A smattering of black-out sections in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report detailing his Russia investigation were revealed to the public for the first time on Friday.
Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by BuzzFeed News, newly unredacted sections show Mueller declined to charge Donald Trump Jr. with a misdemeanor “computer intrusion” crime for accessing a website, putintrump.org, using a password he obtained from WikiLeaks without authorization in September 2016 weeks before his father, Donald Trump, was elected president. Previously disclosed portions of the report said Mueller’s team determined prosecution was not warranted in this matter but did not reveal specifics about Trump Jr. accessing a third-party website.
Roger Stone, a longtime Trump ally, avoided being charged in a hacking conspiracy involving the Democratic Party, along with WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, the unmasked sections show. The newly disclosed parts also say Mueller’s team did not charge J.D. Gordon, a former Trump campaign adviser, because “the evidence did not establish” that he was “acting at the direction of Russia when he arranged a change in the 2016 Republican Party platform pertaining to assistance to Ukraine.”
Mueller’s 448-page report, released in 2019, concluded thousands of emails were stolen by the Russians from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and other Democratic staffers and associates. According to the special counsel, Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, or GRU, stole these emails and distributed them through two GRU-operated fronts: the DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 websites.
?BREAKING: @BuzzFeedNews & I just got more passages unredacted from Mueller report
It reveals for 1st time that Mueller declined to charge Donald Trump Jr with a computer crime for accessing a website using a PW he got from Wikileaks & Stone for hackinghttps://t.co/ktBQmcp1G7 pic.twitter.com/23qdpU4pXA
— Jason Leopold (@JasonLeopold) February 11, 2022
“The GRU units transferred many of the documents they stole from the DNC and the chairman of the Clinton Campaign to WikiLeaks,” Mueller reported. He also determined DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 were the Russian conduits for communication with WikiLeaks.
Grant Smith, Stone’s attorney, said Mueller declining to charge his client for computer crimes “vindicates Mr. Stone’s position that he in no way participated in or had knowledge of any activities of Wikileaks and confirms what we knew all along.”
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However, Stone was convicted of lying to congressional investigators about his alleged attempted outreach to WikiLeaks, obstructing a congressional investigation, and attempting to intimidate a possible congressional witness. Trump later gave Stone a full presidential pardon.
Mueller, a former FBI director, was appointed special counsel in May 2017 after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. The FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into links between the Trump campaign and Russia was wrapped into Mueller’s special counsel effort, which culminated in the release of a 448-page report with redactions in April 2019. Some of those redactions have since been lifted. Mueller’s team was unable to find a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, but the report described 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice that Democrats seized on as a road map to impeachment. The investigation did, however, lead to several convictions and guilty pleas from Trump’s associates over charges unrelated to collusion with Russia.
Mueller has written the occasional statement or op-ed to comment on developments related to the inquiry, including to say that Roger Stone was “rightfully” still a convicted felon after Trump commuted his longtime friend’s sentence. Trump pardoned Stone in December and also did so for other targets of Mueller’s investigation toward the end of his tenure.
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Trump and many of his allies have long derided the investigation as a “witch hunt,” and there are efforts underway by the Justice Department and Republicans in Congress to seek out any misconduct by the investigators. Democrats have long criticized former Attorney General William Barr, who assumed control of the Justice Department in February 2019, for preceding the release of Mueller’s report with a letter of “principal conclusions” in which he and then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said there was insufficient evidence to establish that Trump obstructed justice.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a report in December 2019 that found the Trump-Russia investigation was filled with serious missteps. Barr made now-former U.S. Attorney John Durham a special counsel last year to continue investigating the origins and the conduct of the Trump-Russia investigation.
