-Today, the Justice Department
released Attorney General William Barr's
redacted version of Special Counsel
Robert Mueller's final report.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
Well, it's finally here.
We finally have a redacted version of the thing
that everyone in Washington has been anxiously awaiting
for almost two years, and for two years,
the media has been obsessively dissecting
every morsel of information or speculation
about the investigation.
There was even the time Mueller was spotted at the airport
at the same gate as Don Jr., and pundits speculated
about everything from his clothes to where he was going.
-We're about to have a wow moment.
Stand by. We now have the photo.
This was taken by Politico.
This is Reagan airport in Washington, D.C.
The man spotlighted on the left side of your screen
just sitting there, hanging out, this is Robert Mueller.
This is the special counsel who is the one we've been saying
knows way more than we all do. -You know, it's interesting.
So, having worked for Bob Mueller,
I know that he has two ties, a red one and a blue one.
-Are we really getting into the ties?
-It looks as though --
I'd be curious to see where he's headed.
Is he taking a little vacation, which is probably much deserved,
or is he going to hunt for more clues?
-They were speculating over the ties he wears.
Blue tie means Trump's innocent, red tie means he's guilty,
and no tie means Robert Mueller
is ready for a night out on the town.
Also, he probably wasn't going anywhere.
I bet Robert Mueller goes to the airport
just because he likes going through security.
[ Laughter ]
"All right, you're all good, sir."
"Scan me again -- for safety."
And on top of that, we've been living through months
of endless speculation
about when the investigation would finally end.
In fact, the media specifically kept speculating about
whether the investigation was wrapping up or winding down.
-Do you see Mueller wrapping this up
at any point in the near future?
-When you read the tea leaves,
this could mean that the probe is actually winding down.
-That multifaceted investigation may be wrapping up soon.
-That could very well signal
that the investigation is, indeed, winding down.
-Does this mean Mueller's getting close to wrapping up?
-The investigation appears to be winding down.
-Maybe this thing is wrapping up.
-This could be winding down.
-It may be close to wrapping up.
-Potentially, the investigation is winding down.
-That right there is my favorite House of Pain song.
♪ Wrap it up, wind it down, jerk us around ♪
[ Laughter ]
They've been saying the Mueller report
was about to come out forever.
In fact, true story -- when they found
those 20,000-year-old cave paintings in France,
one of them just said, "Is Mueller wrapping up?"
Now the report is finally here, but before he even had any idea
what was in the report, Trump spent weeks
declaring victory and setting incredibly high expectations
for how the full report would totally and completely
vindicate him of everything,
with one small caveat that comes at the very, very end.
-It was a complete and total exoneration.
The Mueller report was great.
It could not have been better.
The finding was very, very strong --
no collusion, no obstruction, no Russia, no nothing.
The result was great.
No obstruction, no collusion, no anything.
Total exoneration. Complete vindication.
Everybody waited for the Mueller report,
but then it turns out that there's no obstruction,
no collusion, no anything.
I won. No collusion, no obstruction.
I won.
I have not read the Mueller report.
I haven't seen the Mueller report.
As far as I'm concerned,
I don't care about the Mueller report.
-"The Mueller report is great. It exonerates me.
I've never read it. I don't care about it."
[ Laughter ]
You're like a terrible boyfriend who keeps giving mixed messages.
"I love you, but I need space,
and I can't live without you, but you're crowding me."
[ Laughter ]
In fact, Trump even said he was being charitable to us
by not overreacting.
-It's a disgrace what happened.
And, again, it should never happen to a president again.
You're just lucky I happen to be the president.
Because a lot of other presidents would have reacted
much differently than I reacted.
-That's kind of true.
I mean, it really only happened to one other president,
and he quit. [ Laughter ]
Now, before we get into the report,
let's just review what we already know.
For one thing, Mueller has already produced
a staggering number of indictments and convictions
of some of the President's closest aides and advisers.
I mean, look at this --
this group has more criminals in it than a Hollywood PTA meeting.
[ Laughter ]
Two, even before we got the report today,
Trump was already directly implicated
in a crime to break election law during the 2016 campaign
by paying hush money to cover up an affair.
Of course, as you might remember,
prosecutors mysteriously referred to him
as Individual #1 in the court filing
despite also telling us that Individual #1
"began an ultimately successful campaign
for President of the United States."
And then, in a big, dramatic reveal,
Trump's ex-lawyer, Michael Cohen,
revealed to the world who Individual #1 was.
-Last fall, I pled guilty in federal court
to felonies for the benefit of, at the direction of,
and in coordination with Individual #1.
And for the record, Individual #1
is President Donald J. Trump.
-Yeah, dude, we know. [ Laughter ]
That was, like, the easiest "Where's Waldo?" of all time.
[ Laughter ]
So, what we already knew was damning,
and even Trump's inner circle seemed to know the report
might be damning, which might explain
why their handling of the report was so weird.
First, Barr issued his infamous letter summarizing the report.
Then, a week later, he issued a second letter
saying the first letter wasn't supposed to be a summary.
Then, Mueller's team started leaking
and saying they weren't happy with Barr's summary.
Then, we found out they wrote their own summaries
that Barr didn't use.
Then we found out Barr briefed the White House on the report.
Then we found out Barr let
Trump's attorneys see the report.
I mean, Jesus, who else got to see this thing before us?
"I don't know. I, uh...
I feel like it really..." [ Laughter, cheers, applause ]
I feel like I come off as bad guy.
Where are my Sharpie?" [ Laughter ]
Then, this morning, Barr held a press conference on the report
where he spun all the conclusions
before reporters or the public
actually had a chance to read the report.
No one had read it.
Well, some people had read it, as Barr explained.
-Earlier this week, the President's personal counsel
requested and was given the opportunity to read
a final version of the redacted report
before it was publicly released.
-That means Rudy Giuliani
got to read the report before the rest of us.
And from the looks of it, he was trying to open his eyes
wide enough to read all 400 pages at once.
"I don't like to flip. Spread them all out."
[ Laughter and applause ]
Now, on the question of the Trump campaign's ties to Russia,
the Mueller report says the investigation also identified
numerous links between the Russian government
and the Trump campaign.
But in his press conference, Barr chose instead
to highlight a sentence from his report
that he knew would please his boss
and repeated it over and over.
-The Special Counsel's report states that his
"investigation did not establish
that members of the Trump campaign
conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.
The Russian operatives who perpetrated these schemes
did not have the cooperation
of President Trump or the Trump campaign."
The Special Counsel found no evidence that any American,
including anyone associated with the Trump campaign,
conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.
Again, the Special Counsel's report did not find any evidence
that members of the Trump campaign
or anyone associated with the campaign,
conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.
As he said from the beginning,
there was, in fact, no collusion.
-My God, halfway through that press conference,
I started expecting Barr to rip off his mask
and reveal it was Trump the whole time.
[ Laughter ]
The Mueller investigation
had questions it was supposed to answer.
Now we have the report. We can take our time
and go through and hopefully get answers to those questions.
And on top of that, the guy who wrote the report,
the guy who almost never speaks publicly,
Robert Mueller himself,
might actually testify in public before Congress.
-Jerry Nadler, who is the chairman
of the House Committee on the Judiciary,
has now formally requested that the Honorable Robert Mueller,
the Special Counsel, come and testify before Congress
no later than May 23rd.
-Wow, we might actually hear from Robert Mueller.
He never speaks in public.
Honestly, I don't even know what his voice sounds like.
For all I know, he could sound like Bobcat Goldthwait,
or maybe his mouth moves like a "South Park" character.
-You will respect my authoritah!
[ Laughter ]
-We don't know.
So once Barr was done with his press conference,
Congress and reporters finally started
to get their hands on the report,
but the way they got the report was as weird as everything else
about how Trump's team handled the process.
-Good morning, everyone. So, here's how this plays out.
First, Congress gets the report delivered this morning on CD.
-Now, we have this interregnum for 45 more minutes
before members of Congress and, of course,
the members of the public are allowed to see
the CD-ROM of this report.
-Any minute now, we are expecting
a Justice Department official to come and drop off a disk
of the redacted report to the House Judiciary Committee.
We are expecting, Jake, in a matter of moments
the disk to be dropped off.
-That's right -- a compact disk.
They got the Mueller report the same way we all got Encarta.
[ Laughter ]
Seriously, this is how the government handles
one of the most anticipated documents in recent history?
Was it a report or did they just send Congress a mixtape?
[ Laughter, cheers, applause ]
The fact is, reporters were waiting for this disk to arrive.
Everyone was literally sitting on
the Justice Department website reloading the page
where the report was supposed to be posted.
-It is up, is online. You can go to www.justice.gov,
and I think it's /storage/report.pdf.
-We're just waiting to find out more.
I'm sure everyone is eagerly hitting the refresh button
on the Department of Justice website.
-Oh, good. So the same way people see
if they got their Coachella tickets.
[ Laughter ]
Also, can we hear that website link again?
-You can go to www.justice.gov,
and I think it's /storage/report.pdf.
-My God, that link constitutes obstruction of justice.
[ Laughter ]
Just buy MuellerReport.gov or something.
If you're gonna make it hard to find, why not go all the way
and post it at justice.gov/storage/report /no/collusion/innocent
/witchhunt/dontlook /stopclicking/whyareyouclicking
/messageboard/napster.biz?
[ Laughter, cheers, applause ]
Still, now we have the actual report.
And suffice it to say, it's a lot more damning
and nuanced and legally dense than Barr made it sound.
For example, on obstruction of justice,
there's that question of whether Trump had corrupt intent.
Now, Republicans have been chiding everyone else
for thinking Mueller's appointment
would be the end of Trump's presidency.
They've been mocking people for saying, "Oh, my God.
This is the end of his presidency.
He's [bleep]"
But apparently, one of the people who thought that
was Donald Trump himself, because according to the report,
when his then Attorney General Jeff Sessions
told the president that a Special Counsel
had been appointed, the President slumped back
in his chair and said, "Oh, my God. This is terrible.
This is the end of my presidency.
I'm [bleep]" [ Laughter ]
Ugh! The one time we wanted you to be right, and you weren't!
No, while not surprising to hear that even after all
of the new damning details in the report,
the President, who spent the last two weeks
calling it a total and complete exoneration
despite not reading it, called the 400-page final report
a total and complete exoneration despite not reading it.
-When I talked to people inside the Trump campaign,
Trump advisers, earlier this morning,
they just feel like this is a complete victory.
I talked to one Trump adviser who said this is $40 million
clean bill of health for the President.
-I'm sorry, but Donald Trump has never in his life
gotten a clean bill of health.
I mean, for one thing, this is his doctor.
[ Laughter ] "Hey, good news, man.
I did an X-ray.
Most of your bones are still there."
[ Laughter ]
Second, the report is full of damning evidence
about the President's various attempts
to influence the investigation.
Mueller writes that those attempts
were mostly unsuccessful largely because the persons
who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders.
In fact, we've gotten so many more details
about the campaign's ties to Russia.
Just take Trump's ex-campaign chairman Paul Manafort
as one example.
Manafort communicated with the Ukrainian political consultant
tied to Russian intelligence named Konstantin Kilimnik.
Kilimnik proposed a peace plan for Ukraine
that Manafort has since acknowledged
was a backdoor means for Russia to control Eastern Ukraine.
Kilimnik wrote an e-mail to Manafort,
expressing the view which Manafort later said he shared,
that the plan's success would require U.S. support to succeed.
"All that is required to start the process
is a very minor wink from Donald Trump."
Of course, with Trump, it's impossible to know
if he's winking or just trying to read off a teleprompter.
[ Laughter ]
I mean, this is what he looks like
when he's just trying to read a prepared statement.
-10,000 known or "suspested" gang members...
-"Suspected," as in "Robert Mueller suspested
that Trump obstrusted justice."
[ Laughter ]
Again, the report is detailed.
There's a lot to go through,
and it will take time for journalists
and political systems to process it.
But it's worth keeping in mind that after Barr's first letter,
Republicans told us it was a major political win for Trump.
Compare that to a CNN poll that found many voters
felt very differently about the Russia investigation.
-Robert Mueller's work is done,
and among the many remaining questions,
how will it weigh on voters in the 2020 election?
-So, look, this is a recent poll we just asked.
We open-ended it, said, "Okay. What's the most important issue
for your 2020 vote?" so voters could say pretty much anything.
But look at this.
Look where the Russia investigation...
0% said it was most important to their vote in 2020.
Exactly zero, zero, zero respondents said Russia.
-Wow. That guy went full Willie Wonka.
"Zero! You get nothing! Good day, sir!"
[ Laughter ]
So, Mueller laid out the facts, and now it's up to Congress.
In fact, there are multiple specific references to Congress
in this report, including one line that is very direct.
-I just think this sentence is enormously important.
-Read it again. -"The conclusion that Congress
may apply the obstruction law 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."
This is an invitation to Congress to say,
"You can do it using the impeachment power."
-So, now it's up to Congress to do their job.
I don't know if they will,
but if they did, the Trump presidency would be...
-Wrapping up. -Winding down.
This has been "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]