According to the summary released by Attorney General William Barr, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election found there was no conspiracy involving Donald Trump or his campaign.
“The Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign,” read the four-page letter by Attorney General William Barr summarizing “principal conclusions” of Mueller’s investigation. The letter was sent to leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees Sunday afternoon, two days after Mueller delivered the confidential report to Barr.
While Barr’s letter also drew no final conclusions about whether or not the president obstructed justice, President Trump and his legal team are taking the final report as a complete victory.
“After a long look, after a long investigation, after so many people have been so badly hurt, after not looking at the other side where a lot of bad things happened…it was just announced there was no collusion with Russia, the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,”
Trump told reporters before he boarded Air Force One in Palm Beach, Florida where he finally broke his silence days after the end of the two-year investigation into possible collusion between his campaign and the Russian government.
“It was a complete and total exoneration,” said Trump. “It’s a shame that our country had to go through this. To be honest it’s a shame that your president had to go through this.”
Trump Turns the Tables on Mueller?
Now, following the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s key findings — including no evidence of collusion with Russia during the 2016 campaign – it seems that the president is seeking once again to turn the tables on Mueller, by renewing calls to investigate the investigators.
“Hopefully somebody is going to look at the other side,” Trump said. “This was an illegal takedown that failed, and hopefully somebody is going to be looking at the other side.”
In case it wasn’t clear what he meant by that statement, Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani told Fox News an investigation should be launched into how the investigation began.
“He was being investigated for a crime that never happened,” Giuliani said. “There was never any collusion.”
Giuliani added, “There has to be a full and complete investigation, with at least as much enthusiasm as this one, to figure out where did this charge emanate, who started it, who paid for it.”
The former New York mayor specifically called out one of Trump’s most vocal critics, Rep. Adam Schiff, asking the California lawmaker where the evidence of collusion is that Schiff has said he has.
“Where is Schiff’s evidence?” Giuliani asked. “Where is it? In his head?”
Trump has maintained all along that he never colluded with Russia during the 2016 campaign. He has long decried the Mueller probe as a “witch hunt” while attacking the FBI figures who launched the original Russia probe that was eventually taken over by Mueller in 2017. Trump and his legal team have also questioned what role the unverified and salacious anti-Trump “dossier” played in the probe’s beginnings.
