Mueller special counsel investigation
The probe included a criminal investigation that looked into potential conspiracy and obstruction of justice charges against Trump and members of his campaign or his administration.
[32][33] In January 2017, an assessment was released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, then headed by Obama appointee James Clapper, which asserted that Russian leadership had favored presidential candidate Donald Trump over rival candidate Hillary Clinton, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin had personally ordered an "influence campaign" to harm Clinton's electoral chances and "undermine public faith in the US democratic process".
As part of his oversight, Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel in May 2017 with the mandate "to oversee the previously-confirmed FBI investigation of Russian government efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election and related matters".
[49] Complicating the situation, Comey arranged to leak to the press classified information, notes from an interview with the president where Trump asked him to end the probe into Michael Flynn.
[53] The New York Times reported on January 11, 2019, that FBI counterintelligence grew concerned about Trump's ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign but held off opening an investigation because of uncertainty about how to proceed on such a sensitive matter.
[72][73] On March 14, 2019, the House voted 420–0 in favor of a non-binding resolution calling for the full special counsel report to be released to Congress and the public, excluding classified or grand jury information.
[79] Two days later, on March 24, Barr sent a four-page letter of the report to Congress, describing the conclusions on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and obstruction of justice.
[11] Barr said the report would be delivered to Congress by mid-April, with some redactions of any information that would "potentially compromise sources and methods" or "unduly infringe on the personal privacy and reputational interests of peripheral third parties".
The grand jury has the power to subpoena documents, require witnesses to testify under oath, and issue indictments for targets of criminal charges if probable cause is found.
[85] NBC News reported on August 25, 2017, that "in recent days" the grand jury subpoenaed witness testimony from the executives of six public relations firms, who worked with Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on lobbying efforts in Ukraine.
[99] On August 10, 2018, federal judge Beryl A. Howell found Stone's former aide Andrew Miller to be in contempt of court for refusing to testify before the grand jury.
Corsi's attorney said he expected his client to be asked about his association with Roger Stone, who had appeared to know in advance that WikiLeaks would release damaging information about the Clinton campaign.
[119][120] Previously in August 2017, one month prior to joining the Justice Department as Sessions' chief of staff, Whitaker wrote an opinion column for CNN titled "Mueller's investigation of Trump is going too far".
[125] Whitaker, a vocal Trump supporter, had publicly criticized the Mueller investigation on several occasions before joining the Justice Department in September 2017, asserting it was "going too far" and referring to it as a "lynch mob".
[137][138][139] On February 14, 2019, Barr was sworn in as attorney general after the Senate approved his appointment by a 54–45 vote that day,[140][141] thus gaining oversight of the Mueller investigation from Whitaker.
Charges were also filed against bank account seller Richard Pinedo,[149] and lawyer Alex van der Zwaan as well as Paul Manafort associate Konstantin Kilimnik.
[152] The Democrat-controlled House Intelligence Committee voted in February 2019 to refer dozens of witness testimony transcripts and thousands of other documents to Mueller's office.
[154] The indictment filed by the Office of the Special Counsel contained 7 charges, including obstructing an official proceeding, witness tampering, and lying to congress in regard to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election and his involvement with WikiLeaks.
"[161] Dozens of ongoing investigations originally handled by the Special Counsel's office were forwarded to district and state prosecutors, other Department of Justice (DoJ) branches, and other federal agencies.
[186] Barr said that on the question of Russian interference in the election, Mueller detailed two ways in which Russia attempted to influence the election, firstly disinformation and social media campaigns by the Internet Research Agency to cause social discord, and secondly computer hacking and strategic release of emails from the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and Democratic Party organizations.
[187][188] However, Barr quoted the report as saying: "[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.
"[189][186][190][191] On the question of obstruction of justice, Barr said no conclusion was reached by the special counsel, noting that Mueller wrote "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him".
[202][203][204][191] In May 2021, federal judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled the Barr DOJ had misled her and Congress by asserting a heavily redacted March 2019 internal memorandum[205] contained only deliberative analysis of whether Trump should be charged with obstruction of justice.
On May 8, 2019, after Trump invoked executive privilege, the House Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to reject White House's assertion of executive privilege and approve a motion put forward by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fl) which states that a vote to hold Barr in contempt would not "be construed as a directive for the Attorney General to violate Federal law or rules.
[19][20][250] Since they had decided "not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment" on whether to "initiate or decline a prosecution," the special counsel's office "did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President's conduct."
[28][18] The House Judiciary and Intelligence committees subpoenaed Mueller on June 25, 2019, with a letter saying that "the American public deserves to hear directly from you about your investigation and conclusions."
[259][260] There have been numerous calls and requests to open a counter-investigation into the origins of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane probe, with attention on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) documents against Carter Page and the Steele dossier.
"Many people seem to assume that the only intelligence collection that occurred was a single confidential informant [referring to Stefan Halper] and a FISA warrant," Barr stated.
When asked by Republican Senator John Cornyn "Can we state with confidence that the Steele dossier was not part of the Russian disinformation campaign" Barr responded "No.
[268] On October 24, 2019, news media reported that Durham had opened a criminal probe into the matter, giving him the power to empanel a grand jury and to compel testimony.
