RIYADMEDIA

A second U.S. Senate committee on Wednesday sought to examine the motives of federal agents and investigators who launched the Trump-Russia probe as a Republican effort gathered momentum to seek retribution on behalf of President Donald Trump.

Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson told Reuters he planned to join Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, a fellow Republican, in a review of what motivated an investigation that led to U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.

“How was this pushed by members of the FBI, Department of Justice and the intelligence community? We’re fully aware of the bias that existed in those agencies under the Obama administration,” Johnson said, referring to Democratic President Barack Obama, who preceded Trump.

“I’ve been talking to Senator Graham. I want to work hand-in-glove, our two committees, to try and get that information and make it public for the American people,” he said.

Trump, who, along with fellow Republicans, has seized on the disclosure that Mueller did not find his campaign conspired with Russia to meddle in the election, has been calling for investigations into how the probe got started.

“He is on fire. Anybody who thinks this is going to go by the wayside does not understand the issue of retribution,” said a Trump confidant who speaks to the president regularly. “Hell hath no fury like a president scorned.”

Trump advisers predict Trump will make much of the matter at a rally for supporters in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Thursday, his first major appearance since the Mueller investigation concluded.

A Trump ally, Graham laid out plans for his own investigation this week and urged U.S. Attorney General William Barr to name a special counsel to look into the matter separately.

U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler told reporters he was very concerned that Barr would not submit Mueller’s report to Congress by next Tuesday as Democrats had requested. Nadler said he had a 10-minute phone conversation with Barr on Wednesday.

“I asked whether he could commit that the full report, an unredacted full report with the underlying documents evidence would be provided to Congress and to the American people. And he wouldn’t make a commitment to that. I am very concerned about that,” Nadler said.

Mueller’s report was submitted on Friday to Barr, who issued a summary. Trump said he had been completely exonerated, even though the report did not clear him on the question of obstructing justice.

Trump still faces congressional investigations into his personal and business affairs. But Republicans are hoping Mueller’s findings will help Trump’s 2020 re-election prospects and rebound against his Democratic accusers.

A focus of Republican inquiries is a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant for former Trump adviser Carter Page, based in part on information in a dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who co-founded a private intelligence firm.

Page, a foreign policy adviser during Trump’s campaign, drew scrutiny from the FBI, which said in legal filings in 2016 that it believed he had been “collaborating and conspiring” with the Kremlin. Page met with several Russian government officials during a trip to Moscow in July 2016. He was not charged. Johnson also hopes to unearth facts about alleged discussions at the Justice Department both to surreptitiously record conversations with Trump and to approach Cabinet members about replacing him under the U.S. Constitution’s 25th Amendment.

Johnson said federal law enforcement officials would have done better to approach Trump quietly about concerns they had involving members of his campaign.

During his investigation, Mueller brought charges against 34 people, including Russian agents and former Trump aides. Asked about the Republican push to investigate the investigators, Democrat Jamie Raskin of the House Judiciary Committee said: There is a scramble to obscure the reality that nobody has seen the Mueller report yet.

“So, it was perfectly predictable,” he added, “that once they declared the president completely and totally exonerated by a report no one has read, they would turn in vindictive fashion to try to go after the people whoever raised questions about the president’s conduct.”
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Top lawmakers are blasting the Trump administration’s proposal to slash funding for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo testified Wednesday on Capitol Hill about the plan to cut his agency’s budget by 23 percent. He says difficult choices were made when crafting the 2020 proposal but argues the funding is enough to achieve the administration’s foreign policy goals.

Lawmakers don’t see it that way. Democratic Appropriations Chairwoman Nita Lowey of New York described the request as “insufficient” and said she intends to work with her colleagues to reject it.

“If the President’s budget were enacted it would undermine U.S. leadership and stymie worldwide efforts to counter violent extremism, terrorism and disinformation,” Lowey said.

A Republican on the panel, Hal Rogers of Kentucky, said the plan seemed “detached from reality” and warned “if we were to accept cuts of the magnitude proposed it would make our nation less safe, make it harder to achieve the effectiveness we all seek.”

The Trump administration has called for steep cuts to diplomacy three years in a row. Each time, lawmakers have ignored the requests. House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, Democrat-New York, has already pronounced the 2020 proposal “dead on arrival.”

While the 2020 budget request would reduce spending in areas such as refugee resettlement and global health care programs, it would allocate $3.3 billion in foreign aid to Israel. Trump has made strong relations with Israel central to his administration’s foreign policy and has promised a landmark plan to achieve peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Pompeo told lawmakers Wednesday the peace plan was forthcoming and would be made up of “new and fresh and different” ideas. When asked if the plan supports a state for Palestinians as well as the state of Israel, Pompeo said, “ultimately it will be the peoples of those two lands that resolve this and make that decision about how it is they’ll come together, what the contours of that resolution will look like.”

The 2020 budget request also seeks $5.4 billion to improve security for U.S. diplomats, an issue that has received more attention since the deadly 2012 attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya.

 
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Top lawmakers are blasting the Trump administration’s proposal to slash funding for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo testified Wednesday on Capitol Hill about the plan to cut his agency’s budget by 23 percent. He says difficult choices were made when crafting the 2020 proposal but argues the funding is enough to achieve the administration’s foreign policy goals.

Lawmakers don’t see it that way. Democratic Appropriations Chairwoman Nita Lowey of New York described the request as “insufficient” and said she intends to work with her colleagues to reject it.

“If the President’s budget were enacted it would undermine U.S. leadership and stymie worldwide efforts to counter violent extremism, terrorism and disinformation,” Lowey said.

A Republican on the panel, Hal Rogers of Kentucky, said the plan seemed “detached from reality” and warned “if we were to accept cuts of the magnitude proposed it would make our nation less safe, make it harder to achieve the effectiveness we all seek.”

The Trump administration has called for steep cuts to diplomacy three years in a row. Each time, lawmakers have ignored the requests. House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, Democrat-New York, has already pronounced the 2020 proposal “dead on arrival.”

While the 2020 budget request would reduce spending in areas such as refugee resettlement and global health care programs, it would allocate $3.3 billion in foreign aid to Israel. Trump has made strong relations with Israel central to his administration’s foreign policy and has promised a landmark plan to achieve peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Pompeo told lawmakers Wednesday the peace plan was forthcoming and would be made up of “new and fresh and different” ideas. When asked if the plan supports a state for Palestinians as well as the state of Israel, Pompeo said, “ultimately it will be the peoples of those two lands that resolve this and make that decision about how it is they’ll come together, what the contours of that resolution will look like.”

The 2020 budget request also seeks $5.4 billion to improve security for U.S. diplomats, an issue that has received more attention since the deadly 2012 attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya.

 
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Barbara Bush says Donald Trump caused her “angst” during the 2016 election and led her to question whether she was still a Republican in the months before she died.

The late former first lady’s thoughts about Trump were revealed in excerpts published Wednesday in USA Today of an upcoming biography, The Matriarch.

In a February 2018 interview, Bush was asked if she still considered herself a Republican. She replied, “I’d probably say ‘no’ today.”

She died in April at age 92.

Bush recalls drafting a funny letter to mail after the election congratulating Bill Clinton on becoming a presidential spouse. But Bush said when she woke up, she realized “to my horror that Trump had won.”

A friend gave Bush a clock that counted down the time remaining in Trump’s first term that she kept at her bedside.
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In 2016, President Donald Trump compared Hillary Clinton’s campaign to the lumbering federal bureaucracy. Now he’s building one of his own.

From an office tower across the Potomac River from Washington, from the bowels of the Republican National Committee’s headquarters on Capitol Hill and from field offices across the country, Trump is assembling an army of operatives to fight for victory in what stands to be a legacy-defining political battle. Even with a sea of still-unfilled desks, his 2020 campaign is already unrecognizable from the fly-by-night operation of the last effort, when Trump won the White House despite his inexperienced campaign team.

Trump may still consider himself his own best strategist and communicator, but this time he’s leaving nothing to chance. Trump’s 2020 effort is melding the RNC and his presidential campaign into one functional entity, with the two organizations sharing staff, resources and data in what they argue is the perfect model of the modern integrated campaign.

“We are creating the largest and most efficient campaign operation in American history with the ability to reach more voters than ever before,” said Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale.

Still, the constant and greatest source of uncertainty for the new effort remains Trump — his disdain for feeling managed and his unwavering belief in his own gut instincts above all else.

“Everything the campaign does is to complement and reinforce the candidate, it’s not a substitute for the candidate,” said GOP strategist Alex Conant. “The candidate needs to be in sync with the campaign.”

Trump’s attacks on the late Sen. John McCain of Arizona earlier this month marked an example of how a candidate could unsettle his own political effort.

Driving the 2020 operation is Parscale, a confidant of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is the White House overseer of the campaign. Parscale brings an unusual pedigree to the position: He did website work for Trump’s golf properties before being hired to run Trump’s digital efforts in 2016, when his targeted Facebook ads helped drive Trump voters in the Midwest to the polls.

A priority of both Parscale and Kushner, aides said, is reducing the disruptive staff turnover that defined Trump’s first White House bid and continued through his first two years in the White House. Key campaign hires have had to pass muster with both men. And Parscale, with his 13-month tenure in the job, already has lasted longer than any of Trump’s three 2016 campaign heads.

One reason that Trump is more open to a bulky campaign apparatus this time: the RNC’s fundraising prowess. Trump self-funded his 2016 campaign to the tune of more than $66 million, but he hasn’t put any money into his campaign since November 2016, and officials say that, so far, he doesn’t intend to.

Buoyed by the release of Attorney General William Barr’s summary of the special counsel investigation, which had been hanging over the president’s 2020 prospects, the announcement that Mueller found no evidence of collusion with Russia has served as an unofficial kickoff for Trump’s campaign. But the GOP’s fundraising operation is already well underway.

For 2020, Trump’s campaign is benefiting from the RNC’s access to high-dollar donors, as well as Trump’s massive grassroots email list for small-dollar contributors. Through the end of 2018, the last date for which figures are publicly available, the campaign had brought in more than $129 million. President Barack Obama, by comparison, didn’t even begin his 2012 re-election campaign until 2011. Party operatives think the 2020 campaign and allied GOP groups will need to raise more than $1 billion for Trump’s re-election effort.

Trump’s campaign is spending heavily out of the gate, with twice as much spent on digital advertising so far this year as the Democratic field combined, according to data compiled by Democratic digital marketing firm Bully Pulpit Interactive.

Beyond early fundraising success, the campaign says it is deploying its dollars more efficiently than previous campaigns.

Trump’s 2016 effort was entirely dependent on the RNC in the general election for data, field workers and rapid response, leaning on the national party’s army of staffers in swing states and yearslong technology investments to win. The party operation dwarfed Trump’s campaign staff of just over 100.

Heading into 2020, Trump and the Republican Party are increasingly indistinguishable. In the main hallway of the party’s Capitol Hill headquarters, glossy photos of Trump have replaced photos of other GOP presidents. Political director Chris Carr holds the title for both the campaign and the RNC. And while state-based operatives may work for either entity or their joint venture, known as “Trump Victory,” they will share a common organizational chart.

The RNC’s existing data operation, which Democrats are frantically trying to replicate, has been steadily honed over the last six years, soaking up consumer data and years of political outreach to produce “voter scores” on every voting-age American. The 100-scale scores are then used by GOP campaigns to identify and contact the voters they need to turn out at the polls.

Trump’s campaign is aiming even higher going forward, planning to build a team of more than 1 million volunteers to reach out to swing voters, aides said.

“We will have a formidable ground game, one volunteer for every 13 swing voters, and a data operation that cannot be replicated,” Parscale promises.

Trump’s 2016 campaign chief executive, Steve Bannon, who has feuded with some in the president’s orbit since leaving the White House, assesses the 2020 operation positively.

“They got an operation stood up,” he says approvingly.
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Former Vice President Joe Biden condemned “a white man’s culture” Tuesday night as he lashed out against violence against women and, more specifically, lamented his role in the Supreme Court confirmation hearings that undermined Anita Hill’s credibility nearly three decades ago.

Biden, a Democratic presidential prospect who often highlights his white working-class roots, said Hill, who is African-American, should not have been forced to face a panel of “a bunch of white guys.”

“To this day I regret I couldn’t come up with a way to give her the kind of hearing she deserved,” he said, echoing comments he delivered last fall as the nation debated sexual misconduct allegations against Brett Kavanaugh amid his Supreme Court confirmation hearing.

Later in his Tuesday remarks, Biden called on Americans to “change the culture” that dates back centuries and allows pervasive violence against women. “It’s an English jurisprudential culture, a white man’s culture. It’s got to change,” Biden said.

The 76-year-old Democrat delivered the remarks at a New York City event honoring young people who helped combat sexual assault on college campuses. The event, held at a venue called the Russian Tea Room, was hosted by the Biden Foundation and the nonprofit group It’s on Us, which Biden founded with former President Barack Obama in 2014.

Biden is perhaps the last high-profile Democrat who has yet to announce his or her 2020 intentions. He has a small team of political operatives laying the groundwork for a run, but he has acknowledged publicly in recent weeks that his entrance in the presidential race is no sure thing.

Biden’s role in the 1991 Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings are among his many political challenges as he weighs his place in today’s Democratic Party. Should he run, he would be among a handful of white men in a Democratic presidential field that features several women and minorities.

In remarks that were rambling at times and spanned more than a half hour, Biden repeatedly denounced violence against women. It’s a topic Biden knows well. As a senator, he introduced the Violence Against Women’s Act in 1990.

“No man has a right to lay a hand on a woman no matter what she’s wearing, she does, who she is, unless it’s in self-defense. Never,” he said Tuesday.

He then shared a conversation he had with a member of a college fraternity.

“If you see a brother taking an inebriated co-ed up the stairs at a fraternity house and you don’t go and stop it, you’re a damn coward,” Biden said. “You don’t deserve to be called a man.”
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Former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, the first person charged in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, said on Tuesday his lawyers have applied for a pardon and that he may withdraw his guilty plea.

“My lawyers have applied for a pardon from the president for me,” Papadopoulos said in an interview with Reuters, adding that the request was made a few days ago. “If I’m offered one I would love to accept it, of course.”

Papadopoulos, who was plucked out of obscurity to work as a foreign policy adviser for Donald Trump during the 2016 election campaign, has become an increasingly vocal critic of Mueller’s Russia probe since completing a 12-day prison term in December.

Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in October 2017 to lying to FBI agents about the timing and nature of his communications with two Russian nationals and a Maltese professor with ties to Russian officials while working on the Trump campaign.

Book details deal

His comments about a pardon came on the same day that he released a book in which he disavowed his guilty plea, claiming he did not lie to the FBI and was unfairly pressured by Mueller’s prosecutors into cutting a deal.

Papadopoulos says Mueller’s team threatened that if he did not agree to the plea deal, he would be charged for not registering as a foreign agent for his Israel-related work.

“I was faced with a choice: accept the charges that I lied or face FARA charges,” he wrote in the book. “I made a deal. A deal forced on me.”

FARA refers to the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

His claims could gather traction after Attorney General William Barr said on Sunday that Mueller’s team of investigators did not find evidence that Trump or his campaign conspired with Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election.

“My story is part of a larger story. The story of Trump and the story of stopping Trump, or trying to,” the 31-year-old Papadopoulos wrote in his book. “The Trump presidency was the primary target of all this insanity.”

A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment.

Maltese professor

Under his plea deal, Papadopoulos acknowledged that Joseph Mifsud, the Maltese professor, told him in April 2016 that Russia had “dirt” on then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.”

In July 2016, WikiLeaks published a trove of emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee, one in a series of operations that U.S. intelligence agencies say were carried out by Russia and which roiled Clinton’s campaign.

Papadopoulos admitted he lied when he told the FBI that Mifsud had shared the information on the emails with him before he became an adviser to the Trump campaign.

Mifsud has denied discussing the emails with Papadopoulos.

Papadopoulos also helped trigger an FBI counterintelligence probe of the Trump campaign by telling an Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, in May 2016 that Russia had “dirt” on Clinton.

Unintentional lies

Australian officials passed that information to their U.S. counterparts two months later when the leaked Democratic emails appeared online.

In his book, Papadopoulos said his alleged lies to the FBI were unintentional, contradicting his plea agreement and his final statement to the judge, in which he apologized for not being honest and for possibly hindering Mueller’s probe.

“Without consulting my calendar or my emails, I did not  accurately remember the timeline of events,” he wrote in the book.
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Leading House Democrats, backed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are unveiling broad legislation to shore up the Affordable Care Act. It’s an attempt to deliver on campaign promises about health care and to — just maybe— change the conversation.

In a capital city consumed with the political storm over special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report , Democrats are trying to show they also care about policy by falling back on an issue that worked well for them in last year’s midterm elections.

According to Pelosi’s office, the bill being unveiled Tuesday would make more middle-class people eligible for subsidized health insurance through former President Barack Obama’s health law, often called “Obamacare,” while increasing aid for those with lower incomes who already qualify. And it would fix a longstanding affordability problem for some consumers, known as the “family glitch.”

The legislation would provide money to help insurers pay the bills of their costliest patients and restore advertising and outreach budgets slashed by President Donald Trump’s administration, helping to stabilize health insurance markets.

It also would block the Trump administration from loosening “Obamacare” rules through waivers that allow states to undermine protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions or to scale back so-called “essential” benefits like coverage for mental health and addiction treatment.

The bill will get a vote in the House, but as a package it has no chance of passing the Republican-controlled Senate. However, some elements have bipartisan support and may make it into law.

Trump swept into office promising to “repeal and replace” the Obama health law but was unable to do so, even with a Congress fully under Republican control.

Trump remains committed to overturning the ACA, but with the House in Democratic hands his last hope seems to be a court challenge to the law by Texas and other Republican-led states, now before a federal appeals panel.

The Trump administration said in its most recent appellate court filing in the case that the entire law should be struck down as unconstitutional, a bolder position than it previously held. It’s rare for the Justice Department to decline to defend a federal law.

Meanwhile, millions of people continue to benefit from the ACA’s taxpayer-subsidized private insurance plans, but enrollment is slowly declining and experts fear stagnation.

The government said Monday that 11.4 million people have signed up for coverage this year, just a slight dip from 2018. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found remarkably steady enrollment, down only about 300,000 consumers. Premiums stabilized, and more insurers came into the market.

Still, the number of new customers fell by more than 500,000. That’s a worrisome sign for backers of the ACA, who say the Trump administration’s cuts to the ad budget and congressional repeal of a requirement that people get insured will gradually eat away at program enrollment. Unless younger, healthier people sign up, already-high premiums will march upward again.

Since Trump took office, the federal health insurance market, HealthCare.gov, has lost more than 1 million customers. State-run markets are holding their own.

The House Democrats’ legislation is being introduced by three major committee leaders: Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and Education and Labor Chairman Bobby Scott, D-Va.
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He doesn’t prepare speeches. He doesn’t like pollsters. And, so far at least, Democratic presidential contender Beto O’Rourke doesn’t always have the capacity to coordinate basic campaign logistics.

Just ask Des Moines County Democratic Party Chairman Tom Courtney.

Last week, Courtney got an 8 p.m. text from the frantic owner of a local cafe who heard rumors that O’Rourke planned to hold a campaign event at her business the next day. But she hadn’t heard from O’Rourke’s team. When his representatives did reach out later that night, the cafe owner was left scrambling to find a half dozen additional employees with just hours of notice to work the event.

Almost a week later, Courtney is still incredulous.

“He’s a nice candidate, and I liked him,” Courtney said. “But if he does that kind of organization, he’s gonna piss everybody off.”

Welcome to Betomania, a nascent presidential campaign that’s still learning how to balance the 46-year-old Democrat’s freewheeling style with the demands of running a nationwide political organization.

O’Rourke attracted overflowing crowds, record fundraising and tremendous media buzz for his inaugural tour as he raced across Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada over the last week. He also irritated Democratic leaders at times with a seat-of-the-pants campaign approach that may ultimately raise questions about his ability to govern.

With little executive experience to speak of, the former three-term congressman’s 2020 presidential campaign – which is essentially a multimillion-dollar nationwide company that already features thousands of volunteers and dozens of paid staff – may represent the most significant leadership test of his life.

The former punk rocker employed an unconventional approach to his 2018 Senate campaign in Texas, nearly upsetting Republican Sen. Ted Cruz with a rebellious strategy that rejected pollsters, political consultants and scripted speeches. Advisers suggest O’Rourke will eventually be more open to such conventions in his 2020 presidential bid.

But in sharp contrast to the Democratic Party’s last presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, who lost the presidency in part because of her inability to connect with voters in an authentic way, O’Rourke’s campaign is focused on a stripped-down presidential playbook that features little more than a rented van and a microphone.

His team insists that early bumps are the natural byproduct of a candidate who genuinely didn’t decide he was running until a week or two before his March 14 announcement.

“I’m not someone who’s been running for president for my life or for years,” O’Rourke said as he barnstormed through South Carolina over the weekend. “I’ve been thinking about it in a serious way for a couple of months and have been a declared candidate for 7 days, so I understand that that can pose some challenges.”

Indeed, many top-tier candidates in the crowded 2020 presidential field have spent much of the last year – or longer – building shadow campaigns of prospective staff, donors and volunteers to allow them to ramp up their presidential operation quickly. O’Rourke had never stepped foot in Iowa before launching his presidential campaign.

Aides report that he considers his wife, Amy, his most trusted adviser. But O’Rourke took a big step toward professionalizing his operation on Monday, 11 days after announcing his candidacy, by naming veteran Democratic strategist Jen O’Malley Dillon to serve as his campaign manager. She has experience on five previous presidential campaigns, most recently serving as deputy campaign manager to President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election. 

O’Rourke’s skeleton crew moved into his El Paso, Texas, campaign headquarters on the Monday before his Thursday announcement, advisers said. Most of the current 24 paid staff were hired on a one-month temporary employment agreement to start. O’Rourke’s former congressional chief of staff, David Wysong, who has no presidential campaign experience, is currently directing campaign operations.

Advisers note that the campaign is still relying heavily on its network of volunteers across the country but has received more than 6,000 applications for paid staff positions.

​Despite the challenges, O’Rourke’s campaign has attracted a flood of cash and positive media attention in the early days of his presidential bid.

He raised $6.1 million from more than 128,000 individual donors in the first 24 hours after announcing his candidacy, a figure that bested Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ $6 million and the $1.5 million raised by the next closest first-day fundraising leader, California Sen. Kamala Harris. And in the days leading up to his announcement, O’Rourke was featured prominently in media coverage, including large spreads in Vanity Fair, The Washington Post and a documentary film that debuted at the SXSW film festival.

The documentary made it clear that the candidate seeks to use the media to his advantage. Scenes showed him talking to advisers about trying to bait certain reporters into favorable coverage while complaining about having to “dance” for national outlets. In El Paso, O’Rourke critics have complained about him using the city as a prop for East Coast newspaper reporters.

Amid the success on some fronts, the inexperience is showing elsewhere on the ground in key states.

On the night before O’Rourke’s highly publicized arrival in New Hampshire, state Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley didn’t have any details about when or where to see him. House Speaker Steve Shurtleff, one of the state’s top elected Democrats, spoke with O’Rourke on the phone but could not arrange a time to meet in person.

Some people find O’Rourke’s “quirky campaign” endearing, Shurtleff said, although tracking him down can be difficult.

“It’s almost like ‘Where’s Waldo.’ Where’s he going to pop up next?” Shurtleff asked. “It’s hard for some people to plan.”

Others notice that O’Rourke’s team was taking unusual routes from event to event, which strained his schedule and prompted jokes about unnecessary travel on bumpy backroads.

“I looked at his New Hampshire schedule and said, ‘Here’s a man who doesn’t know New Hampshire,”’ said Susan Chandler a 72-year-old retired assistant principal who attended one of O’Rourke’s 11 events in the state over two days last week.

That may be the point.

O’Rourke and his team don’t yet know the states that matter most on the presidential primary calendar. He says his unorthodox approach on the campaign trail will help him connect with voters of all walks of life – especially in areas he doesn’t know. For now, he’s largely depending on an inexperienced staff and a huge collection of energized but inexperienced volunteers to guide him.

His campaign, he said in South Carolina, “is all about people and about all people.”

“I don’t care how red or rural, blue or urban the community is. Everyone in this country is important, and we want to bring forward and not leave behind a single soul in this country,” O’Rourke said. “And that’s not just how I want to serve as president. That’s how I want to campaign as a candidate.”
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Representative Ilhan Omar has a way of attracting attention.

Four months ago, the Democrat became the first Somali-American — and one of the first two Muslim women — to serve in the U.S. Congress. Her election was heralded by many as a sign of a more diverse generation of politicians coming to power on Capitol Hill.

But just weeks into her first congressional term, Omar ignited a controversy with a tweet invoking an offensive trope suggesting U.S. lawmakers’ support for Israel was swayed by money from the powerful lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Shortly after her apology for that tweet, Omar suggested in a public statement that lawmakers held a dual loyalty to the U.S. and Israel.

Omar’s comments triggered two Congressional resolutions condemning hate speech. Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, including senior Democratic leadership, strongly criticized Omar for making remarks that many felt crossed the line into anti-Semitism. In a speech Sunday to the opening session of AIPAC’s annual conference in Washington, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland declared that “What weakens us … is when, instead of engaging in legitimate debate about policies, someone questions the motives of his or her fellow citizens.”

The controversy jeopardized Omar’s high-profile assignment on the House Foreign Relations Committee, while giving a House freshman an unusually high-profile role in a long-running and contentious U.S. foreign policy debate over Israel and its treatment of Palestinians.

Home district

But in the Minneapolis-centered Minnesota 5th Congressional district that Omar represents, the nation’s largest Somali-American community sees the controversy differently. For the Somali-Americans who watched the election of one-time refugee Omar with pride just a short time ago, they are suspicious and troubled by the negative attention. 

“The reason there is a lot of attention on Ilhan Omar is because a lot of differences came into the Congress — a Muslim woman, a hijab woman, an African woman — a lot of differences, that’s what brings attention,” Somali-American Bashir Jama told VOA recently at Village Market, one of Minneapolis’ largest Somali malls.

“We were watching the criticism of Ilhan Omar, but we do not believe she is behaving with hatred toward Jewish people. I think that’s a misinterpretation against her,” Ali Muse, a Somali-American, told VOA.

Somali-Americans make up only part of Omar’s racially diverse district, which is overall 70 percent white and trends toward a young, urban and highly educated population. The district was the first to elect a Muslim to Congress, sending now-Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to Washington beginning in 2006.

Jewish leaders

The district also includes the St. Louis Park suburbs that are home to a strong Jewish population. Leaders in the Minnesota Jewish community have been deeply hurt by Omar’s allegations but are also aware of the fine line they have to walk to maintain the historically close ties between the Somali and Jewish communities here in Minnesota.

“This is not an attack or critique on Congresswoman Omar because she’s a woman of color, because she’s of Somali descent, because she wears a hijab,” said Avi S. Olitzky, a senior rabbi at Beth El Synagogue. But he says Omar’s comments are particularly dangerous in a growing atmosphere of anti-Semitism.

“The language really echoed upon anti-Semitic tropes that have been used throughout the centuries, accusations of Jews having dual loyalties to foreign countries — specifically Israel — or Jews with their associations with money and buying political favor,” Olitzky told VOA.

Jewish leaders have met with Omar and her staff to follow up on her comments and inform her about the hurtful consequences. They say this controversy should be an opportunity to inform the public about damaging stereotypes and caricatures, not about cutting off informed debate over U.S. foreign policy.

“There is no reason why Israel, Palestine, the United States relationship with Israel should not be the subject of robust debate and discussion,” said Steve Hunegs, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas. “That’s the hallmark of American democracy. But when we descend to ugly comments, or indulgent stereotypes, or casting aspersions, that degrades our democracy.”

Hunegs said he showed Omar and her staff a photograph of his cousin, who was killed in action fighting in World War II, to make the point that Jewish families are loyal to the United States and have made considerable sacrifices for that loyalty.

Local Jewish leaders emphasize the ongoing conversation with Omar and her staff is ultimately about seeking better representation for this diverse district while avoiding divisiveness.

“White nationalists seeking to divide natural allies of communities of color or Jewish people from Muslims, if we are challenging or fighting one another as opposed to challenging that ideology, they are able to continue to cause all of our communities harm,” Rabbi Michael Latz of the Shirtikvah Congregation in Minneapolis told VOA. 

Abdullahi Farah, the executive director of the Abubakar Islamic Center, one of the largest mosques in the Minneapolis area, told VOA the community did not support hateful speech in any form and looked forward to an ongoing dialogue in the community.

Campaign insider

Omar’s own history, first as a refugee fleeing violence in Somalia to a camp in Kenya and then emigrating to the United States, informs her perspective on democratic debate, Khalid Mohammed told VOA. Mohammed worked on Omar’s campaign last year.

“She is a war survivor,” Mohammed said. “So when you see her talking about injustices happening across the globe, it’s not because she just saying it for the sake of saying it. She deeply cares about it because she’d been through a struggle.”

He does not see Omar’s challenge to U.S. foreign policy as an attack against Jews, but a criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s increasingly harsh policies in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“When she talked about Israel, I don’t think she was going after Jewish people or their faith,” Mohammed said. “She was going after one individual — the Prime Minister of Israel and the violations that he’s been committing for a while and how the U.S. just turned its back on those policies.” 

Omar could not be reached for comment. In a March 17 Washington Post commentary, Omar said her experience as a refugee informed her desire to find “a balanced, inclusive approach” to a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians.

“When I criticize certain Israeli government actions in Gaza or settlements in the West Bank, it is because I believe these actions not only threaten the possibility of peace in the region — they also threaten the United States’ own national security interests,” Omar wrote.

Threats, challenges

Omar’s outspokenness has invited more than controversy. Mohammed pointed to an FBI investigation into a death threat against Omar written on the wall of a gas station in her district. Somali-Americans in Minneapolis also brought up a poster at a Republican-sponsored gathering in West Virginia linking Omar with the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the U.S. The state party denounced the sign even as Omar called it “the GOP’s anti-Muslim display.”

Ultimately, Omar’s re-election in 2020 could be at risk as voters in the Minnesota 5th weigh the consequences of a representative who courts controversy while provoking debate. The district is one of the most Democratic in the nation, meaning that a party primary challenge would be the best opportunity to unseat Omar.

Rabb Latz said that while his synagogue does not get involved in endorsing candidates, challengers are already eyeing the seat a year and a half ahead of a potential primary.

“I can probably count five to 10 off the top of my head right now of folks who are already considering running,” Latz said. 
…

U.S. President Donald Trump and Republican allies in Congress pledged Monday to carry out their own investigations of his prominent critics and those behind the probe of links between is 2016 campaign and Russian efforts to disrupt the election in favor of Trump.

“There are a lot of people out there that have done some very evil things, very bad things, I would say treasonous things against our country,” Trump said, without specifying anyone in particular. “Those people will certainly be looked at.”

During the investigation, many Democrats repeatedly stated their belief that Trump’s inner circle did collude with Russia and that the president later sought to evade justice — pronouncements that did not go unnoticed by White House press secretary Sarah Sanders.

“It’s hard to obstruct a crime that never took place,” Sanders told the U.S.-based cable news network, CNN. “The Democrats and the liberal media owe the president, and they owe the American people, an apology. They wasted two years and created a massive disruption and distraction from things that impact people’s everyday lives.”

The comments came after Attorney General William Barr released a summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings from the exhaustive, 22-month probe, which led to dozens of indictments as well as guilty pleas from some of Trump’s closest former associates.

In a letter to congressional leaders, Barr said Mueller concluded that Russia unquestionably meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but that Trump and his campaign did not conspire with Moscow to help him win the White House.

On the question of obstruction, however, Barr wrote, “The report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” On that basis, Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein decided that charges against Trump were not warranted.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally and the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, promised Monday to “unpack the other side of the story” of the Mueller investigation and to look into how the Justice Department started it.

For nearly two years, Trump had repeatedly blasted the special counsel probe as a “witch hunt.” With the investigation complete, the president said, “We can never, ever let this happen to another president again.”

Reaction from lawmakers

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers had sharply differing reactions.

“For the president to say he is completely exonerated directly contradicts the words of Mr. Mueller and is not to be taken with any degree of credibility,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said in a joint statement.

The Democratic leaders added: “Attorney General Barr’s letter raises as many questions as it answers. The fact that Special Counsel Mueller’s report does not exonerate the president on a charge as serious as obstruction of justice demonstrates how urgent it is that the full report and underlying documentation be made public without any further delay.”

Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware said on CNN, “Mueller’s report, at the least the summary that we’ve gotten from Barr, leaves wide open both the question of obstruction, and I think, makes it clear that other investigations should proceed.”

By contrast, Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn urged Congress “to move on,” and that “the worst thing we could do is to get bogged down in a relitigation of all of these issues.”

At the same time, Cornyn urged the release of as much of the Mueller report as possible, consistent with Justice Department regulations and U.S. law. He also called for a review of steps taken by federal officials in launching the Russia investigation.

Full report

On Monday, Schumer urged a Senate vote on a resolution calling for the release of Mueller’s full report. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, objected, saying Barr must be given time to determine which portions of the report can be divulged without revealing classified information.

But the six chairs of committees in the Democratically controlled House sent Barr a letter Monday, demanding he turn over the full Mueller report by April 2. They also told Barr to start handing over all evidence the special counsel used to write the report.

The six Democratic leaders — five men and one woman — say Barr’s four-page summary is not sufficient for Congress to do its work. They also say Congress needs to make an independent assessment of the evidence regarding Trumps alleged obstruction of justice.

Meantime, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said he hopes Barr will testify before his panel.

Graham also promised Monday to “unpack the other side of the story” of the Mueller investigation and will look into how the Justice Department started it.

During the investigation, many Democrats repeatedly stated their belief that Trump’s inner circle did collude with Russia and that the president later sought to evade justice — pronouncements that did not go unnoticed by White House press secretary Sarah Sanders.

“It’s hard to obstruct a crime that never took place,” Sanders told CNN. “The Democrats and the liberal media owe the president, and they owe the American people, an apology. They wasted two years and created a massive disruption and distraction from things that impact people’s everyday lives.”

Investigation numbers

Mueller charged 25 Russians with election interference, although they are unlikely to stand trial because the United States and Russia do not have an extradition treaty.

He also has secured guilty pleas or won convictions for a variety of offenses against six Trump aides and advisers, including the president’s one-time campaign manager, Paul Manafort; his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn; and his longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

Barr’s summary noted that Mueller had 19 lawyers and 40 FBI agents working with him on the investigation, issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, talked to about 500 witnesses and carried out nearly 500 search warrants.

Michael Bowman on Capitol Hill contributed to this report.
…

In a big legal and political win for U.S. President Donald Trump, Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded in his final report that there was no evidence that Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign or anyone associated with it colluded with Russia to influence the outcome of the vote, according to a summary of the confidential report released on Sunday by Attorney General William Barr.

That finding was emphatic, and validated Trump’s long-standing insistence that “there was no collusion” between his campaign and Russian hackers and meddlers who sought to change the outcome of Trump’s presidential battle with Democrat Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state. Using Mueller’s own words, the Barr letter stated that “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

But on the question of whether Trump obstructed justice in the course of the investigation, Mueller reached no conclusion and punted the decision to Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, according to a letter Barr wrote to top Democrats and Republicans on the House and Senate judiciary committees summarizing the report’s “principal conclusions.” Complicating Mueller’s challenge in getting to the bottom of the question was Trump’s refusal to answer questions under oath and instead provide written answers. Barr and Rosenstein – who appointed Mueller as Special Counsel and oversaw the investigation– concluded that the evidence developed during the investigation “is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”

That finding is certain to be a key bone of contention for congressional Democrats who are investigating Trump and his administration, especially given the Special Counsel’s assertion that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, tweeted that “The fact that Mueller’s report does not exonerate the president on a charge as serious as obstruction of justice demonstrates how urgent it is that the full report & documentation be made public without any further delay.”

​Mueller submitted his report to Barr late Friday, nearly two years after he was appointed to investigate allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election and collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow. 

After combing through the report over the weekend, Barr submitted a four-page letter to Congress absolving Trump of any collusion with the Russians or obstruction of justice in blocking the criminal investigation. Barr’s letter was made public shortly after it was delivered to Congress. 

“It was complete and total exoneration,” Trump told reporters in Florida before returning to Washington Sunday afternoon. “This was an illegal takedown that failed and hopefully somebody is going to be looking at their other side.”

Here are five key take-aways from Barr’s summary of the Mueller report:

Trump was right: There was no collusion

The central question before Mueller was whether members of the Trump campaign or any other Americans conspired with Russians to tip the 2016 campaign in favor of the real estate tycoon. On that score, the Mueller report delivers a categorical vindication of the president. 

While Mueller’s investigators uncovered evidence of Russian meddling in the U.S. election, “[the] investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” the summary quotes Mueller as writing.

​The special counsel interpreted “coordination” fairly broadly to include both tacit and express agreements.But he found no evidence that members of the Trump campaign accepted offers of help from Russian operatives. “There was really an affirmative ‘No’” said Eric Jaso, a former associate special counsel for the Whitewater affair during former President Bill Clinton’s administration and now a partner at the Spiro Harrison law firm.“If they’d gone along and said yes, that would have fallen under the tacit agreement category.”

Mueller punts obstruction of justice question

Mueller’s decision to punt the question of obstruction of justice struck many legal experts as unusual. 

The Special Counsel took up the question after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey over the Russia investigation and after Comey claimed that Trump had asked him to stop investigating his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn. 

But Mueller drew no conclusion about whether Trump’s actions during the investigation amounted to obstruction of justice, according to the Barr summary. 

“Instead, for each one of the relevant actions investigated, the report sets out evidence on both sides of the question and leaves unresolved what the Special Counsel views as ‘difficult issues’ of” whether Trump obstructed justice, Barr wrote.

With Mueller leaving the matter unresolved, it was left to the attorney general to make a determination. Barr wrote that after consulting with Justice Department officials, he and Rosenstein concluded that there was not enough evidence that Trump had committed obstruction of justice. The determination, he added, was made irrespective of a long-standing Justice Department guidance that a sitting president can’t be indicted.

​Before taking the helm of the Justice Department last month, Barr had written critically of the Mueller probe and called the investigation of Trump for possible obstruction of justice “fatally flawed.”

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, called the decision “concerning” and said he’ll ask Barr to testify before the panel in the near future. 

Jaso said the fact that Barr made the determination in concert with Rosenstein provides Barr with political cover.

“He can’t be just painted as a toady of the president,” Jaso said. 

No additional indictments

The Special Counsel investigation led to the indictments of 37 individuals and entities, mostly Russian operatives and a handful of former Trump associates. In the run-up to the Mueller report, speculation was rife that the Special Counsel would announce new indictments against individuals in the president’s orbit. 

But Barr’s summary says the Special Counsel does not recommend any additional indictments in his report and says that there are no indictments under seal that have yet to be made public. 

A redacted version in the works 

The full extent of Mueller’s findings, including evidence concerning obstruction of justice, will remain unknowable until a more complete version of the report is released. In his letter, Barr indicated that he’ll share a redacted version of the full report at a future date.Barr said that he’s asked the Special Counsel to identify confidential information that must be kept classified and that as soon as “that process is complete, I will be in a position to move forward expeditiously in determining” what can be released. Democrats are demanding full disclosure and vowing to compel the attorney general to comply.

Thorough investigation

Defenders of the Mueller investigation found a measure of vindication in the thoroughness with which the veteran prosecutor and former FBI director carried out the probe. According to Barr’s letter, the Special Counsel issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants, obtained more than 230 orders for communication records, made 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence and interviewed approximately 500 witnesses. 

By all accounts, Mueller left no stones untouched in his dogged effort to probe whether the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow and whether the president sought to impede the investigation that followed. 

But Mueller appears to have steered clear of one line of inquiry that the president had said was off limits: Trump’s finances and whether the president’s business interests in Russia led him and his campaign into collusion. 

“It does not say that thirdly or furthermore we investigated whether the Trump campaign or Trump himself had a desire to ingratiate himself with the Russians which somehow made him vulnerable to this effort,” Jaso said.
…

In a big legal and political win for U.S. President Donald Trump, Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded in his final report that there was no evidence that Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign or anyone associated with it colluded with Russia to influence the outcome of the vote, according to a summary of the confidential report released on Sunday by Attorney General William Barr.

That finding was emphatic, and validated Trump’s long-standing insistence that “there was no collusion” between his campaign and Russian hackers and meddlers who sought to change the outcome of Trump’s presidential battle with Democrat Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state. Using Mueller’s own words, the Barr letter stated that “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

But on the question of whether Trump obstructed justice in the course of the investigation, Mueller reached no conclusion and punted the decision to Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, according to a letter Barr wrote to top Democrats and Republicans on the House and Senate judiciary committees summarizing the report’s “principal conclusions.” Complicating Mueller’s challenge in getting to the bottom of the question was Trump’s refusal to answer questions under oath and instead provide written answers. Barr and Rosenstein – who appointed Mueller as Special Counsel and oversaw the investigation– concluded that the evidence developed during the investigation “is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”

That finding is certain to be a key bone of contention for congressional Democrats who are investigating Trump and his administration, especially given the Special Counsel’s assertion that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, tweeted that “The fact that Mueller’s report does not exonerate the president on a charge as serious as obstruction of justice demonstrates how urgent it is that the full report & documentation be made public without any further delay.”

​Mueller submitted his report to Barr late Friday, nearly two years after he was appointed to investigate allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election and collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow. 

After combing through the report over the weekend, Barr submitted a four-page letter to Congress absolving Trump of any collusion with the Russians or obstruction of justice in blocking the criminal investigation. Barr’s letter was made public shortly after it was delivered to Congress. 

“It was complete and total exoneration,” Trump told reporters in Florida before returning to Washington Sunday afternoon. “This was an illegal takedown that failed and hopefully somebody is going to be looking at their other side.”

Here are five key take-aways from Barr’s summary of the Mueller report:

Trump was right: There was no collusion

The central question before Mueller was whether members of the Trump campaign or any other Americans conspired with Russians to tip the 2016 campaign in favor of the real estate tycoon. On that score, the Mueller report delivers a categorical vindication of the president. 

While Mueller’s investigators uncovered evidence of Russian meddling in the U.S. election, “[the] investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” the summary quotes Mueller as writing.

​The special counsel interpreted “coordination” fairly broadly to include both tacit and express agreements.But he found no evidence that members of the Trump campaign accepted offers of help from Russian operatives. “There was really an affirmative ‘No’” said Eric Jaso, a former associate special counsel for the Whitewater affair during former President Bill Clinton’s administration and now a partner at the Spiro Harrison law firm.“If they’d gone along and said yes, that would have fallen under the tacit agreement category.”

Mueller punts obstruction of justice question

Mueller’s decision to punt the question of obstruction of justice struck many legal experts as unusual. 

The Special Counsel took up the question after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey over the Russia investigation and after Comey claimed that Trump had asked him to stop investigating his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn. 

But Mueller drew no conclusion about whether Trump’s actions during the investigation amounted to obstruction of justice, according to the Barr summary. 

“Instead, for each one of the relevant actions investigated, the report sets out evidence on both sides of the question and leaves unresolved what the Special Counsel views as ‘difficult issues’ of” whether Trump obstructed justice, Barr wrote.

With Mueller leaving the matter unresolved, it was left to the attorney general to make a determination. Barr wrote that after consulting with Justice Department officials, he and Rosenstein concluded that there was not enough evidence that Trump had committed obstruction of justice. The determination, he added, was made irrespective of a long-standing Justice Department guidance that a sitting president can’t be indicted.

​Before taking the helm of the Justice Department last month, Barr had written critically of the Mueller probe and called the investigation of Trump for possible obstruction of justice “fatally flawed.”

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, called the decision “concerning” and said he’ll ask Barr to testify before the panel in the near future. 

Jaso said the fact that Barr made the determination in concert with Rosenstein provides Barr with political cover.

“He can’t be just painted as a toady of the president,” Jaso said. 

No additional indictments

The Special Counsel investigation led to the indictments of 37 individuals and entities, mostly Russian operatives and a handful of former Trump associates. In the run-up to the Mueller report, speculation was rife that the Special Counsel would announce new indictments against individuals in the president’s orbit. 

But Barr’s summary says the Special Counsel does not recommend any additional indictments in his report and says that there are no indictments under seal that have yet to be made public. 

A redacted version in the works 

The full extent of Mueller’s findings, including evidence concerning obstruction of justice, will remain unknowable until a more complete version of the report is released. In his letter, Barr indicated that he’ll share a redacted version of the full report at a future date.Barr said that he’s asked the Special Counsel to identify confidential information that must be kept classified and that as soon as “that process is complete, I will be in a position to move forward expeditiously in determining” what can be released. Democrats are demanding full disclosure and vowing to compel the attorney general to comply.

Thorough investigation

Defenders of the Mueller investigation found a measure of vindication in the thoroughness with which the veteran prosecutor and former FBI director carried out the probe. According to Barr’s letter, the Special Counsel issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants, obtained more than 230 orders for communication records, made 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence and interviewed approximately 500 witnesses. 

By all accounts, Mueller left no stones untouched in his dogged effort to probe whether the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow and whether the president sought to impede the investigation that followed. 

But Mueller appears to have steered clear of one line of inquiry that the president had said was off limits: Trump’s finances and whether the president’s business interests in Russia led him and his campaign into collusion. 

“It does not say that thirdly or furthermore we investigated whether the Trump campaign or Trump himself had a desire to ingratiate himself with the Russians which somehow made him vulnerable to this effort,” Jaso said.
…

U.S. Attorney General William Barr said in a letter Sunday that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election found no evidence that President Donald Trump or anyone associated with his campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia.

But on the question of whether Trump tried to obstruct justice by interfering with or trying to derail the Mueller probe, Barr said, “The report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

Barr released a summary of the long-awaited report on a 22-month-long probe into allegations the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the election in Trump’s favor.

Barr sent his summary to Congress and released it to the public Sunday. Mueller delivered his report to the Department of Justice on Friday.

“The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it coordinated … with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” Barr’s summary said.

Barr said this is what the report concluded despite what he says were “multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.”

“The Special Counsel’s investigation determined that there were two main Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election. The first involved attempts by a Russian organization, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), to conduct disinformation and social media operations in the United States designed to sow social discord, eventually with the aim of interfering with the election,” Barr wrote. “The second element involved the Russian government’s efforts to conduct computer hacking operations designed to gather and disseminate information to influence the election.”

Mueller charged 25 Russians with election interference. He also brought indictments against six Trump aides and advisors, including the president’s one-time campaign manager Paul Manafort, his first National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and his longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen.

According to Barr, Mueller did not conclude whether Trump obstructed justice, turning that question over to Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Barr writes that there is not enough evidence to conclude whether Trump committed the crime of obstructing justice. He said this was not based on any belief that a sitting president cannot be indicted.

“To obtain and sustain an obstruction conviction, the government would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person acting with corrupt intent engaged in obstructive conduct,” Barr wrote.

Despite Barr saying the Mueller report does not totally clear him, Trump tweeted, “No collusion, no obstruction, complete and total exoneration. Keep America Great!”

He later told reporters that the probe was “the most ridiculous thing I ever heard … it’s a shame our country had to go through this … it’s a shame the president had to go through this before I even got elected — this was an illegal takedown that failed and hopefully somebody is going to look at the other side.”

Numerous court decisions upheld the legality of the Mueller probe.

Barr’s summary noted that during the nearly two-year-long investigation, Mueller had 19 lawyers and 40 FBI agents working with him, issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, talked to about 500 witnesses, and carried out nearly 500 search warrants.

The House voted unanimously earlier this month on a measure demanding the full Mueller report be released to the public. Many lawmakers also want to see any evidence Mueller used to reach his conclusions, especially now that Barr wrote the Mueller report “does not exonerate” Trump, even if the president says it does.

​”Attorney General Barr’s letter raises as many questions as it answers,” Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement. “Given Mr. Barr’s public record of bias against the special counsel’s inquiry, he is not a neutral observer and is not in a position to make objective determinations about the report.”

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler says his panel will call Barr to testify in the near future “in light of the very concerning discrepancies and final decision making at the Justice Department following the Special Counsel report, where Mueller did not exonerate the president.” 

Several Democratic presidential candidates — Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren — also said Sunday that a summary of the Mueller report filtered through the president’s “hand-picked attorney general” is unsatisfactory.

But House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, says Barr’s letter makes it “abundantly clear, without a shadow of a doubt, there was no collusion” and says the country welcomes the findings.

One of Trump closest congressional allies, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, says Mueller did a “great job” and called Sunday a “good day for the rule of law” and a “bad day for those hoping the Mueller investigation would take President Trump down.”

“Now it is time to move on, govern the country, and get ready to combat Russia and other foreign actors ahead of 2020,” he wrote Sunday.
…

The cloud that has hung over President Donald Trump since the day he walked into the White House has been lifted.

Yes, special counsel Robert Mueller left open the question of whether Trump tried to obstruct the investigation. Yes, separate federal probes still put Trump and his associates in legal jeopardy. And yes, Democrats will spend the coming months pushing for more details from Mueller, all while launching new probes into Trump’s administration and businesses.

But at its core, Mueller’s investigation gave the president what he wanted: public affirmation that he and his campaign did not coordinate with Russia to win the 2016 election. After spending months tweeting “No collusion,” Trump had been proven right.

The findings, summarized Sunday by the Justice Department , are sure to embolden Trump as he plunges into his re-election campaign, armed now with new fodder to claim the investigation was little more than a politically motivated effort to undermine his presidency.

“It’s a shame that our country had to go through this,” Trump said. “To be honest, it’s a shame that your president has had to go through this.”

Mueller’s investigation stretched on for nearly two years, enveloping Trump’s presidency in a cloud of uncertainty and sending him into frequent fits of rage. The scope of the probe was sweeping: Mueller issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, obtained nearly 500 search warrants and interviewed 500 witnesses, including some of the president’s closest advisers.

And Trump’s ultimate vindication on the question of collusion with Russia came at a steep cost.

The investigation took down his campaign chairman, his White House national security adviser and his longtime lawyer. It revealed the extent of Moscow’s desire to swing the 2016 contest toward Trump, as well as Trump’s pursuit of business deals in Russia deep into the campaign. And the Justice Department didn’t explain why so many Trump associates lied throughout the investigation.

But in the end, Mueller concluded that those lies were not an effort to obscure a criminal conspiracy by Trump and his advisers to work with Russia. There was smoke, and plenty of it — including an eyebrow-raising meeting between Trump’s son and a Russian lawyer — but ultimately, no fire.

“Good day for the rule of law. Great day for President Trump and his team,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. “Bad day for those hoping the Mueller investigation would take President Trump down.”

Democrats quickly sought to puncture Trump and fellow Republicans’ jubilation, vowing to subpoena Mueller’s full report, which remains a secret. After spending years questioning Trump’s ties to Moscow, the Democrats’ focus is shifting to the question Mueller pointedly left unanswered: whether Trump obstructed the investigation by firing FBI Director James Comey and dictating a misleading statement about his son’s meeting with the Russian lawyer.

“The fact that special counsel Mueller’s report does not exonerate the president on a charge as serious as obstruction of justice demonstrates how urgent it is that the full report and underlying documentation be made public without any further delay,” House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement.

The fight for those documents will be lengthy and contentious, particularly against the backdrop of the 2020 presidential election. It will involve complex debates over the rules that govern special counsel investigations, which put a member of Trump’s Cabinet in charge of summarizing Mueller’s findings for the public, and a president’s right to keep his private discussions out of the public eye.

Previewing the case Democrats will make to get more details about Trump’s actions, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., declared: “Executive privilege cannot be used to shield or hide wrongdoing.”

For Trump and his associates, the argument will be far simpler: Democrats already tried to go after the president once and failed.

“Just as important a victory as this is for President Trump, this is a crushing defeat for Democrats and members of the media who have pushed the collusion delusion myth for the past two years. That officially ends today,” said Jason Miller, a former Trump campaign official.

Trump’s legal troubles are far from over. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are pursuing at least two criminal inquiries involving the president or people in his orbit, one involving his inaugural committee and another focused on the hush-money scandal that led his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to plead guilty last year to campaign finance violations. New York Attorney General Letitia James is also looking into whether Trump exaggerated his wealth when seeking loans for real estate projects and a failed bid to buy the NFL’s Buffalo Bills.

But in the hours after Mueller’s findings were released, those investigations appeared to be a world away for Trump. As he walked into the White House Sunday night, he pumped his fist to a group of supporters and declared, “America is the greatest place on earth, the greatest place on earth.”
…

Washington is in deep suspense over the findings of the Russia probe now that special counsel Robert Mueller has concluded a two-year investigation of Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and contacts between President Donald Trump’s inner circle and Russia. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, a new battle is brewing over whether and how much of Mueller’s report will be made public.
…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Washington looking for an electoral advantage from U.S. President Donald Trump’s expected formal recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the disputed Golan Heights.

Netanyahu, facing corruption charges and a tough re-election contest April 9, is meeting Monday with Trump at the White House and having dinner there on Tuesday, sandwiched around a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a major U.S. lobbying group for the Jewish state.

Trump said on Twitter last week that he would recognize the Israeli ownership of the Golan Heights, the territory to the northeast of Israel along the Syrian border that was seized by Israel from Syria in the Six-Day War in 1967 and annexed in 1981.

Trump’s stance breaks with long-standing U.S. policy and the international community, which considers the Golan Heights as Israeli-occupied, not a sovereign holding.  

“President Trump will sign tomorrow in the presence of PM Netanyahu an order recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights,” Foreign Minister Israel Katz wrote on Twitter on Sunday.

Netanyahu is lagging in political surveys ahead of next month’s election.  His main rival, former military chief Benny Gantz, is speaking at the annual AIPAC convention on Monday, but only Netanyahu will be at the White House dinner on Tuesday.

Trump compared his decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights as similar to that of his decision last year to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, another stance at odds with the international community. Israel claims Jerusalem as its eternal and indivisible capital, but the Palestinians have also staked a claim on Jerusalem as their capital in any eventual creation of a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu, in the run-up to the election, has stressed his friendship with Trump.

“Our alliance in recent years has never been stronger,” the Israeli leader said last week as he met in Jerusalem with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.  “It is an unbreakable bond.  It is based on shared values of liberty and democracy and shared interest to fight the enemies of democracy, the enemies of our way of life, the terrorists that prowl our airspace and our countries, and working together we have been able to achieve an enormous amount.”

Trump’s Golan Heights announcement came shortly after Pompeo visited the Western Wall, one of Judaism’s holiest sites in Palestinian east Jerusalem, with Netanyahu, the first time such a high-ranking U.S. official had visited the site with an Israeli leader.
…

U.S. Attorney General William Barr could release his first summary as early as Sunday of special counsel Robert Mueller’s confidential report on Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether Donald Trump, after assuming power, then sought to obstruct the investigation.

Barr and his aides spent hours Saturday poring over the report Mueller handed them late Friday after his 22-month investigation. Barr aides say that he hopes to hand top lawmakers an initial summary after more review on Sunday and could also publicly release the same summary.

Key lawmakers, opposition Democrats and some of Trump’s Republican allies, have all called for release of the full report, but it is not clear whether Barr will do so. President Trump said last week he did not object to the full release to the public but also has said it is up to Barr, whom he appointed as the country’s top law enforcement official, to decide how much of it is disclosed.

White House aides say Trump has not been briefed on the outcome of Mueller’s investigation, a probe that has clouded almost the entirety of his 26-month presidency. The U.S. leader has dozens of times derided Mueller’s investigation as unwarranted and a “witch hunt,” while rejecting accusations that he colluded with Russia or that he tried to thwart the probe.

He is spending the weekend at his Atlantic oceanfront retreat Mar-a-Lago in Florida, playing golf, and uncharacteristically not commenting on Twitter about Mueller. On Sunday, he tweeted, “Good Morning, Have A Great Day!”

White House aides were relieved to learn one aspect of Mueller’s conclusions, that he was not recommending any further indictments that might have ensnared White House officials or Trump family members.

Mueller has already secured guilty pleas or convictions from five key figures in Trump’s orbit and indicted a sixth for a variety of offenses, including some for lying about their contacts with Russia during the election campaign or just before Trump took office in January 2017.

Trump’s one-time personal attorney, Michael Cohen, has been ordered to prison to start a three-year term in May for financial crimes and lying to Congress about Trump’s efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Former campaign manager Paul Manafort has already been imprisoned for a 7 1/2-year term for financial crimes related to his long-time lobbying efforts for pro-Russian interests in Ukraine. Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty to lying about his contacts just before Trump took office with Russia’s then-ambassador to Washington.

Under long-standing Justice Department policy, U.S. presidents cannot be indicted while serving in office, but can face charges once they leave office. Trump’s term in the White House ends in January 2021, but he is running for re-election next year for another four-year term.

In addition to the Mueller investigation, Trump is facing numerous investigations brought by Democrats in the House of Representatives, along with federal criminal probes in New York of his business affairs as a real estate mogul before he ran for president and the financing of his inaugural committee as he took power.

If the full Mueller report, and underlying investigative evidence, is not turned over to Congress, Democrats who control the House have vowed to subpoena it and possibly call Mueller to testify about his findings. Some lawmakers have called for Trump’s impeachment, but top leaders cautioned that any possible impeachment proceedings should wait until Mueller’s conclusions are known.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he hopes that Barr will “provide as much information as possible” on the findings, “with as much openness and transparency as possible.”

Democratic presidential hopefuls also joined the chorus of calls for the report’s release.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a frequent critic of the president, requested that Barr disclose the report “to the American public. Now.”

Kamala Harris, a senator from California, not only demanded “total transparency,” but said Barr “must publicly testify under oath about the investigation’s findings.”

The Democratic heads of six House committees wrote a joint letter to Barr Friday, saying, “If the Special Counsel has reason to believe that the president has engaged in criminal or other serious misconduct, then the Justice Department has an obligation not to conceal such information. The president must be subject to accountability.”

Mueller, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has won wide acclaim in Washington for his impartiality, but his report is landing at a time of widespread political division in the United States, with polls showing a sharp split among Americans about Trump’s performance in office and whether he should be re-elected.

 More than a dozen Democrats are seeking their party’s nomination to oppose him in the November 2020 election. Any negative conclusions drawn by Mueller are sure to become a key talking point to voters to oust Trump after a single term in the White House.

 
…

It was late Saturday evening in Moscow and almost 24 hours since the news that special counsel Robert Mueller submitted his long-awaited report to the U.S. attorney general had reached Russia’s capital. But both the Kremlin and the country’s Foreign Ministry were quiet.  

While no details of the inquiry were made public, a single commentary by an unnamed Justice Department official could be viewed in Moscow as a preliminary victory: Mueller and his team, investigating alleged collusion between Russia and President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, did not recommend any further indictments.  

Russian officials for months have been denying any interference in the U.S. elections, despite dozens of charges brought by Mueller and his team against 25 Russian nationals,  mostly military officers and trolls,  for their role in alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. 

The people VOA interviewed on the streets of Moscow seemed uninterested in Mueller himself and the line of work he does.  

‘It never happened’

And a few, who were familiar with the inquiry he had led, stood firmly by their government, denying Moscow’s interference in the U.S. elections or any other malign activity abroad. 

“We didn’t need any such interference and it never happened,” said one unnamed Moscovite to VOA. “Russia didn’t have either desire or resources to influence the will of the American people,” echoed another. 

Independent experts are not surprised by such reaction by fellow countrymen. 

“The majority will tell you that you have to deny everything by default. We are in the state of information war, and it’s the right tactics,” said Denis Volkov from Levada Center, a Russian independent polling organization. 

Volkov has been studying public opinion in Russia for more than 10 years. He said that typically, at the beginning of surveys, Russians avoid answering questions about Moscow’s malevolent behavior abroad by just saying “it could have been anyone.” 

WATCH: Interference in Elections? The View From Moscow 

The researcher said that with such responses people almost subconsciously repeat the ever-changing interpretation of Russia’s involvement abroad by state-controlled TV. 

“It’s just like we [Russians] were rejecting the idea of Russian troops being in Crimea until Putin said, ‘Yes, those were our soldiers.’ But previously, he denied it,” Volkov said.

Old grudges

Experts believe many Russians also tend to accept the government’s interpretation of global events because of sociohistoric grudges stemming from lost glory.

The ongoing conflict between Moscow and the West doesn’t help, either. 

“I’d say it’s almost some kind of envy toward a country that is No. 1. Because just recently, there was a parity and 30 years ago it all ended,” Volkov said. 

The head of the Russian International Affairs Council, Andrey Kortunov, disagrees with Volkov. By siding with the government on issues like this, Russians simply seek affirmation of their new place in the world today. 

“I think for an average Russian it’s a mechanism of attracting American attention. Russia means something and you cannot write it off. You cannot call it Upper Volta with missiles, or a gas station that pretends to be a country,” Kortunov said. 

But studies show that Russians are not the only people who accept the mainstream position for ultimate truth.

In a series of coordinated surveys conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Levada Center in Moscow, sociologists asked Americans and Russians a variety of questions on foreign policy. The results somewhat surprised them. 

“It amused me quite a bit. The answers were mirror images of each other. The Russians said: ‘It’s not us, it’s them who interferes in our affairs.’ The exact opposite was true for the U.S.,” Volkov said. 
…

It was late Saturday evening in Moscow and almost 24 hours since the news that special counsel Robert Mueller submitted his long-awaited report to the U.S. attorney general had reached Russia’s capital. But both the Kremlin and the country’s Foreign Ministry were quiet.  

While no details of the inquiry were made public, a single commentary by an unnamed Justice Department official could be viewed in Moscow as a preliminary victory: Mueller and his team, investigating alleged collusion between Russia and President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, did not recommend any further indictments.  

Russian officials for months have been denying any interference in the U.S. elections, despite dozens of charges brought by Mueller and his team against 25 Russian nationals,  mostly military officers and trolls,  for their role in alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. 

The people VOA interviewed on the streets of Moscow seemed uninterested in Mueller himself and the line of work he does.  

‘It never happened’

And a few, who were familiar with the inquiry he had led, stood firmly by their government, denying Moscow’s interference in the U.S. elections or any other malign activity abroad. 

“We didn’t need any such interference and it never happened,” said one unnamed Moscovite to VOA. “Russia didn’t have either desire or resources to influence the will of the American people,” echoed another. 

Independent experts are not surprised by such reaction by fellow countrymen. 

“The majority will tell you that you have to deny everything by default. We are in the state of information war, and it’s the right tactics,” said Denis Volkov from Levada Center, a Russian independent polling organization. 

Volkov has been studying public opinion in Russia for more than 10 years. He said that typically, at the beginning of surveys, Russians avoid answering questions about Moscow’s malevolent behavior abroad by just saying “it could have been anyone.” 

WATCH: Interference in Elections? The View From Moscow 

The researcher said that with such responses people almost subconsciously repeat the ever-changing interpretation of Russia’s involvement abroad by state-controlled TV. 

“It’s just like we [Russians] were rejecting the idea of Russian troops being in Crimea until Putin said, ‘Yes, those were our soldiers.’ But previously, he denied it,” Volkov said.

Old grudges

Experts believe many Russians also tend to accept the government’s interpretation of global events because of sociohistoric grudges stemming from lost glory.

The ongoing conflict between Moscow and the West doesn’t help, either. 

“I’d say it’s almost some kind of envy toward a country that is No. 1. Because just recently, there was a parity and 30 years ago it all ended,” Volkov said. 

The head of the Russian International Affairs Council, Andrey Kortunov, disagrees with Volkov. By siding with the government on issues like this, Russians simply seek affirmation of their new place in the world today. 

“I think for an average Russian it’s a mechanism of attracting American attention. Russia means something and you cannot write it off. You cannot call it Upper Volta with missiles, or a gas station that pretends to be a country,” Kortunov said. 

But studies show that Russians are not the only people who accept the mainstream position for ultimate truth.

In a series of coordinated surveys conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Levada Center in Moscow, sociologists asked Americans and Russians a variety of questions on foreign policy. The results somewhat surprised them. 

“It amused me quite a bit. The answers were mirror images of each other. The Russians said: ‘It’s not us, it’s them who interferes in our affairs.’ The exact opposite was true for the U.S.,” Volkov said. 
…

The nearly 2-year-old probe into potential ties between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian election interference has come to an end.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Friday submitted his confidential report to U.S. Attorney General William Barr.

But will Mueller’s report be the end of the story?

Hardly. Prosecutors from outside the special counsel’s office, including the U.S. attorney’s offices in New York, Virginia and Washington, D.C., are all pursuing cases that have spun off from the Mueller investigation.

State investigators in New York and Maryland have ongoing Trump-related investigations. And in Congress, the House and Senate intelligence and other committees are actively looking into Trump’s finances, potential Russia-Trump ties and other matters.

Besides Mueller, here’s a rundown of who’s investigating what:

​Violations of federal campaign finance law. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York is investigating Trump’s role in silencing former Playboy model Karen McDougal and adult-film actress Stormy Daniels with hush payments in August and October 2016, respectively. The two women have previously claimed to have had affairs with President Trump.

Inauguration funding. Trump’s inaugural committee received a subpoena in February 2019 from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Federal prosecutors are looking into where the money raised and spent by the Trump inauguration committee, $107 million, came from and where it went.

​Paul Manafort’s activity. In March, a Manhattan grand jury indicted Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, on 16 counts of mortgage fraud and conspiracy. The state-level indictment came after Manafort was sentenced in federal court in Alexandria and Washington, D.C., to more than seven years in prison for a host of crimes.

Trump Super PAC Funding. Federal prosecutors are examining whether foreigners illegally funneled donations to the pro-Trump super PAC “Rebuilding America Now.” U.S. law prohibits foreign nationals from giving to federal campaigns, PACs and inaugural funds.

Russian Accountant Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova. The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia indicted Khusyaynova in October 2018 for conspiracy to defraud the United States by interfering in the 2016 presidential elections and 2018 midterm elections.

Turkish Influence. Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is cooperating with federal prosecutors in eastern Virginia in a criminal case against two former associates. The two worked on behalf of a Turkish entrepreneur who financed a campaign to discredit Fethullah Gülen, the cleric accused by the Turkish government of helping instigate a failed coup. Flynn pleaded guilty Dec. 1, 2017, to lying to the FBI about his contact with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and his plea agreement includes some details of the Turkish case.

Trump Foundation Tax Case. The New York Attorney General’s Office is collaborating with the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance to look into possible criminal charges against the now-defunct Donald J. Trump Foundation for alleged tax evasion and aggressive pursuit of tax breaks. Trump agreed to dissolve the charity in December 2018.

​Emoluments Lawsuit. The state of Maryland and the District of Columbia have sued President Trump for allegedly violating two anti-corruption provisions of the U.S. Constitution. The plaintiffs say Trump has violated the so-called Domestic Emoluments Clause, which prohibits the president from accepting gifts from states and the Foreign Emoluments Clause, which bans him from accepting payments from foreign governments.

Roger Stone and WikiLeaks. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and Mueller’s office are jointly prosecuting the case against Trump’s longtime adviser and confidante, Roger Stone. Stone was charged with witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to Congress about Democrats’ emails stolen by Russian hackers and published by the website WikiLeaks before 2016 election. Stone, now under a judge’s gag order, has pleaded not guilty.

Masood Farivar contributed to this report.
…

The nearly 2-year-old probe into potential ties between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian election interference has come to an end.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Friday submitted his confidential report to U.S. Attorney General William Barr.

But will Mueller’s report be the end of the story?

Hardly. Prosecutors from outside the special counsel’s office, including the U.S. attorney’s offices in New York, Virginia and Washington, D.C., are all pursuing cases that have spun off from the Mueller investigation.

State investigators in New York and Maryland have ongoing Trump-related investigations. And in Congress, the House and Senate intelligence and other committees are actively looking into Trump’s finances, potential Russia-Trump ties and other matters.

Besides Mueller, here’s a rundown of who’s investigating what:

​Violations of federal campaign finance law. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York is investigating Trump’s role in silencing former Playboy model Karen McDougal and adult-film actress Stormy Daniels with hush payments in August and October 2016, respectively. The two women have previously claimed to have had affairs with President Trump.

Inauguration funding. Trump’s inaugural committee received a subpoena in February 2019 from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Federal prosecutors are looking into where the money raised and spent by the Trump inauguration committee, $107 million, came from and where it went.

​Paul Manafort’s activity. In March, a Manhattan grand jury indicted Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, on 16 counts of mortgage fraud and conspiracy. The state-level indictment came after Manafort was sentenced in federal court in Alexandria and Washington, D.C., to more than seven years in prison for a host of crimes.

Trump Super PAC Funding. Federal prosecutors are examining whether foreigners illegally funneled donations to the pro-Trump super PAC “Rebuilding America Now.” U.S. law prohibits foreign nationals from giving to federal campaigns, PACs and inaugural funds.

Russian Accountant Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova. The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia indicted Khusyaynova in October 2018 for conspiracy to defraud the United States by interfering in the 2016 presidential elections and 2018 midterm elections.

Turkish Influence. Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is cooperating with federal prosecutors in eastern Virginia in a criminal case against two former associates. The two worked on behalf of a Turkish entrepreneur who financed a campaign to discredit Fethullah Gülen, the cleric accused by the Turkish government of helping instigate a failed coup. Flynn pleaded guilty Dec. 1, 2017, to lying to the FBI about his contact with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and his plea agreement includes some details of the Turkish case.

Trump Foundation Tax Case. The New York Attorney General’s Office is collaborating with the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance to look into possible criminal charges against the now-defunct Donald J. Trump Foundation for alleged tax evasion and aggressive pursuit of tax breaks. Trump agreed to dissolve the charity in December 2018.

​Emoluments Lawsuit. The state of Maryland and the District of Columbia have sued President Trump for allegedly violating two anti-corruption provisions of the U.S. Constitution. The plaintiffs say Trump has violated the so-called Domestic Emoluments Clause, which prohibits the president from accepting gifts from states and the Foreign Emoluments Clause, which bans him from accepting payments from foreign governments.

Roger Stone and WikiLeaks. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and Mueller’s office are jointly prosecuting the case against Trump’s longtime adviser and confidante, Roger Stone. Stone was charged with witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to Congress about Democrats’ emails stolen by Russian hackers and published by the website WikiLeaks before 2016 election. Stone, now under a judge’s gag order, has pleaded not guilty.

Masood Farivar contributed to this report.
…

President Donald Trump said Friday that he will nominate Stephen Moore, a conservative economic analyst, to fill a vacancy on the Federal Reserve’s seven-member board.

Moore, a well-known and often polarizing figure in Washington political circles, served as an economic adviser to Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. In that role, he helped draft Trump’s tax cut plan.

Trump has been harshly critical of the Fed’s rate increases last year even after the central bank this week announced that it foresees no hikes this year. Moore, who has served as chief economist for the conservative Heritage Foundation, has also been critical of policy moves made by Chairman Jerome Powell, who was hand-picked by Trump to be Fed chairman.

An ardent defender of tax cuts, Moore is close to Larry Kudlow, head of the White House National Economic Council. The two collaborated in shaping the tax overhaul that Trump signed into law at the end of 2017, leading to changes that largely favored tax cuts for corporations and wealthier Americans with the idea of spurring investment and faster growth.

Reshaping Central Bank

Trump in his first two years in office has been able to reshape the central bank. He nominated four of the current five members. And he tapped Powell, a Republican who had been chosen for the Fed board by President Barack Obama, to succeed Janet Yellen as chairman. If confirmed by the Senate, Moore would fill one of two vacancies on the Fed’s board.

The selection of Moore marks a deviation from Trump’s previous selections for the Fed’s board to a highly visible public figure who has long pushed conservative economic ideology. In a March editorial in The Wall Street Journal, Moore estimated that Fed rate policies had reduced inflation-adjusted economic growth by as much as 1.5 percentage points in the past six months. Moore proposed that the Fed set short-term rates with an eye toward stabilizing commodity prices, rather than solely on overall inflation.

This approach, Moore has argued, would have prevented the Fed from raising rates as much as it has. And he contended that the approach, if adopted, would help accelerate economic growth above 3 percent, compared with the longer-run average of 1.9 percent that Fed officials have forecast.

Moore has frequently praised the administration on television, and he co-wrote the 2018 book “Trumponomics.” His partner on that book was Art Laffer, who pioneered the Republican doctrine that lower tax rates would accelerate economic growth in ways that could minimize debt. Federal debt has jumped since Trump’s overhaul to the tax code, surging nearly 77 percent through the first four months of fiscal 2019 compared with the previous year.
…

President Donald Trump said Friday that he will nominate Stephen Moore, a conservative economic analyst, to fill a vacancy on the Federal Reserve’s seven-member board.

Moore, a well-known and often polarizing figure in Washington political circles, served as an economic adviser to Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. In that role, he helped draft Trump’s tax cut plan.

Trump has been harshly critical of the Fed’s rate increases last year even after the central bank this week announced that it foresees no hikes this year. Moore, who has served as chief economist for the conservative Heritage Foundation, has also been critical of policy moves made by Chairman Jerome Powell, who was hand-picked by Trump to be Fed chairman.

An ardent defender of tax cuts, Moore is close to Larry Kudlow, head of the White House National Economic Council. The two collaborated in shaping the tax overhaul that Trump signed into law at the end of 2017, leading to changes that largely favored tax cuts for corporations and wealthier Americans with the idea of spurring investment and faster growth.

Reshaping Central Bank

Trump in his first two years in office has been able to reshape the central bank. He nominated four of the current five members. And he tapped Powell, a Republican who had been chosen for the Fed board by President Barack Obama, to succeed Janet Yellen as chairman. If confirmed by the Senate, Moore would fill one of two vacancies on the Fed’s board.

The selection of Moore marks a deviation from Trump’s previous selections for the Fed’s board to a highly visible public figure who has long pushed conservative economic ideology. In a March editorial in The Wall Street Journal, Moore estimated that Fed rate policies had reduced inflation-adjusted economic growth by as much as 1.5 percentage points in the past six months. Moore proposed that the Fed set short-term rates with an eye toward stabilizing commodity prices, rather than solely on overall inflation.

This approach, Moore has argued, would have prevented the Fed from raising rates as much as it has. And he contended that the approach, if adopted, would help accelerate economic growth above 3 percent, compared with the longer-run average of 1.9 percent that Fed officials have forecast.

Moore has frequently praised the administration on television, and he co-wrote the 2018 book “Trumponomics.” His partner on that book was Art Laffer, who pioneered the Republican doctrine that lower tax rates would accelerate economic growth in ways that could minimize debt. Federal debt has jumped since Trump’s overhaul to the tax code, surging nearly 77 percent through the first four months of fiscal 2019 compared with the previous year.
…