Trump-russian collusion: What the Mueller report says – and doesn’t say

WASHINGTON – Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III uncovered “evidence of numerous links” between Donald Trump campaign officials and individuals with or claiming ties to the Russian government, according to a redacted version of his final report released by the Justice Department on Thursday.

But Mueller declined to charge any of those campaign officials under conspiracy, coordination, or campaign finance laws for their contacts with Russians, because the evidence didn’t reach a prosecutable threshold.

As the investigation unfolded, Democrats and other Trump critics pointed to multiple instances of those contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russia as evidence of “collusion,” a term that Mueller points out in his report has no legal application, but nevertheless colloquially encompasses the kinds of possible violations he examined.

Here is an instance of what the redacted Mueller report says – and doesn’t say:

Perhaps the most conspicuous instance of alleged coordination and collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia throughout the Mueller investigation involved the June 9, 2016, meeting between three senior Trump campaign advisers – Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner; his oldest son Donald Trump Jr.; and Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman – and a Russian lawyer who promised “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

Michael Cohen, the president’s former personal lawyer, has claimed that Trump knew about the meeting in advance and approved of it, which Trump and Donald Trump Jr. have denied.

Mueller declined to prosecute Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort for coordinating with a foreign agent – in this case the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya – or committing relevant campaign finance law violations.

The special counsel determined that even if prosecutors could convince a jury that the Trump Tower meeting constituted criminal activity, “a prosecution would encounter difficulties proving that Campaign officials or individuals connected to the Campaign willfully violated the law,” Mueller wrote in his report.

The report does not say whether Trump himself had advance knowledge of the meeting or its connection to Russians. While former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen claimed to have been in the room with Trump Jr. when he told his father over the phone about the upcoming meeting, Trump Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he did not inform his father of the meeting, according to Mueller’s report.

“President Trump has stated to this Office, in written answers to questions, that he has ‘no recollection of learning at the time’ that his son, Manafort, or Kushner ‘was considering participating in a meeting in June 2016 concerning potentially negative information about Hillary Clinton,’ Mueller wrote in his report.

Trump Jr. told the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 that the meeting lasted roughly 20 minutes, and the “dirt” on Clinton that he and the campaign had been promised amounted to a false flag to talk about other matters.

Veselnitskaya, who has links to Russian government officials, spent most of the time at the meeting advocating for a rollback of U.S. Magnitsky Act sanctions against Russia.

Veselnitskaya was charged in January with obstruction in an unrelated money laundering case.