Details of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election — and the possible involvement of members of President Donald Trump’s campaign — were held back for a second day as Department of Justice officials kept the findings a closely guarded secret.
Democrats and Republicans alike held their breath and waited for Mueller’s findings, the result of an agonizing 22-month probe that has divided the country and hobbled the president’s first two years in office.
The impending release of just a summary of the report sometime this weekend unleashed endless rumors and repeated rounds of partisan speculation.
Not even President Trump had been briefed on the contents of the report, White House press office said Saturday, as the Commander-in-Tweet remained uncharacteristically silent all day.
A few top aides huddled with Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, trying to distill the report into a document that can be made public without violating laws regarding grand-jury disclosures.
Concern about leaks of the most highly anticipated political document in recent memory forced Barr to severely limit the number of staffers who can see it, a Justice official told Politico.
Even with the details under wraps, the closure of the probe on Friday without any additional indictments appeared to put the lid on rumors that members of the president’s family — such as son-in-law Jared Kushner or son Donald Trump Jr. — would be criminally charged.
Both men participated in a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer who they thought would share damaging material on Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic opponent.
The plan came to nothing, however, when the visitor turned out to be a lobbyist pitching relief for US sanctions on Russia.
Some Democrats sought to prepare Trump’s political foes for disappointment.
“Once we get the principal conclusions of the report, I think it’s entirely possible that that will be a good day for the president and his core supporters,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said to party members on a Saturday conference call organized to strategize their next steps.
Others kept fanning the collusion flames.
“You have a president who in my opinion, beyond the shadow of a doubt, sought to, however ham-handedly, collude with the Russian government, ― a foreign power,” presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke said on the campaign trail in South Carolina.
Barr has said he wants to release as much of the report as he can. But doing so could force him to ignore longstanding Justice Department policy of withholding negative information about people who are investigated but not criminally indicted.
But Democrats are already pushing for broader than normal disclosures — including the right to see all of the underlying evidence that Mueller collected.
Some have cited former FBI Director James Comey’s precedent-busting speech in 2016 laying out the evidence in the Hillary Clinton email investigation as reason to ignore the standard procedure.
But Rosenstein has suggested the Justice Department, mindful of the backlash against Comey’s disclosure, would avoid such a step.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a new demand Saturday: immediate declassification of Mueller’s report “so that Members can speak freely about every aspect of the report and not be confined to what DOJ chooses to release publicly.”
“Congress requires the full report and the underlying documents so that the Committees can proceed with their independent work, including oversight and legislating to address any issues the Mueller report may raise,” Pelosi wrote in a letter to colleagues Saturday.
“The American people deserve the truth.”
It was a strong signal that House Democrats in Congress will continue probing the collusion allegations — even in the absence of new indictments from Mueller.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan/Brooklyn), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, launched a probe earlier this month into alleged obstruction of justice and other abuses of power by President Trump.
He has asked for records and documents from 81 people and entities connected to the president — but only a few complied and met his March 18 deadline, Fox News reported.
Nadler’s committee would be responsible for introducing articles of impeachment against Trump. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she does not support impeaching the president — because “he’s just not worth it.”
