THE Donald Trump campaign knew Russia’s Vladimir Putin was working to put their candidate in the White House, according to explosive details from independent prosecutor Robert Mueller.
A full report of an investigation in to alleged collusion between Mr Trump’s team and the Kremlin was published Thursday, sparking
For some 200 pages Mr Mueller and his colleagues catalogue efforts by the Russian Government and its agencies and proxies, including hackers, to interfere in the 2016 president election.
And for more than another 200 they describe how the new White House tried to undermine their investigation in to claims of co-ordination between Republicans and Russians.
Mr Trump for some time has been claiming that the Mueller report - published in redacted form on Thursday morning - had cleared him of what he calls the “Russian Hoax” or the “Collusion Delusion”.
His attorney-general, William Barr, who released the document, said its “bottom line” was that it showed “no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government hackers”.
Mr Mueller and his team did not find evidence to suggest a criminal conspiracy under which Trump aides, a number of whom have been convicted or charged with offences, colluded with the Putin Kremlin and its intelligence and propaganda might.
However, critics and observers on Thursday describing the report as “devastating” for the Trump presidency, not least because his campaign thought Russian efforts to undermine opponent Hillary Clinton would help them.
The report said: “Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference efforts.”
In America, the political debate on Thursday firmly focused on evidence that Mr Trump had tried to underline Mr Mueller.
The report has revealed that Mr Trump tried to seize control of the Russia probe and force Mr Mueller’s removal to stop him from investigating potential obstruction of justice by the president.
The report said that in June 2017, Mr Trump directed White House counsel Don McGahn to call the acting attorney general and say that Mr Mueller must be ousted because he had conflicts of interest.
Mr McGahn refused - deciding he would rather resign than trigger what he regarded as a potential Saturday Night Massacre of Watergate firings fame.
For all of that, Mr Mueller said in his report that he could not conclusively determine that Mr Trump had committed criminal obstruction of justice.
Mr Mueller evaluated 10 episodes for possible obstruction of justice, including Mr Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey, the president’s directive to subordinates to have Mr Mueller fired and efforts to encourage witnesses not to cooperate.
The president’s lawyers have said Mr Trump’s conduct fell within his constitutional powers, but Mr Mueller’s team deemed the episodes deserving of criminal scrutiny.
However, crucially, Mr Mueller made clear that he could neither charge nor clear Mr Trump over obstruction of justice.
His report said: “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. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. ... Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel