The report is expected to reveal what Mueller uncovered about ties between the Trump campaign and Russia that fell short of criminal conduct. It will also lay out the special counsel’s conclusions about formative episodes in Trump’s presidency, including his firing of FBI Director James Comey and his efforts to undermine the Russia investigation publicly and privately.

The report is not expected to place the president in legal jeopardy, as Barr made his own decision that Trump shouldn’t be prosecuted for obstruction. But it is likely to contain unflattering details about the president’s efforts to control the Russia investigation that will cloud his ability to credibly claim total exoneration. And it may paint the Trump campaign as eager to exploit Russian aid and emails stolen from Democrats and Hillary Clinton’s campaign even if no Americans crossed the line into criminal activity.

The report’s release will be a test of Barr’s credibility as the public and Congress judge whether he is using his post to protect Trump.

Barr will also face scrutiny over how much of the report he blacks out and whether Mueller’s document lines up with a letter the attorney general released last month. The letter said Mueller didn’t find a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government but he found evidence on “both sides” of the question of whether the president obstructed justice.

Barr has said he is withholding grand jury and classified information as well as portions relating to ongoing investigation and the privacy or reputation of uncharged “peripheral” people. But how liberally he interprets those categories is yet to be seen.

Democrats have vowed to fight in court for the disclosure of the additional information from the report and say they have subpoenas ready to go if it is heavily redacted.

House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said Wednesday he will “probably find it useful” to call Mueller and members of his team to testify after reading the version of the report Barr releases.

Nadler also criticized the attorney general for trying to “bake in the narrative” of the report to the benefit of the White House.

Late Wednesday, Nadler joined the chairs of four other House committees in calling for Barr to cancel his news conference. But Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, defended Barr and accused Democrats of “trying to spin the report.”

Collins said Barr has done “nothing unilaterally,” saying he had worked with Rosenstein and Mueller’s team “step by step.”

Mueller is known to have investigated multiple efforts by the president over the last two years to influence the Russia probe or shape public perception of it.

In addition to Comey’s firing, Mueller scrutinized the president’s request of Comey to end an investigation into Trump’s first national security adviser; his relentless badgering of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions over his recusal from the Russia investigation; and his role in drafting an incomplete explanation about a meeting his oldest son took at Trump Tower with a Kremlin-connected lawyer.

Overall, Mueller brought charges against 34 people — including six Trump aides and advisers — and revealed a sophisticated, wide-ranging Russian effort to influence the 2016 presidential election. Twenty-five of those charged were Russians accused either in the hacking of Democratic email accounts or of a hidden but powerful social media effort to spread disinformation online.

Five former Trump aides or advisers pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate in Mueller’s investigation, including Trump’s campaign chairman, national security adviser and personal lawyer.

Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Zeke Miller in Washington and Jonathan Lemire and Jennifer Peltz in New York contributed to this report.