WASHINGTON: Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on his inquiry into Russia’s role in the 2016 US election described in extensive and sometimes unflattering detail how President Donald Trump tried to impede the probe, raising questions about whether he committed the crime of obstruction of justice.
The release of the 448-page report on Thursday after a 22-month investigation marked a milestone in Trump’s tumultuous presidency and inflamed partisan passions ahead of his 2020 re-election bid.
Democrats said the report contained disturbing evidence of wrongdoing by Trump that could fuel congressional investigations, but there was no immediate indication they would try to remove him from office through impeachment.
Mueller built an extensive case indicating the Republican president had committed obstruction of justice but stopped short of concluding he had committed a crime, though he did not exonerate the president. Mueller noted that Congress has the power to address whether Trump violated the law.
“The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law,” the report stated.
Mueller also unearthed “numerous links” between the Russian government and Trump’s campaign and said the president’s team “expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts,” referring to hacked Democratic emails.
But Mueller, a former FBI director, concluded there was not enough evidence to establish that Trump’s campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Moscow.
Trump appeared to be in a celebratory mood, saying at a White House event with wounded US troops he was “having a good day” following the report’s release, adding, “It’s called no collusion, no obstruction.” Trump, whose legal team called the report “a total victory,” has long described Mueller’s inquiry as a “witch hunt.”
Trump headed to his resort in Florida for the weekend, and on landing on Thursday night told a crowd of well wishers at the airport: “Game over folks, now it’s back to work.”
The report, with some portions blacked out to protect sensitive information, provided fresh details of how Trump tried to force Mueller’s ouster, directed members of his administration to publicly vouch for his innocence and dangled a pardon to a former aide to try to prevent him from cooperating with the special counsel.
“The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests,” the report stated.
The report said that when former Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Trump in May 2017 that the Justice Department was appointing a special counsel to look into allegations that his campaign colluded with Russia, Trump slumped back in his chair and said, “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m f***ed.”
Attorney General William Barr told a news conference Mueller had detailed “10 episodes involving the president and discusses potential legal theories for connecting these actions to elements of an obstruction offense.” Barr concluded last month after receiving a confidential copy of Mueller’s report that Trump had not actually committed a crime.
Trump was wary of FBI scrutiny of his campaign and him personally, the report said. “The evidence does indicate that a thorough FBI investigation would uncover facts about the campaign and the president personally that the president could have understood to be crimes or that would give rise to personal and political concerns,” the report stated.
Any impeachment effort would start in the Democratic-led House of Representatives, but Trump’s removal would require the support of the Republican-led Senate — an unlikely outcome. Many Democrats steered clear of impeachment talk on Thursday, although a prominent liberal congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, embraced the idea.
“Many know I take no pleasure in discussions of impeachment. I didn’t campaign on it, & rarely discuss it unprompted,” she said on Twitter. “But the report squarely puts this on our doorstep.”
The House, when it voted to impeach President Bill Clinton in 1998, included obstruction of justice as one of the charges. The Senate ultimately decided not to remove Clinton from office.
The Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jerrold Nadler, said he would issue subpoenas to obtain the unredacted Mueller report and asked Mueller to testify before the panel by May 23.
Nadler told reporters in New York Mueller probably wrote the report with the intent of providing Congress a road map for future action, but the congressman said it was too early to talk about impeachment.
“Mueller’s report paints a damning portrait of lies that appear to have materially impaired the investigation, a body of evidence of improper contacts with a foreign adversary, and serious allegations about how President Trump sought to obstruct a legitimate, and deeply important, counterintelligence investigation,” the Democratic chairs of six House committees said in a statement.
Election meddling
The inquiry laid bare what the special counsel and US intelligence agencies have described as a Russian campaign of hacking and propaganda to sow discord in the United States, denigrate 2016 Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and boost Trump, the Kremlin’s preferred candidate. Russia has denied election interference.
In analyzing whether Trump obstructed justice, Mueller looked at a series of actions by Trump, including his attempts to remove Mueller and limit the scope of his probe and efforts to prevent the public from knowing about a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York between senior campaign officials and Russians.
In June 2017, Trump directed White House counsel Don McGahn to tell the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, Rod Rosenstein, that Mueller had conflicts of interest and must be removed, the report said. McGahn did not carry out the order. McGahn was home on a Saturday that month when Trump called him at least twice.
“You gotta do this. You gotta call Rod,” McGahn recalled the president as saying, according to the report.
House Judiciary Democrat Jamie Raskin pointed to Trump’s effort to get McGahn to fire Mueller and then lie about being told to do so as an area of interest for lawmakers, and said McGahn and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions could be valuable witnesses as the committee moves forward.
“There are these dramatic episodes of presidential attempts to interfere with the Mueller investigation, and I think people would like to hear from a number of officials involved. White House counsel McGahn jumps out as an important witness,” he told Reuters.
It also said there was “substantial evidence” Trump fired James Comey as FBI director in May 2017 due to his “unwillingness to publicly state that the president was not personally under investigation.” The FBI headed the inquiry at the time.
Mueller cited “some evidence” suggesting Trump knew about former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s controversial calls with the Russian ambassador to the United States before Trump took office, but evidence was “inconclusive” and could not be used to establish intent to obstruct.
The report said Trump directed former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to ask Sessions to say the Russia investigation was “very unfair.”
Barr, a Trump appointee, seemed to offer cover for Trump’s actions by saying the report acknowledges “there is substantial evidence to show that the president was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks.”
“President Trump faced an unprecedented situation. As he entered into office and sought to perform his responsibilities as president, federal agents and prosecutors were scrutinizing his conduct before and after taking office and the conduct of some of his associates,” Barr said.
Mueller’s team did not issue a subpoena to force Trump to give an interview to the special counsel because it would have created a “substantial delay” at a late stage in the investigation, the report said. Trump refused an interview and eventually provided only written answers.
The report said Mueller accepted the longstanding Justice Department view that a sitting president cannot be indicted on criminal charges, while still recognizing that a president can be criminally investigated.
The report listed 14 criminal referrals for investigation by US prosecutors but 12 of those were fully blacked out because they are open investigations.
Mueller said evidence he collected indicates Trump intended to encourage his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, not to cooperate and that the evidence supports the idea that Trump wanted Manafort to believe he could receive a presidential pardon.
The report said the special counsel’s team determined there was a “reasonable argument” that the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., violated campaign finance laws, but did not believe they could obtain a conviction.
The report cited Trump’s repeated efforts to convince Sessions to resume oversight of the probe after he had recused himself because of his own prior contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the United States.
In unflattering detail, Mueller report reveals Trump actions to impede inquiry
In unflattering detail, Mueller report reveals Trump actions to impede inquiry
Russian attacks kill two in Ukraine
- Diplomatic efforts to end the war have accelerated in recent weeks, with both sides meeting earlier this month for their first round of direct talks in more than three years
In the Zaporizhzhia region, “Russians hit a residential area with guided aerial bombs,” killing the girl and wounding a 16-year-old boy, Ivan Fedorov, head of the regional military administration, said on the Telegram platform.
One house was destroyed and several others damaged by the blast, he added.
In a separate assault on the city of Kherson, a “66-year-old man sustained fatal injuries” from Russian shelling, Oleksandr Prokudin, Kherson region’s governor, wrote on Telegram.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, tens of thousands of people have been killed, swaths of eastern and southern Ukraine destroyed, and millions forced to flee their homes.
One person was wounded in a Russian drone strike in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, its mayor said.
In Russia, Ukrainian drone attacks wounded 10 people in the Kursk region overnight, acting governor Alexander Khinshtein said.
Diplomatic efforts to end the war have accelerated in recent weeks, with both sides meeting earlier this month for their first round of direct talks in more than three years.
But the negotiations in Istanbul yielded only a prisoner exchange and promises to stay in touch.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday that his government did not expect results from further talks with Russia unless Moscow provided its peace terms in advance, accusing the Kremlin of doing “everything” it could to sabotage a potential meeting.
“There must be a ceasefire to continue moving toward peace. We need to stop the killing of people,” Zelensky added in a statement on Telegram.
The Ukrainian leader also said he had discussed with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “a possible next meeting in Istanbul and under what conditions Ukraine is ready to participate,” with both agreeing that the next round of talks with Moscow “cannot and should not be a waste of time.”
Russia has said it will send a team of negotiators to Istanbul for a second round of talks on Monday, but Kyiv has yet to confirm if it will attend.
Australia’s defense minister urges greater military openness from China
Speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue defense meeting in Singapore, Marles said that while China remains an important strategic partner to Australia, more open communication between the two nations is key for a “productive” relationship.
“When you look at the growth in the Chinese military that has happened without a strategic reassurance, or a strategic transparency....we would like to have a greater transparency in what China is seeking to do in not only its build up, but in the exercises that it undertakes,” said Marles.
“We want to have the most productive relationship with China that we can have ... we hope that in the context of that productive relationship, we can see greater transparency and greater communication between our two countries in respect of our defense.”
Both Australia and New Zealand raised concerns in February after three Chinese warships conducted unprecedented live-fire drills in the Tasman Sea.
Both nations complained of late notice over the drills by China, which led to the diversion of 49 commercial flights.
Marles said that while the drills were in accordance with international law, China should have been less disruptive.
He also said Australia was able to closely scrutinize the Chinese task-force.
“It’s fair to say that this was done in a bigger way than they have done before, but equally, that was meant from our point of view, by a much greater degree of surveillance than we’ve ever done,” he said.
“From the moment that Chinese warships came within the vicinity of Australia, they were being tailed and tracked by Australian assets ... we were very clear about what exercises China was undertaking and what capability they were seeking to exercise and to build.”
Chinese officials have signalled that more such exercises could be expected as it was routine naval activity in international waters. Defense analysts say the exercises underscore Beijing’s ambition to develop a global navy that will be able to project power into the region more frequently.
Australia has in recent times pledged to boost its missile defense capability amid China’s nuclear weapons buildup and its blue-water naval expansion, as the country targets to increase its defense spending from roughly 2 percent of GDP currently to 2.4 percent by the early 2030s.
The nation is scheduled to pay the United States $2 billion by the end of 2025 to assist its submarine shipyards, in order to buy three Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines starting in 2032 — its biggest ever defense project.
Germany hopes for EU deal on sending failed asylum seekers to third countries, minister says
- The EU’s executive Commission proposed a scheme that would let member states reject asylum applications from migrants who passed through a “safe” third country on their way to the bloc
BERLIN: Germany’s interior minister is hoping the European Union can reach a bloc-wide agreement on sending failed asylum seekers who cannot go home to safe countries near their original homelands.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives won February’s national election on a promise to bring down immigration levels, which opinion polls showed many voters regarded as being out of control, although numbers have been falling for over a year.
In an interview with the Welt am Sonntag newspaper published on Saturday, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said the approach of using third countries could work only if there was a Europe-wide consensus.
“We need third countries that are prepared to take migrants who are objectively unable to return to their home countries,” he told the newspaper.
Earlier this month, the EU’s executive Commission proposed a scheme that would let member states reject asylum applications from migrants who passed through a “safe” third country on their way to the bloc. The proposals, criticized by rights groups, have yet to be adopted by national governments or the European Parliament.
“No individual EU member state can create this model on its own: it will have to happen on an EU level,” Dobrindt said. “We are preparing the foundations for that right now.”
Dobrindt’s initial promises to tighten border controls on taking office angered neighbors who protested at plans to return to their territory those migrants found not to have a right to enter Germany.
An Italian plan to process asylum seekers picked up at sea in Albania has stalled amid Italian court challenges.
A scheme by Britain, which is not an EU member, under its previous Conservative government to send asylum seekers who arrived in Britain without permission to Rwanda was scrapped by Prime Minister Keir Starmer when he took office last year.
US FDA approves Moderna’s next-generation COVID-19 vaccine for adults 65 or older
- The vaccine has also been approved for people aged 12 to 64 with at least one or more underlying risk factors
- The Moderna vaccine, branded mNEXSPIKE, can be stored in refrigerators rather than freezers
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved Moderna’s next-generation COVID-19 vaccine for everyone aged 65 and above, the company said on Saturday, the first endorsement since the regulator tightened requirements.
The vaccine has also been approved for people aged 12 to 64 with at least one or more underlying risk factors, Moderna said in a statement.
The Department of Health and Human Services, under the leadership of long-time vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is increasing regulatory scrutiny on vaccines.
The FDA said on May 20 it planned to require drugmakers to test their COVID booster shots against an inert placebo in healthy adults under 65 for approval, effectively limiting them to older adults and those at risk of developing severe illness.
The Moderna vaccine, branded mNEXSPIKE, can be stored in refrigerators rather than freezers, to offer longer shelf life and make distribution easier, especially in developing countries where supply-chain issues could hamper vaccination drives.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which Kennedy also oversees, said on Thursday that COVID vaccines remain an option for healthy children when parents and doctors agree that it is needed, stopping short of Kennedy’s announcement days earlier that the agency would remove the shots from its immunization schedule.
Musk vows to stay Trump’s ‘friend’ in bizarre black-eyed farewell
- “I look forward to continuing to be a friend and adviser to the president,” Musk said in a press conference
- Many people were more interested in the black bruise around Musk’s right eye, which he blamed on his son
WASHINGTON: Billionaire Elon Musk bade farewell to Donald Trump in an extraordinary Oval Office appearance Friday, sporting a black eye, brushing aside drug abuse claims and vowing to stay a “friend and adviser” to the US president.
As the world’s richest person bowed out of his role as Trump’s cost-cutter-in-chief, the Republican hailed Musk’s “incredible service” and handed him a golden key to the White House.
But Trump insisted that Musk was “really not leaving” after a turbulent four months in which his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cut tens of thousands of jobs, shuttered whole agencies and slashed foreign aid.
“He’s going to be back and forth,” said Trump, showering praise on the tech tycoon for what he called the “most sweeping and consequential government reform program in generations.”
South-African born Musk, wearing a black T-shirt with the word “Dogefather” in white lettering and a black DOGE baseball cap, said many of the $1 trillion savings he promised would take time to bear fruit.
“I look forward to continuing to be a friend and adviser to the president,” he said.
But many people were more interested in the livid black bruise around Musk’s right eye.
Speculation about the cause was further fueled by accusations in the New York Times Friday that Musk used so much of the drug ketamine on the 2024 campaign trail that he developed bladder problems.
‘Go ahead punch me in the face’
The SpaceX and Tesla magnate said that his son was to blame for the injury.
“I was just horsing around with lil’ X, and I said, ‘go ahead punch me in the face,’” 53-year-old Musk said. “And he did. Turns out even a five-year-old punching you in the face actually is...” he added, before tailing off.
Musk, however, dodged a question about the drug allegations.
The New York Times said Musk, the biggest donor to Trump’s 2024 election campaign, also took ecstasy and psychoactive mushrooms and traveled with a pill box last year.
Musk, who has long railed against the news media and championed his X social media platform as an alternative, took aim at the paper instead.
“Is that the same publication that got a Pulitzer Prize for false reporting on the Russiagate?” said Musk, referring to claims that Trump’s 2016 election campaign colluded with Moscow.
“Let’s move on. Okay. Next question.”
Later in the day, when a reporter asked Trump if he was “aware of Elon Musk’s regular drug use,” Trump simply responded: “I wasn’t.”
“I think Elon is a fantastic guy,” he added.
The White House had earlier played down the report.
“The drugs that we’re concerned about are the drugs running across the southern border” from Mexico, said Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, whose wife works for Musk.
Musk has previously admitted to taking ketamine, saying he was prescribed it to treat a “negative frame of mind” and suggesting his use of drugs benefited his work.
Leaving under a cloud
The latest in a series of made-for-TV Oval Office events was aimed at putting a positive spin on Musk’s departure.
Musk is leaving Trump’s administration under a cloud, after admitting disillusionment with his role and criticizing the Republican president’s spending plans.
It was a far cry from his first few weeks as Trump’s chainsaw-brandishing sidekick.
At one time Musk was almost inseparable from Trump, glued to his side on Air Force One, Marine One, in the White House and at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
The right-wing magnate’s DOGE led an ideologically-driven rampage through the federal government, with its young “tech bros” slashing tens of thousands of jobs.
But DOGE’s achievements fell far short of Musk’s original goal of saving $2 trillion dollars.
The White House says DOGE has made $170 billion in savings so far. The independent “Doge Tracker” site has counted just $12 billion while the Atlantic magazine put it far lower, at $2 billion.
Musk’s “move fast and break things” mantra was also at odds with some of his cabinet colleagues, and he said earlier this week that he was “disappointed” in Trump’s planned mega tax and spending bill as it undermined DOGE’s cuts.
Musk’s companies, meanwhile, have suffered.
Tesla shareholders called for him to return to work as sales slumped and protests targeted the electric vehicle maker, while SpaceX had a series of fiery rocket failures.
