American HustleJuly/August 2019 67
witness tampering: Trump, the report notes, “engaged in eorts” to
“prevent the disclosure o evidence to [the special counsel], including
through public and private contacts with potential witnesses.” The lies
told by people connected to the Trump campaign, the report states,
“materially impaired the investigation o Russian election interference.”
The report is incomplete in another way: its primary focus is the
criminal investigation into Russia’s interference, rather than the μ’s
parallel counterintelligence investigation—which is where the whole
story began. Russia conducted a cyber-assault on U.S. democracy, dem-
onstrating for other potential adversaries, not to mention potential
American copycats, that it could be done. This is a clear and present
danger. But when investigators discovered the Trump campaign per-
sonnel’s eagerness to interact with Russian operatives, the counterintel-
ligence probe was complicated by the need for a criminal investigation.
The sections o the report that treat what Russia intended and
achieved are its most heavily redacted parts. The public version o the
report attributes the interference to orders from “the highest levels” o
the Russian government, but not to President Vladimir Putin speciÃ-
cally. In that sense, Mueller’s report bears almost no resemblance to
the last detailed, U.S. government-funded report on a crime commit-
ted by a foreign adversary against the United States: the one produced
by the 9/11 Commission. That report included a rigorous analysis o
how al Qaeda planned and carried out the attacks, explored the nature
o U.S. security failures and ongoing vulnerabilities, and put forward
a panoply o recommended Ãxes. The public version o Mueller’s re-
port oers nothing like that. Many o the sections on the role that
technology played in making the Russian interference possible are
heavily redacted: close to two-thirds o the text dealing with Russia’s
activities in cyberspace is blacked out. As a result, it provides limited
insight into the relationships, i any, among the many dierent actors
on the Russian side, not all o whom were government functionaries.
Take the infamous episode that took place on July 27, 2016, when
Trump, in a campaign speech, requested Russian assistance in under-
mining Clinton by obtaining personal e-mails that she had declined to
turn over during an investigation into her use o a private server while
she was secretary o state. “Russia, i you’re listening, I hope you’re
able to Ãnd the 30,000 e-mails that are missing,” Trump said. Mueller
reveals that within approximately Ãve hours, ocers o Russia’s mili-
tary intelligence agency targeted Clinton’s home oce for the Ãrst