Apr 14, 2019 5 min read

While we have not yet seen the Mueller report, Attorney General William Barr and Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein have, and have summarized it thusly: no collusion, no obstruction, total vindication. At least, that is how President Trump and his allies see it. But as is the case with most of what the Trump administration says, that’s not accurate.

Very few people have seen the report, and Barr’s summary (which he later claimed was not a summary) only includes parts of two sentences (and one of those specifically states that Trump was NOT exonerated on the charge of obstruction of justice). It is important to remember that Barr just took office and that a primary reason Trump chose him was that he sent the Trump administration a memo over the summer in which he argued that as president, Trump was incapable of obstructing justice. He was also not required to summarize the report (which actually has summaries in it that could have been released with only limited redactions). It is much more likely that Mueller did not make a judgment on the obstruction of justice charge because he felt that was the job of Congress, not because he wanted Barr to step in.

Trump claims the Mueller investigation is a witch hunt instigated by the Democrats who want to change the results of an election they lost. While it is undoubtedly true that a lot of Democrats want to see Trump removed from office, the Democrats were not the ones behind the investigation, and just recently, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi essentially declared that impeachment is off the table. After Trump fired FBI Director James Comey over “this Russia thing,” Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller, a lifelong Republican and a man with an impeccable reputation for fairness, as special counsel to investigate the issue.

Trump supporters claim that Democrats are investigating Trump only because they are “deranged” by hatred. While I think Trump is a terrible president, I was initially quite skeptical that he would “collude” with the Russians; I thought he was likely financially corrupt (refusing to release his tax returns and refusing to put his assets into a blind trust support that notion), but thought it unlikely that he would actually work with the Russians. Then came the revelations. The infamous meeting in Trump Tower with Don Jr. and Russians with ties to Vladimir Putin, in which Don Jr. was seeking “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Maybe he did not know that accepting help from the Russians was illegal, but it is unlikely that he did this without his dad knowing about it (and an experienced campaigner like Paul Manafort would know of the legal issues). President Trump dictating the letter that lied about the purpose of the meeting (claiming it was about adoptions), then lying about doing that, are not the signs of innocence.

There are many other troubling aspects of Trump and his campaign’s interactions with Russia. Jared Kushner tried to set up a secret back channel with the Russians, using their embassy to avoid allowing U.S. authorities to overhear the conversations. He also failed to reveal meetings with more than 100 foreign officials, including the Russian ambassador. Roger Stone told the Russians not to worry about the sanctions President Obama imposed to punish the Russians for interfering in our election because Trump would take care of them when he came into office. Erik Prince (founder of Blackwater) tried to set up another back channel to the Russians with a meeting in the Seychelles. Trump asked the Russians to “release her emails,” and later that day, the Russians attempted to hack her computers. At the Republican Convention, the Trump Campaign pushed the Republican Party to “soften” its view toward the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Trump has a surprisingly deep business history with Russia. When his business empire was struggling, and no bank would give him a loan, he suddenly started buying things with cash (very unusual for real estate developers who increase profits through leverage obtained from borrowed money); Don Jr. claimed that the “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.” The only bank that would lend him money was Deutsche Bank, which was convicted of laundering Russian money (and paid $631 million in fines). And many Russian oligarchs purchased real estate from Trump, which is often a way to launder money (during the depth of the real estate crash, Dimtry Rybolovlev bought a property in Florida for $100 million that Trump had purchased for $60 million four years before). He was also pursuing the development of a Trump Tower in Moscow during the election campaign, all while denying he had any business in Russia. Trump does not act like a man with nothing to hide.

The Mueller Report should be released as completely as possible. While some redactions may be necessary, someone who is not a Trump appointee should see the unredacted report, to be assured that the redactions were for valid concerns and not just political expediency, especially since Barr is claiming that he can redact things that might be embarrassing to people who were not indicted. While Trump may not have had a quid pro quo with Russia regarding the election, I think the Mueller Report is likely to yield a lot of unethical and possibly illegal behavior, as well as how the Russians used Trump to help sow discord in the United States. It will not flatter the president.

Kent James has degrees in history and public policy management from Carnegie Mellon University.