Presented with Related Materials by The Washington Post
By Robert Mueller
Introduction and Analysis by Reporters Rosalind S. Helderman and Matt Zapotosky
Mueller’s team toiled for long stretches in silence, emerging periodically to file bombshell indictments.
Two of the indictments appeared designed to explain to the American people exactly what the Russians did during the campaign. In February 2018, Mueller’s team indicted thirteen Russian nationals and three Russian companies, alleging that they had engaged in a complex two-year scheme to interfere in US politics by posing as Americans and planting false news stories and divisive ads on Social media. Working from a small office building in St. Petersburg,these trolls allegedly duped real Americans with whom they interacted online, amplifying tense debates about race, gun control, and sexual identity, pushing pro-Trump messages and even getting some Americans to organize and attend rallies they orchestrated. Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin, who the Russian news media has identified as the financial backer of the group, told Russia’s state news agency of the indictment, “The Americans are very impressionable people, and they see what they want to see,” adding, “I am not at all disappointed that I appear on this list. If they want to see the devil – let them.” Then, in July 2018, Mueller’s team indicted twelve Russian military intelligence officers, alleging that they hacked into the email accounts of the Democratic Party and Clinton campaign officials and posed online as an entity called Guccifer 2.0 to publish the material, including by passing it to WikiLeaks and others. The Russian Foreign Ministry rejected the indictment’s allegations as lacking evidence and described the charges as a clear effort to derail an upcoming Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki. “It is unfortunate that distributing false information has become the norm in Washington, and that criminal cases are being initiated based on clearly political motives,” the ministry said.
(Mueller 2019, pp.23-24)
The IRA [Internal Research Agency] operated individualized Twitter accounts similar to the operation of its Facebook accounts, by continuously posting original content to the accounts while also communicating with U.S. Twitter users directly (through public tweeting or Twitter’s private messaging).
The IRA used many of these accounts to attempt to influence U.S. audiences on the election. Individualized accounts used to influence the U.S. presidential election included @TEN_GOP; @jenn_abrams (claiming to be a Virginia Trump supporter with 70,000 followers); @Pamela_Moore13 (claiming to be a Texan Trump supporter with 70,000 followers); and @America_1st_ (an anti-immigration persona with 24,000 followers). In May 2016, the IRA created the Twitter account @march_for_trump, which promoted IRA-organized rallies in support of the Trump Campaign (described below).
… [REDACTED] …
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Using these accounts and others, the IRA provoked reactions from users and the media. Multiple IRA-posted tweets gained popularity. U.S. media outlets also quoted tweets from IRA-controlled accounts and attributed them to the reactions of real U.S. persons. Similarly, numerous high-profile U.S. persons, including former Ambassador Michael McFaul, Roger Stone, Sean Hannity, and Michael Flynn Jr., retweeted or responded to tweets posted to these IRA-controlled accounts. Multiple individuals affiliated with the Trump Campaign also promoted IRA tweets.
(Mueller 2019, pp.85-86)
Throughout 2016, the Trump Campaign expressed interest in Hillary Clinton’s private email server and whether approximately 30,000 emails from that server had in fact been permanently destroyed, as reported by the media. Several individuals associated with the Campaign were contacted in 2016 about various efforts to obtain the missing Clinton emails and other stolen material in support of the Trump Campaign. Some of these contacts were met with skepticism, and nothing came of them; others were pursued to some degree. The investigation did not find evidence the the Trump Campaign recovered any such Clinton emails, or that these contacts were part of a coordinated effort between Russia and the Trump Campaign.
(Mueller 2019, pp.119)
The Office identified multiple contacts – “links,” in the words of the Appointment Order – between Trump Campaign officials and individuals with ties to the Russian government. The Office investigated whether those contacts constituted a third avenue of attempted Russian interference with or influence on the 2016 presidential election. In particular, the investigation examined whether these contacts involved or resulted in coordination or a conspiracy with the Trump Campaign and Russia, including with respect to Russia providing assistance to the Campaign in exchange for any sort of favorable treatment in the future. Based on the available information, the investigation did not establish such coordination.
(Mueller 2019, pp.124)
On June 9, 2016, senior representatives of the Trump Campaign met in Trump Tower with a Russian attorney expecting to receive derogatory information about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government. The meeting was proposed to Donald Trump Jr. in an email from Robert Goldstone, at the request of his then-client Emin Agalarov, the son of Russian real-estate developer Aras Agalarov. Goldstone relayed to Trump Jr. that the “Crown prosecutor of Russia … offered to provide the Trump Campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia” as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Trump Jr. immediately responded that “if it’s what you say I love it,” and arranged the meeting through a series of emails and telephone calls.
Trump Jr. invited campaign chairman Paul Manafort and senior advisor Jared Kushner to attend the meeting, and both attended. Members of the Campaign discussed the meeting before it occurred, and Michael Cohen recalled that Trump Jr. may have told candidate Trump about an upcoming meeting to receive adverse information about Clinton, without linking the meeting to Russia. According to written answers submitted by President Trump, he has no recollection of learning of the meeting at the time, and the Office found no documentary evidence showing that he was made aware of the meeting – or its Russian connection – before it occurred.
The Russian attorney who spoke at the meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya, had previously worked for the Russian government and maintained a relationship with that government throughout this period of time. She claimed that funds derived from illegal activities in Russia were provided to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats. Trump Jr. requested evidence to support those claims, but Beselnitskaya did not provide such information. She and her associates then turned to a critique of the origins of the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 statute that imposed financial and travel sanctions to Russian officials and that resulted in a retaliatory ban on adoptions of Russian children. Trump Jr. suggested that the issue could be revisited when and if candidate Trump was elected. After the election, Veselnitskaya made additional efforts to follow up on the meeting, but the Trump Transition Team did not engage.
(Mueller 2019, pp.168)
Although members of the IRA had contact with individuals affiliated with the Trump Campaign, the indictment does not charge any Trump Campaign official or any other U.S. person with participating in the conspiracy. That is because the investigation did not identify evidence that any U.S. person who coordinated or communicated with the IRA knew that he or she was speaking with Russian nationals engaged in the criminal conspiracy. The Office therefore determined that such persons did not have the knowledge or criminal purpose required to charge them in the conspiracy to defraud the United States (Count One) or in the separate count alleging a wire- and bank -fraud conspiracy involving the IRA and two individual Russian nationals (Count Two).
The Office did, however, charge one U.S. national for his role in supplying false or stolen bank account numbers that allowed the IRA conspirators to access U.S. online payment systems by circumventing those systems’ security features. On February 12, 2018, Richard Pinedo pleaded guilty, pursuant to a single-count information, to identity fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.S. 1028(a)(7) and (b)(1)(D). Plea Agreement, United States v. Richard Piedo, No. 1:18-cr-24 (D.D.C. Feb. 12, 2018), Doc. 10. The investigation did not establish that Pinedo was aware of the identity of the IRA members who purchased bank account numbers from him. Pinedo’s sales of account numbers enabled the IRA members to anonymously access a financial network through which they transacted with U.S. persons and companies. See Gov’t Sent. Mem. at 3, United States v. Richard Pinedo, No. 1:18-cr-24 (D.D.C. Sept. 26,2018), Doc. 24. On October 10, 2018, Pinedo was sentenced to six months of imprisonment, to be followed by six months of home confinement, and was ordered to complete 100 hours of community service.
(Mueller 2019, pp.233)
As an initial matter, this Office evaluated potentially criminal conduct that involved the collective action of multiple individuals not under the rubric of “collusion,” but through the lens of conspiracy law. In so doing, the Office recognized that the word “collud[e]” appears in the Acting Attorney General’s August 2, 2017 memorandum; it has frequently been invoked in public reporting; and it is sometimes referenced in antitrust law, see, e.g., Brooke Group v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 509 U.S. 209, 227 (1993). But collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found int he U.S. Code; nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law. To the contrary, even as defined in legal dictionaries, collusion is largely synonymous with conspiracy as that crime is set froth in the general federal conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. 371. See Black’s Law Dictionary 321 (10th ed. 2014) (collusion is “[a]n agreement to defraud another or to do or obtain something forbidden by law”); 1 Alexander Burrill, A Law Dictionary and Glossary 311 (1871) (“An agreement between two or more persons to defraud another by the forms of law, or to employ such forms as means of accomplishing some unlawful object.”) 1 Bouvier’s Law Dictionary 352 (1897) (“An agreement between two or more persons to defraud a person of his rights by the forms of law, or to obtain an object forbidden by law.”).
For this reason, this Office’s focus in resolving the question of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as defined in federal law, not the commonly discussed term “collusion.” The Office considered in particular whether contacts between Trump Campaign officials and Russia-linked individuals could trigger liability for the crime of conspiracy – either under statutes that have their own conspiracy language (e.g., 18 U.S.C. 1349, 1951(a)), or under the general conspiracy statute (18 U.S.C. 371). The investigation did not establish that the contacts described in Volume I, Section IV, supra, amounted to an agreement to commit any substantive violation of federal criminal law – including foreign-influence and campaign-financial laws, both of which are discussed further below. The Office therefore did not charge any individual associated with the Trump Campaign with conspiracy to commit a federal offense arising from Russia contacts, either under a specific statute or under Section 371’s offenses clause.
The Office also did not charge any campaign official or associate with a conspiracy under Section 371’s defraud clause. That clause criminalizes participating in an agreement to obstruct a lawful function of the U.S. government or its agencies through deceitful or dishonest means. See Dennis v. United States, 384 U.S. 855, 861 (1966); Hammerschmidt v. United States, 265 U.S. 182, 188 (1924); see also United States v. Concord Mgmt. & Consulting LLC, 347 F. Supp. 3d 38, 46 (D.D.C. 2018). The investigation did not establish any agreement among Campaign officials – or between such officials and Russia-linked individuals – to interfere with or obstruct a lawful function of a government agency during the campaign or transition period. And, as discussed in Volume I, Section V.A, supra, the investigation did not identify evidence that any Campaign official or associate knowingly and intentionally participated in the conspiracy to defraud that the Office charged, namely, the active-measures conspiracy described in Volume I, Section II, supra. Accordingly, the Office did not charge any Campaign associate or other U.S. person with conspiracy to defraud the United States based on the Russia-related contacts described in Section IV above.
(Mueller 2019, pp.238-239)
The anticipated effect of removing the FBI director, however, would not necessarily be to prevent or impede the FBI from continuing its investigation. As a general matter, FBI investigations run under the operational director of FBI personnel levels below the FBI director. Bannon made a similar point when he told the PResident that he could fire the FBI director, but could not fire the FBI. The White House issued a press statement the day after Comey was fired that said, “The investigation would have always continued, and obviously, the termination of Comey would not have ended it.” In addition, in his May 11 interview with Lester Holt, the PResident stated that he understood when he made the decision to fire Comey that the action might prolong the investigation. And the President chose McCabe to serve as interim director, even though McCabe told the President he had worked “very closely” with Comey and was part of all the decisions made in the Clinton investigation.
(Mueller 2019, pp.336-337)
But the evidence does not establish that the President took steps to prevent the emails or other information about the June 9 meeting from being provided to Congress or the Special Counsel. The series of discussions in which the President sought to limit access to the emails and prevent their public release occurred in the context of developing a press strategy. The only evidence we have of the President discussing the production of documents to Congress or the Special Counsel is the conversation on June 29, 2017, when Hicks recalled the President acknowledging that Kushner’s attorney should provide emails related to the June 9 meeting to whomever he needed to give them to. We do not have evidence of what the President discussed with his own lawyers at that time.
(Mueller 2019, pp.368)
References
Mueller, Robert S. 2019. The Mueller Report. N.p.: Scribner.
ISBN 978-1-9821-2973-6
Benjamin’s Book Joural 
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