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Trump Claims ‘Complete and Total’ Exoneration After Barr Letter

White House Claims ‘Complete Exoneration’ of Trump After Barr Summary

(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump declared himself absolved after Attorney General William Barr said that Special Counsel Robert Mueller didn’t find evidence that the president or his campaign conspired with Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“It’s a shame that our country had to go through this,” Trump told reporters before he departed Palm Beach, Florida to return to the White House. He called Mueller’s probe, which began nearly two years ago, an “illegal takedown that failed.”

Barr sent a letter to Congress on Sunday reporting that Mueller found no evidence that Trump or his campaign aides conspired with Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election. Barr also wrote that while Mueller declined to make a judgment about whether Trump committed obstruction of justice by interfering in investigations into the Russian meddling campaign, Barr himself determined there wasn’t sufficient evidence to charge the president.

“The special counsel did not find any collusion and did not find any obstruction,” Sanders said in a statement, inaccurately describing Mueller’s findings. “Attorney General Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein further determined there was no obstruction. The findings of the Department of Justice are a total and complete exoneration of the President of the United States.”

Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani said in a text message: “It’s better than I expected.”

Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., told Bloomberg News that Barr’s summary of Mueller’s report “proves what those of us with sane minds have known all along, there was ZERO collusion with Russia.

“Sadly, instead of apologizing for needlessly destabilizing the country in a transparent attempt to delegitimize the 2016 election, it’s clear that the Collusion Truthers in the media and the Democrat Party are only going to double down on their sick and twisted conspiracy theories moving forward,” Trump Jr. said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Margaret Talev in Washington at mtalev@bloomberg.net;Justin Sink in Washington at jsink1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net

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