Barr reported on Friday he received the documents titled “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election.”
Conclusions from Mueller’s investigation and Barr’s summary report
1. Russian government interests sought to influence the 2016 election through a disinformation campaign using social media and by hacking computers of the Democratic Party and of candidate Hillary Clinton, but found no evidence that President Donald Trump or members of his campaign coordinated with Russians in that work.
2. Special Counsel Robert Mueller reached no conclusion on whether or not President Trump sought to obstruct justice by his actions during the investigation. “While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” Mueller wrote
3. Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded that based on Mueller’s statement, that the evidence “is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”
U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Dayton, told WHIO’s John Bedell on Sunday that it’s clear from Barr’s summary that Mueller’s exhaustive investigation came to the same conclusions arrived at by the House Intelligence Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee, that there was no collusion.
“It gives the American public the confidence that, although the Russians tried to interfere in our elections, that there were no Americans that conspired or colluded with Russia and certainly wasn’t the president or the president’s campaign,” Turner said.
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U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Urbana) initially took to Twitter in reacting to the release, Tweeting “No collusion! No obstruction! It’s time to move on.”
Jordan sent a statement later saying that “after 22 months and over $25 million in taxpayer funds, we know what many of us suspected all along — there was no collusion, coordination, or cooperation with Russia.”
“All the special counsel’s prosecution of U.S. persons in the course of this investigation were wholly unrelated to collusion,” Jordan said.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said the report “finds no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.” Portman noted that while the “summary indicates that” Mueller” “reached no conclusion on obstruction of justice,” he said the Justice Department does not plan to pursue “any obstruction of justice charges against the president.”
Portman repeated his call that the report be made public, saying he hopes “to have the opportunity to review the report very soon.”
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said the summary report “is not enough,” calling on the Justice Department to “turn over the full report to Congress.”
John Bedell, Jack Torry and Jessica Wehrman of the Washington D.C. bureau contributed to this report
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