The Mueller Report: What We Know
If you haven't heard of The Mueller Report, I am genuinely impressed. This means that you have somehow managed to avoid all U.S. politics since the 2016 election. So, for those of you who don’t know about The Mueller Report, or have heard of it and been willfully ignorant, here’s the rundown.
The Mueller Report is a massive investigation that began in 2017 in order to determine whether or not Donald Trump colluded with the Russian government to help him win the presidency. The United States already knew that Russia did interfere and tried to rig the election in favor of Trump, according to a declassified report, and the Mueller report was meant to clarify Trump's role in this plot. The report spanned from 2017-2019, and a full list of the current indictments and a complete timeline of the investigation is shown here.
On March 22, 2019, The Mueller Probe officially ended and Mueller filed his report with Attorney General William Barr. Mueller concluded that Trump did NOT collude with Russia in the 2016 election, but…
The Mueller report has not been made public yet. As of right now, “The Mueller Report: The Final Report of the Special Counsel into Donald Trump, Russia, and Collusion” is being sold on Amazon for $9.20 in paperback edition, and $7.99 for Kindle edition. It is still in pre-order but is already a #1 best seller in the “Federal Jurisdiction Law” category of Amazon. There are questions as to whether the report will be fully released as a select few powerful individuals do not want it to be made public. But, the vast majority of the American public and Congress want the report publicly released, so the chances that we’ll get our hands on it are good.
Since the report is not fully public, we are still in the dark as to whether Trump will be indicted because of one key issue… Obstruction of Justice. When Mueller stated that Trump did not collude with Russia, he also said that the he will leave the charge of obstruction of justice up to the Attorney General. William Barr (The Attorney General) has said that, based off of his reading of the report, there is probably no obstruction of justice, but people were quick to point out his fatal flaw. In saying that there was no obstruction of justice charge, Barr implied that Trump did not lie about doing anything illegal, but, as we see here, obstruction of justice does not require Trump to have lied about committing a crime.
We do not have that many complete answers yet as to how this report will shape American politics and the world at large, but what I can say for certain is that there will be lasting implications. I will be adding a follow up piece as soon as the report is actually released.
By Owen Stone