'I have NOTHING to hide,' says Trump as attorney general reveals he will publish 400-page Mueller report in mid-April 'so everyone can read it'
- Attorney general William Barr reveals he will publish the Mueller report by 'mid-April or earlier'
- President said he has 'confidence' in Barr and has 'nothing to hide'
- Trump followed up with attacks on the Mueller probe
- He has written to the House and Senate Judiciary Committee chairs - Democrat Jerry Nadler and Republican Lindsey Graham - to inform them of progress
- Barr revealed that the report is 400 pages but will be published with redactions
- Department of Justice will censor classified information, details that could expose intelligence sources, and anything to do with open criminal cases
- Attorney general offered to testify to the Senate committee on May 1 and House the following day
- He said Trump had waived executive privilege so the White House will not be sent the report to see if they want anything redacted
- Says the four-page letter he released Sunday was NOT an official summary of the report but of its bottom line
- Barr's Sunday letter said Mueller cleared Trump of collusion but 'did not exonerate' him of obstruction to justice; that decision was taken by Barr
President Donald Trump said he is on board with Attorney General William Barr's decision to release the nearly 400-page Mueller report – minus several categories of redactions that are already drawing scrutiny.
'I have great confidence in the new attorney general, if that's what he'd like to do,' Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club Friday. 'I have nothing to hide,' the president said.
Then Trump went off on yet another attack against the Mueller probe, the product of which Barr would be releasing following a redaction process, according to a new letter from the attorney general.
'This was a hoax. This was a witch hunt. I have absolutely nothing to hide. And I think a lot of things are coming out with respect to the other side,' Trump said, in a veiled reference to Democrats and other critics who have been set back by summary findings that Mueller did not find evidence that his campaign conspired with the Russian government.
'I have nothing to hide,' President Trump said Friday. He was speaking to reporters at Mar-a-Lago alongside outgoing Administrator of the Small Business Administration Linda McMahon
By Friday evening, Trump took his attacks on Mueller online, casting the prosecutor who Trump earlier bragged 'totally exonerated' him as a partisan idolized by the 'Radical Left.'
'Robert Mueller was a Hero to the Radical Left Democrats, until he ruled that there was No Collusion with Russia (so ridiculous to even say!). After more than two years since the 'insurance policy' statement was made by a dirty cop, I got the answers I wanted ...' Trump wrote, referencing an FBI email uncovered through an Inspector General's investigation.
Earlier Friday afternoon, Barr told the chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees that he expects to release Special Counsel Robert Mueller's final report in the next two weeks, and that he will testify publicly about it in early May.
In a letter to Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Barr said the Justice Department is 'preparing the report for release, making the redactions that are required.'
'Our progress is such that I anticipate we will be in a position to release the report by mid-April, if not sooner,' Barr wrote.
Democrats immediately pushed back on the categories of information Barr says he plans to hold back from Congress – and renewed their demand for a complete disclosure.
Letter: 'Our progress is such that I anticipate we will be in a position to release the report by mid-April, if not sooner,' William Barr wrote to Congressional leaders Friday
'As I informed the Attorney General earlier this week, Congress requires the full and complete Mueller report, without redactions, as well as access to the underlying evidence, by April 2,' Nadler, a New York Democrat, said in response to Barr's letter. That deadline still stands.'
Nadler said it was critical for Barr to come before Congress 'immediately to explain the rationale behind his letter, his rapid decision that the evidence developed was insufficient' as well as 'his continued refusal to provide us with the full report.'
Nadler said Barr should work with Congress to request 'a court order to release any and all grand jury information to the House Judiciary Committee – as has occurred in every similar investigation in the past.' He called for Barr to testify 'immediately.'
One immediate battle line was already shaping up over information Barr said he would hold back because it might 'infringe on the personal privacy and reputational interests of peripheral third parties.'
Although he did not spell out how he intended to carry out this goal, it raised the possibility that Congress might receive a document that would include significant redactions that would obscure evidence gathered about Trump business interests and other matters.
Mueller's report on Russia's 2016 election interference is 'nearly 400 pages long,' according to Barr, not including tables and attachments.
Mueller time: The almost 400-page report drawn up by the Special Counsel on whether and how Russia interfered in the election which ended in Donald Trump's victory will be published by mid-April
Letter: How William Barr told Congress that the Mueller report is due in a matter of a few weeks
His agency must scour it for classified information, details that could expose intelligence sources and methods, and anything that could bear on criminal cases.
Barr recommended a May 1 Senate hearing followed by May 2 House testimony.
He objected to his March 25 letter to a quartet of congressional intelligence committee leaders being described as a thorough 'summary' of Mueller's findings, saying it was only meant to reflect the special counsel's 'principal conclusions.'
'Everyone will soon be able to read it on their own,' he wrote.
Barr wrote in his March 25 letter that Mueller had found no evidence President Donald Trump's campaign colluded with Russians to impact the result of the election.
House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jerold Nadler called for the release of the 'full and complete Mueller report'
He left open, however, the question of whether Trump may have obstructed justice by firing then-FBI Director James Comey.
Comey and anti-Trump partisans have claimed Trump intended to derail the counter-intelligence probe that preceded the Mueller probe.
Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein jointly determined that there was not sufficient evidence to support that allegation.
In Friday's letter, which also went to the two committees' ranking minority members, Barr said he doesn't expect President Trump or his attorneys to have an opportunity to assert executive privilege over anything in the Mueller report.
Such privileges can only be claimed by the president himself, and could be subject to court challenges.
'Although the President would have the right to assert privilege over certain parts of the report, he has stated publicly that he intends to defer to me and, accordingly, there are no plans to submit the report to the White House for a privilege review.'
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What to release and what to conceal is 'up to the attorney general,' Trump said Monday at the White House.
The prospect of having the entire report open to public scrutiny, he added, 'wouldn't bother me at all.'
Democrats had spent the past week clamoring for the Mueller report's public release, with some suggesting that Republicans would try to keep it under wraps.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that Barr's 'summary' was a 'condescending' and 'arrogant' encapsulation of a document the world has a right to see.
'Mr. Attorney General,' she said with her fists shaking, 'show us the report and we'll come to our own conclusions.'
'I think they are just scaredy-cats,' Pelosi charged. 'They just don't know what to do.'
She blamed Republicans' 'own insecurity, their own fear of the truth, their fear of the facts' for concealments that Barr now says he has no intention of making.
The president took an extended victory lap during a raucous rally speech Thursday night in Michigan.
'The special counsel completed its report and found no collusion and no obstruction,' he said. 'I could have told you that two and a half years ago very easily.'
'Total exoneration. Complete vindication.'
Trump said he wanted 'accountability' from Democrats and members of the media who promoted the idea that his 2016 campaign colluded with the Kremlin to tilt the election.
Recipients: William Barr wrote to Jerry Nadler (left), the Democratic chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and Lindsey Graham (right), his Republican opposite number in the Senate, to tell them he will publish a redacted version of the Mueller report by mid-April
'Their fraud has been exposed,' he told a screaming crowd of more than 12,500, saying that 'they've now got big problems.'
Trump railed against 'this phony, corrupt, disgusting cloud' of suspicion that hamstrung much of his policy agenda during his first two years in office.
Later, he called the 'partisan' investigations and other pressure on him 'ridiculous bulls**t.'
Mueller completed his investigation on March 22, closing a 22-month chapter that began when Comey asked a friend to leak information to the press from memos he wrote after his private meetings with Trump.
Trump fired Comey in May 2017.
Comey later said he had hoped to generate public outrage about the possibility the president tried to interfere with FBI investigations, and that it would inspire demands for a special counsel investigation.
The president complained bitterly about what he called a resulting 'witch hunt,' blasting Mueller as an ideologically conflicted legal hitman who was biased because of an old business dispute involving a membership at a Trump golf course.
After Barr submitted his first letter to Congress, however, and Trump reveled in his exoneration, he told reporters he thought the special counsel had behaved honorably.
Instead he turned his rhetorical cannons on congressional Democrats including House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff.
'After three years of lies and smears and slander, the Russia hoax is dead,' he said. 'This was nothing more than a sinister effort to undermine our historic election victory and to sabotage the will of the American people.'
READ IN FULL: Attorney General Barr's letter to Congress summarizing the Mueller investigation findings
Mueller - the final tally: Eight convictions, a jailed attorney and 25 Russians accused
GUILTY: MICHAEL FLYNN
Pleaded guilty to making false statements in December 2017. Awaiting sentence
Flynn was President Trump's former National Security Advisor and Robert Mueller's most senior scalp to date. He previously served when he was a three star general as President Obama's director of the Defense Intelligence Agency but was fired.
He admitted to lying to special counsel investigators about his conversations with a Russian ambassador in December 2016. He has agreed to cooperate with the special counsel investigation.
GUILTY: MICHAEL COHEN
Pleaded guilty to eight counts including fraud and two campaign finance violations in August 2018. Pleaded guilty to further count of lying to Congress in November 2018. Sentenced to three years in prison and $2 million in fines and forfeitures in December 2018
Cohen was Trump's longtime personal attorney, starting working for him and the Trump Organization in 2007. He is the longest-serving member of Trump's inner circle to be implicated by Mueller. Cohen professed unswerving devotion to Trump - and organized payments to silence two women who alleged they had sex with the-then candidate: porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. He admitted that payments to both women were felony campaign finance violations - and admitted that he acted at the 'direction' of 'Candidate-1': Donald Trump.
He also admitted tax fraud by lying about his income from loans he made, money from taxi medallions he owned, and other sources of income, at a cost to the Treasury of $1.3 million.
And he admitted lying to Congress in a rare use of the offense. The judge in his case let him report for prison on March 6 and recommended he serve it in a medium-security facility close to New York City.
GUILTY AND JAILED: PAUL MANAFORT
Found guilty of eight charges of bank and tax fraud in August 2018. Sentenced to 47 months in March 2019. Pleaded guilty to two further charges - witness tampering and conspiracy against the United States. Jailed for total of seven and a half years in two separate sentences. Additionally indicted for mortgage fraud by Manhattan District Attorney, using evidence previously presented by Mueller
Manafort worked for Trump's campaign from March 2016 and chaired it from June to August 2016, overseeing Trump being adopted as Republican candidate at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. He is the most senior campaign official to be implicated by Mueller. Manafort was one of Washington D.C.'s longest-term and most influential lobbyists but in 2015, his money dried up and the next year he turned to Trump for help, offering to be his campaign chairman for free - in the hope of making more money afterwards. But Mueller unwound his previous finances and discovered years of tax and bank fraud as he coined in cash from pro-Russia political parties and oligarchs in Ukraine.
Manafort pleaded not guilty to 18 charges of tax and bank fraud but was convicted of eight counts in August 2018. The jury was deadlocked on the other 10 charges. A second trial on charges of failing to register as a foreign agent due in September did not happen when he pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States and witness tampering in a plea bargain. He was supposed to co-operate with Mueller but failed to.
Minutes after his second sentencing hearing in March 2019, he was indicted on 16 counts of fraud and conspiracy by the Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., using evidence which included documents previously presented at his first federal trial. The president has no pardon power over charges by district and state attorneys.
GUILTY: RICK GATES
Pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States and making false statements in February 2018. Awaiting sentence
Gates was Manafort's former deputy at political consulting firm DMP International. He admitted to conspiring to defraud the U.S. government on financial activity, and to lying to investigators about a meeting Manafort had with a member of congress in 2013. As a result of his guilty plea and promise of cooperation, prosecutors vacated charges against Gates on bank fraud, bank fraud conspiracy, failure to disclose foreign bank accounts, filing false tax returns, helping prepare false tax filings, and falsely amending tax returns.
GUILTY AND JAILED: GEORGE PAPADOPOLOUS
Pleaded guilty to making false statements in October 2017. Sentenced to 14 days in September 2018, and reported to prison in November. Served 12 days and released on December 7, 2018
Papadopoulos was a member of Donald Trump's campaign foreign policy advisory committee. He admitted to lying to special counsel investigators about his contacts with London professor Josef Mifsud and Ivan Timofeev, the director of a Russian government-funded think tank.
He has agreed to cooperate with the special counsel investigation.
GUILTY AND JAILED: RICHARD PINEDO
Pleaded guilty to identity fraud in February 2018. Sentenced to a year in prison
Pinedo is a 28-year-old computer specialist from Santa Paula, California. He admitted to selling bank account numbers to Russian nationals over the internet that he had obtained using stolen identities.
He has agreed to cooperate with the special counsel investigation.
GUILTY AND JAILED: ALEX VAN DER ZWAAN
Pleaded guilty to making false statements in February 2018. He served a 30-day prison sentence and was deported to the Netherlands on his release
Van der Zwaan was a Dutch attorney for Skadden Arps who worked on a Ukrainian political analysis report for Paul Manafort in 2012.
He admitted to lying to special counsel investigators about when he last spoke with Rick Gates and Konstantin Kilimnik. His law firm say he was fired.
GUILTY: W. SAMUEL PATTEN
Pleaded guilty in August 2018 to failing to register as a lobbyist while doing work for a Ukrainian political party. Awaiting sentence
Patten, a long-time D.C. lobbyist was a business partner of Paul Manafort. He pleaded guilty to admitting to arranging an illegal $50,000 donation to Trump's inauguration.
He arranged for an American 'straw donor' to pay $50,000 to the inaugural committee, knowing that it was actually for a Ukrainian businessman.
Neither the American or the Ukrainian have been named.
CHARGED: KONSTANTIN KILIMNIK
Indicted for obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice. At large, probably in Russia
Kilimnik is a former employee of Manafort's political consulting firm and helped him with lobbying work in Ukraine. He is accused of witness tampering, after he allegedly contacted individuals who had worked with Manafort to remind them that Manafort only performed lobbying work for them outside of the U.S.
He has been linked to Russian intelligence and is currently thought to be in Russia - effectively beyond the reach of extradition by Mueller's team.
INDICTED: THE RUSSIANS
Twenty-five Russian nationals and three Russian entities have been indicted for conspiracy to defraud the United States. They remain at large in Russia
Two of these Russian nationals were also indicted for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and 11 were indicted for conspiracy to launder money. Fifteen of them were also indicted for identity fraud.
Vladimir Putin has ridiculed the charges. Russia effectively bars extradition of its nationals. The only prospect Mueller has of bringing any in front of a U.S. jury is if Interpol has their names on an international stop list - which is not made public - and they set foot in a territory which extradites to the U.S.
INDICTED: MICHAEL FLYNN'S BUSINESS PARTNERS
Bijan Kian (left), number two in now disgraced former national security adviser Mike Flynn's lobbying company, and the two's business partner Ekim Alptekin (right) were indicted for conspiracy to lobby illegally. Kian is awaiting trial, Alptekin is still to appear in court
Kian, an Iranian-American was arrested and appeared in court charged with a conspiracy to illegally lobby the U.S government without registering as a foreign agent. Their co-conspirator was Flynn, who is called 'Person A' in the indictment and is not charged, offering some insight into what charges he escaped with his plea deal.
Kian, vice-president of Flynn's former lobbying firm, is alleged to have plotted with Alptekin to try to change U.S. policy on an exiled Turkish cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania and who is accused by Turkey's strongman president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of trying to depose him.
Erdogan's government wanted him extradited from the U.S. and paid Flynn's firm through Alptekin for lobbying, including an op-ed in The Hill calling for Gulen to be ejected. Flynn and Kian both lied that the op-ed was not paid for by the Turkish government.
The indictment is a sign of how Mueller is taking an interest in more than just Russian involvement in the 2016 election.
INDICTED: ROGER STONE
Roger Stone, a former Trump campaign official and longtime informal advisor to Trump, was indited on seven counts including obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and lying to Congress about his communications with WikiLeaks in January 2019. Awaiting trial
Stone was a person of interest to Mueller's investigators long before his January indictment, thanks in part due to his public pronouncements as well as internal emails about his contacts with WikiLeks.
In campaign texts and emails, many of which had already been publicly revealed before showing up in Mueller's indictment, Stone communicated with associates about WikiLeaks following reports the organization had obtained a cache of Clinton-related emails.
Stone, a former Nixon campaign adviser who has the disgraced former president's face permanently tattooed on his back, has long been portrayed as a central figure in the election interference scandal, but as recently as January 4 told Dailymail.com that he doesn't expect to be indicted.
'They got nothing,' he said of the special counsel's investigation.
According to the federal indictment, Stone gave 'false and misleading' testimony about his requests for information from WikiLeaks. He then pressured a witness, comedian Randy Credico, to take the Fifth Amendment rather than testify, and pressured him in a series of emails. Following a prolonged dispute over testimony, he called him a 'rat' and threatened to 'take that dog away from you', in reference to Credico's pet, Bianca. Stone warned him: 'Let's get it on. Prepare to die.'
