Donald Trump has flown to his private resort in Florida for the Easter holiday, as lawmakers on Capitol Hill issue subpoenas and discuss impeachment proceedings in the wake of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
The president exploded on Twitter the morning after the report’s release to the public, calling statements included in the nearly 450-page document “bulls**t.”
“Statements are made about me by certain people in the Crazy Mueller Report, in itself written by 18 Angry Democrat Trump Haters, which are fabricated & totally untrue,” he tweeted Friday. “Watch out for people that take so-called ‘notes,’ when the notes never existed until needed. Because I never agreed to testify, it was not necessary for me to respond to statements made in the ‘Report’ about me, some of which are total bullshit & only given to make the other person look good (or me to look bad).”
Meanwhile, the House Oversight Chairman has suggested the possibility of impeaching Donald Trump in the wake of the explosive Mueller report.
“A lot of people keep asking about the question of impeachment. We may very well come to that very soon,” Elijah Cummings said in an interview with MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
He added, “But right now, let’s make sure we understand what Mueller was doing, understand what [Attorney General William] Barr was doing, and see the report in an unredacted form, and all of the underlying documents.”
Mr Mueller laid out multiple episodes in which the president directed others to influence or curtail the Russia investigation after the special counsel’s appointment in May 2017.
The report says those efforts “were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the president declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests”.
The attorney general said on Thursday a version of the report with fewer redactions will be made available to a small group of lawmakers.
He said all redactions would be removed from that version of the report except those relating to grand-jury information.
Additional reporting by AP. Please allow the blog a moment to load
Hello and welcome to The Independent's live coverage of all the fallout from the explosive findings of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign and its links to Russian election interference.
The release of the 400-page, redacted version of Robert Mueller’s probe was one of the most eagerly-awaited events of his first term.
Following the release of attorney general William Barr’s summary of the report last month, many were waiting for a more detailed look at Mr Mueller’s findings.
There have been particular questions still lingering over the issue of possible obstruction of justice by Mr Trump since the release of that summary.
Here are nine key findings from Mr Mueller's final report.
'Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m f*****': Trump's reaction to Mueller
Redacted documents runs to more than 400-pages across two volumesDonald Trump has reacted furiously overnight on Twitter to the Mueller report's findings, which documented extensive efforts by the president to impede the investigations into him, many of which were only prevented by his aides refusing to follow orders.
Trump's claim he could have "fired everyone" if he wanted is likely true, but would also have greatly increased his chances of being impeached.
In fact, it is not clear how much the vote was affected by Russia's interference, which included an extensive social media disinformation campaign against US citizens.
This claim you cannot obstruct justice if an underlying crime cannot be established is again untrue. There are often convictions of the former without the latter.
Donald Trump's Twitter rant doesn't end their...
Prosecutors didn't in fact attempt to charge Trump. They were tasked with finding and laying out the facts, which they did. There was also ample evidence Trump committed acts that could constitute a crime, but Robert Mueller decided not to draw definitive conclusions.
The document actually supported the media's reporting of the Trump campaign and its links to Russians. Many of the incidents first outlined by US news outlets were included in Mueller's report.
Donald Trump has flown out of Washington to his resort in Florida, falsely claiming Robert Mueller had totally exonerated him, and with Democrats assessing how best to respond to a report that failed to provide them with a true smoking gun.
Five hours after the special counsel’s lightly redacted report was finally made public, the president waved and grinned as he boarded Air Force One for a three-day weekend. He did not speak to reporters, but earlier said at the White House he was having a good day as the report revealed “no collusion, no obstruction”. Later, apparently tweeting while on his way south, Mr Trump urged people to watch Fox News later and said: “It was a really great day for America.”
Read more...
Trump leaves town claiming victory and with Democrats scrambling to respond
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez among Democrats pushing for president's impeachmentWe will include some of the main findings of the Mueller report on here throughout the day. Here's one particularly notable one:
Trump thought he was “f*****” after Robert Mueller was appointed
The president did not react too kindly to Mueller being given the job as special counsel by Rod Rosenstein. The president is said to have “slumped back in his chair and said: “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m f*****.”
If you want to read the Mueller report in its entirety, head to the story below. A warning though: it stretches to 400 pages.
How to download the explosive Mueller report - free
Justice Department website will be the official home to the report – though free ebooks are already being made availableBREAKING: Russia says the Mueller report has failed to present any evidence of Russian meddling in the US election.
You can see for yourself the evidence collected by Robert Mueller about the Kremlin's interference here.
Donald Trump's continued attempt to cast the Mueller report in a positive light continued yesterday with a montage of mainly CNN pundits declaring there was "no collusion". The video did not address the issue of obstruction of justice.
The instances of possible obstruction by the president
Robert Mueller’s report makes clear that he did not feel able to pass a traditional legal judgement on whether Donald Trump obstructed justice, but the report “does not exonerate him” with a number of episodes of possible obstruction examined. There were at least 10 such episodes, such of which will be explained in greater detail later in this article. They include:
- The Trump campaign’s response to reports about Russian support for the would-be president
- Conduct involving FBI Director James Comey, who initially led the Russia investigation until Mr Trump fired him in May 2017, and former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn
- Trump’s reaction to the Russia investigation as it was taking place – including angry tweets deriding the investigation
- The president’s termination of Comey
- The appointment of Mueller special counsel and efforts to remove him. This includes attempts to have White House lawyer Don McGahn deny that Trump ordered him to have Mueller removed
- Efforts to curtail Mueller’s investigation
- Efforts to prevent public disclosure of evidence that could prove useful to the investigation
- Further efforts to have the attorney general take control of the Russia investigation
- Conduct towards Flynn, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and another redacted individual
- Conduct involving Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen
Mueller says at the start of the report: “A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there no evidence of the facts.”
William Barr and deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein have decided that none of this evidence passes the threshold required to bring a criminal case.
Here's footage of Anderson Cooper's extraordinary interview with White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley, who continues to claim Donald Trump does not lie, despite multiple instances of lying being laid out in the Mueller report.
Cooper eventually, exasperated, brings the segment to an apparently premature close.
Donald Trump yesterday tweeted a Game of Thrones-themed poster, claiming it was not 'Game Over' after the Mueller report cleared him of conspiring with Russia.
Now, HBO has responded to the tweet, with a spokesperson saying it would "prefer our intellectual property not be used for political purposes".
HBO has responded to Trump using a Game of Thrones meme again
The Independent'We can understand the enthusiasm for 'Game of Thrones'...'Two Democratic-led Congressional committees have issued subpoenas to nine major banks as part of their investigations into Donald Trump’s finances, according to the latest reports.
Those banks include Deutsche Bank, which was previously reported to have received subpoenas from lawmakers surrounding the president’s financial records, and at least eight others, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
Read more...
Nine major banks subpoenaed in probe into Trump’s finances
Top Democrats say they are looking 'into allegations of potential foreign influence on the US political process'Jamie Raskin, a Democratic member of the House judiciary committee, said his reading of the report shows that Donald 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."
Rashida Tlaib, a freshman Democratic congresswoman, has filed an impeachment resolution against the president, which has won support from influential Democratic colleague Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The impeachment resolution is also supported by congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who has born the brunt of relentless attacks from the president in recent weeks.
Another key takeaway from Robert Mueller's completed report:
Trump’s campaign ‘expected’ help from Russia but nobody conspired
The report concludes that Russia definitely interfered in the 2016 election, but there was no conspiring between those on Trump’s team and people connected to Russia – despite a number of “links” between individuals.
Here is what the report says: “[T]he 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.”
Opinion: For months Donald Trump and his White House staff appeared to be losing the information game over the Mueller Report.
At times last year not a week seemed to go by without a former member of Trump’s election team or those close to him facing indictments, guilty pleas or court cases as part of the probe or its connected investigations. It only seemed a matter of time, amid regular angry tweets about the probe from the president, before the president found himself in hot water.
But the Justice Department, and by extension the White House, has been able to take back control of the narrative in a way that seemed extremely unlikely a few weeks ago.
Read more...
Opinion: Barr has proved Trump now controls the Mueller narrative - no matter how hard Democrats try
Critics will rightly focus on Robert Mueller's 10 episodes of possible collusion but it will likely make little differenceHere's a key portion of Robert Mueller's report - on page 157 - in which investigators explain Donald Trump's acts which "were capable of exerting undue influence" over the investigation.
Here's footage of Sarah Sanders' interview with Sean Hannity, in which she addresses her false claim there were "countless" FBI agents pleased to see the firing of James Comey.
She then doubles down on the claim, saying it is "not untrue".
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