American HustleJuly/August 2019 63
500 witnesses, issued some 2,800 subpoenas and some 500 search-and-
seizure warrants, indicted 34 individuals and three Russian businesses,
and secured guilty pleas from or convictions oÊ Trump’s one-time cam-
paign chair and former national security adviser, among others.
In March o this year, Mueller delivered to the Department o
Justice a 448-page report in two volumes, a redacted version o which
Attorney General William Barr made public a few weeks later. The
Ãrst volume scrutinizes the evidence o a possible criminal conspiracy
between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, which,
the report states, interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election “in
sweeping and systematic fashion,” by spreading disinformation over
social media and stealing and disseminating personal e-mails belong-
ing to senior Ãgures in the presidential campaign oÊ Trump’s oppo-
nent, Hillary Clinton. The second volume examines evidence o
possible obstruction o justice by the president in relation to the in-
vestigation—that is, whether Trump violated the law by attempting
to make it harder for Mueller to get to the truth.
The Ãrst volume reaches a more or less straightforward conclusion.
“Although the investigation established that the Russian government
perceived it would beneÃt from a Trump presidency and worked to
secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would ben-
eÃt electorally from information stolen and released through Russian
eorts,” the report states, “the investigation did not establish that
members o the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the
Russian government in its election interference activities.” The cam-
paign did not break the law in its numerous interactions with Rus-
sians. But as the report makes clear, Trump and his senior advisers,
including members oÊ his family, were aware that the Kremlin was
trying to help them, and, rather than sound the alarm to U.S. author-
ities, they were thrilled about the assistance.
The second volume’s Ãndings appear more complex. Owing to the
Department o Justice’s long-standing internal opinion that a sitting
president cannot be indicted, Mueller decided that he did not have the
legal authority to charge the president. As a result, the report does not
render a traditional prosecutorial judgment regarding obstruction o
justice on Trump’s part. Whether Trump committed a crime is left
open to interpretation. After receiving the report, Barr and his deputy,
Rod Rosenstein, who had appointed Mueller and had overseen all but
the Ãnal two months o the investigation, ruled that Trump’s conduct