John Avlon on the Mueller Report

JOHN AVLON, FORMER EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, “THE DAILY BEAST”: Bill Barr, the attorney general, today and in his initial letter to Congress really was putting the single most positive spin possible on behalf of President Trump. He is functioning in effect, it appears, as almost part of the president’s defense, rather than the attorney general who is decidedly not the president’s legal counsel.

Over and over, the top-line assessments he gave may have been legally correct in a narrow sense but a number of them would seem to be intentionally misleading. For example, he repeated multiple times in today’s press conference framing the release of the report before it was actually released, that the top-line conclusion is that no individuals had colluded or coordinated with Russia. That is good news for Americans as he said. I think we can all agree on that.

But the next half of the sentence, which was left out from the letter and from statement today, is that not only did Russia perceive it would benefit from a Trump presidency who tried to act on behalf of, but that the Trump campaign expected it would benefit electorally from the information stolen and released through Russian efforts.

And there are voluminous contacts, many of which had not been previously announced, between the people in the Trump orbit and Russians trying to influence the election. But I think the most significant thing is the question of obstruction, and that is the —

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Before you get to there, John, I want to play —

AVLON: Sure.

AMANPOUR: — so that everybody can see how Attorney General William Barr did lay out the first topic that you just said about the collusion.

AVLON: Yes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM BARR, ATTORNEY GENERAL: Put another way, the special counsel found no collusion by any Americans in IRA’s illegal activities. In other words, there was no evidence of the Trump campaign collusion with the Russian government’s hacking. So, that’s the bottom line. After nearly two years of investigation, thousands of subpoenas, hundreds of warrants and witness interviews, the special counsel confirmed that the Russian government sponsored efforts to illegally interfere with the 2016 president’s election, but did not find that the Trump campaign or other Americans colluded in those efforts.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So, as we’ve all said, he then said that should be good news. But I think a lot of people, yourself included, you’ve just intimated, that we’re really, really wanting to know how Robert Mueller addressed the potential obstruction of justice allegations and that he, in his report, basically had said that he could not exonerate the president. What more have we learned about that particular issue given the pages that are now public?

AVLON: An enormous amount. And I think that’s going to be the topic of the first day’s analysis into this very detailed and revelatory report. At least 12 occasions in which Mueller’s team delineates attempts at obstruction.