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The report could have a sweeping impact on President Donald Trump’s legacy. Hopefully, it will close a convoluted and arduous chapter in US history. Here are nine major questions:
The big question driving Mueller’s two-year investigation was simple: Did anyone affiliated with Trump’s presidential campaign coordinate with the Russians to help Trump win the election?
Did Mueller see “collusion” as a crime?
The legal community will be watching to see how Mueller went about investigating “collusion.” Federal investigators search for violations of specific US laws. So, which laws came into play?
What about obstruction of justice?
This was by far the most puzzling part of Barr’s letter. Mueller’s job was to be an independent arbiter who could make tough decisions like these. He was there to keep these decisions out of the hands of political appointees like Barr, who was Trump’s pick to run the Justice Department.
In his summary, Barr hinted that Mueller’s original report might feature elements of the internal debate on obstruction. He said Mueller described the dilemma as a series of “difficult issues.”
How did Mueller assess Trump’s statements and tweets?
As part of the obstruction inquiry, prosecutors examined “a number of actions by the President,” Barr said, and he specifically noted that most of those actions “took place in public view.”
The report will probably include Mueller’s assessment of how those public actions fit into a larger mosaic of obstruction. Trump’s defenders have argued that he can’t illegally undermine an investigation through public words and tweets. We’ll find out soon if Mueller agrees.
Barr’s carefully worded letter said the public already knows about “most,” but not all, of the events that Mueller scrutinized as part of the obstruction inquiry. That means there are more shoes to drop, new episodes of potential wrongdoing that could be damaging to Trump.
Were Trump Jr. or Kushner investigated but never charged?
The regulations don’t say much about what should go in Mueller’s report. But they do say Mueller needs to explain “prosecution or declination decisions reached by the Special Counsel.”
But we don’t know the “declination decisions.” That is, the people Mueller investigated but decided not to charge. This section of the report could be highly redacted. But even if it’s blacked-out, we could still get a glimpse into how long the list is. This could include other Trump associates or even members of Trump’s family, like Donald Trump Jr. or his son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Will Mueller offer ethical or moral conclusions?
The investigation is over, and Mueller isn’t bringing charges against anyone else. But that doesn’t mean everyone whose conduct was scrutinized will walk away with a clean bill of health.
It’s possible that the report concludes that some actions were not criminal but showed poor judgment or were highly unethical. What comes to mind is Trump Jr.’s eagerness to accept dirt on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton from Russians at the Trump Tower meeting.
Mueller is known as a straight-shooter. He was hired to look for crimes, not to be the morality police. It seems unlikely that he would offer moral judgments like these, but it’s possible.
How many related investigations are ongoing?
During the course of his investigation, Mueller referred some cases to other prosecutors.
The length of the redactions could be telling, and it should be easy to identify which redactions are about ongoing probes. Barr said at a House hearing on Tuesday that all the redactions will be “color-coded” to identify why the material was blacked-out.
How did Mueller investigate the Russians?
The CIA and NSA likely helped Mueller’s team get these insider details, like the Google searches of alleged hackers and the monthly budget of the St. Petersburg-based troll farm.
Unfortunately, it’s all but assured that large chunks of this part of the report will be blacked-out. US intelligence agencies get to scrub the report for “sources and methods,” and will redact any information that they think could hurt national security or put human sources in danger if it became public.
Which countries assisted the investigation?
Mueller’s team “made 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence,” according to Barr’s summary of their investigation. The report might identify which countries were involved. It could be included in the “tables and appendices” that Barr said come after the nearly 400-page report.
Any additional revelations of foreign governments cooperating with Mueller, even in an entirely routine way, could lead to diplomatic fallout. Trump has long viewed the probe was a “witch hunt” and he would likely turn his ire on any foreign leader whose country helped Mueller out.
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