What We Learned—and Didn’t—From Barr’s Mueller Summary

(Bloomberg) -- "No collusion" may have been the biggest headline on a very good day for President Donald Trump, but there are many other questions about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month Russia investigation.

Here are eight of the biggest questions and how Attorney General William Barr did -- or didn’t -- answer them in a four-page summary sent to Congress on Sunday.

Did Trump conspire in Russia’s efforts to help him?

From the now-famous 2016 meeting in Trump Tower, to Trump publicly urging the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails, there were an unusually large number of times when Trump’s campaign seemed to intersect with Russia. Yet Mueller found no collusion. Why?

Mueller concluded that yes, there were "multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign." He documented two separate efforts by Russia to tilt the 2016 election toward Trump, one by its euphemistically named Internet Research Agency -- essentially a massive disinformation and social media campaign to meddle in U.S. politics -- and a second run by Russian government hackers who targeted Clinton and the Democratic Party.

Despite all that, Mueller concluded, in essence, that Trump did nothing to help the Russians. Mueller “did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election," Barr wrote.

Did Trump obstruct justice?

Here, Mueller, in effect, punted. “While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” Barr quoted Mueller as saying.

In the face of this non-decision, Barr stepped in and said that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein reached a clearer conclusion: The evidence collected by Mueller "is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction of justice offense.”

Trump fired the FBI director. That’s not obstruction?

Barr’s letter doesn’t mention Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, or that Trump once said he did so over frustration over the Russia probe.

Democrats plan to review that conclusion and are demanding more evidence collected by Mueller. Some of them are already saying that Barr had effectively prejudged the question of obstruction even before Mueller’s report arrived.

Barr wrote an 19-page memo as a private citizen in 2018 arguing that a president couldn’t obstruct justice by exercising his executive authority to appoint or remove appointees -- the very question at the heart of the Comey firing.

Will anybody else be going to prison?

Mueller won’t be issuing new indictments, but there’s unfinished business, including the trial of longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone. Other unrelated investigations continue, including a Southern District of New York probe of hush money former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen said Trump directed him to make before the election.

Did Putin order the interference to aid Donald Trump?

Trump’s seeming coziness with Russian President Vladimir Putin has always led Democrats to question whether they conspired on the election. Barr said Mueller found the Russian government engaged in multiple efforts to interfere in the 2016 elections, and a number of Russians offered assistance to Trump associates.

But his letter is silent on whether Putin ordered the operations, as U.S. intelligence agencies previously found. Mueller indicted two dozen Russians for hacking Democrats and social media meddling during the campaign.

What did Mueller conclude about the Trump Tower meeting?

In Barr’s letter, there’s no mention of this 2016 meeting even though it has long been thought to be a central issue in Mueller’s probe. In the meeting, Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner met with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton. Barr said that while there were a number of offers of assistance from Russians to the Trump campaign, Mueller couldn’t find conspiracy or coordination with Russian efforts.

What about Trump’s plans for a Moscow tower?

Barr’s letter doesn’t mention the project, which Cohen testified he pursued on Trump’s behalf well into 2016.

When will we see the full Mueller report?

Barr wrote that the report includes evidence that should be protected because it came from secret grand jury proceedings. He said he plans to release more information soon after working with Mueller to expunge protected information, but he didn’t set a timeline. Democrats are already demanding the full report, which could lead to a protracted fight that could eventually land in the Supreme Court.

--With assistance from Billy House.

To contact the reporters on this story: Steven T. Dennis in Washington at sdennis17@bloomberg.net;Ben Brody in Washington at btenerellabr@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, Craig Gordon, Larry Liebert

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.