people’s emails and disseminating disinformation.

Summary

Russian interference
The report concluded that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election did occur "in sweeping and systematic fashion" and "violated U.S. criminal law."[234][235]

The first method detailed in the final report was the usage of the Internet Research Agency, waging "a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton".[19] The Internet Research Agency also sought to "provoke and amplify political and social discord in the United States".[236]

The second method of Russian interference saw the Russian intelligence service, the GRU, hacking into email accounts owned by volunteers and employees of the Clinton presidential campaign, including that of campaign chairman John Podesta, and also hacking into "the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC)". As a result, the GRU obtained hundreds of thousands of hacked documents, and the GRU proceeded by arranging releases of damaging hacked material via the WikiLeaks organization and also GRU's personas "DCLeaks" and "Guccifer 2.0."[14][237][238]

The Russians had also hacked old Republican Party domains and emails, but, according to James Comey, "none of that was released", and there was no sign "that the Trump campaign or the current RNC was successfully hacked".[239] According to the ODNI assessment, the Russians did not release the content in the way they did to the Democrats.[37]

Conspiracy vs collusion
Mueller used "coordination" and "conspiracy" in a synonymous fashion as he looked for evidence of agreed coordination, not just a mutual understanding ("two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other's actions or interests").[240] Mueller expressly explained why he was not interested in proving mere collusion, which he, for the purposes of his investigation, determined was not the same as "conspiracy". There had to be "coordination", which implies a conscious "agreement".

To establish whether a crime was committed by members of the Trump campaign with regard to Russian interference, investigators "applied the framework of conspiracy law", and not the concept of "collusion", because collusion "is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States Code, nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law".[241][240][242] They also investigated if members of the Trump campaign "coordinated" with Russia, using the definition of "coordination" as having "an agreement — tacit or express — between the Trump campaign and the Russian government on election interference". Investigators further elaborated that merely having "two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other's actions or interests" was not enough to establish coordination.[243]

The report writes that the investigation "identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign", found that Russia "perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency" and that the 2016 Trump presidential campaign "expected it would benefit electorally" from Russian hacking efforts. However, ultimately "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities".[15][16] The evidence was not necessarily complete due to encrypted, deleted, or unsaved communications as well as false, incomplete, or declined testimony.[244][245][246][247][248]

Obstruction of justice
The second volume of the report investigated the topic of obstruction of justice, describing ten episodes where Trump may have obstructed justice as president and one episode before he was elected, and analyzing each in terms of the criteria needed to constitute criminal obstruction.[249][24][23] The investigation found both public and private actions "by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations".[22] However, Trump mostly failed to influence it because his subordinates or associates refused to carry out his instructions.[250][251][252] The Mueller team refrained from charging Trump with obstruction because investigators abided by a DOJ Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion that a sitting president cannot stand trial,[20][21] and they feared that charges would affect Trump's governing and possibly preempt a potential impeachment.[25][21][253] In addition, investigators felt it would be unfair to accuse Trump of a crime without charges and without a trial in which he could clear his name.[20][21][254] Since they had decided "not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment" on whether to "initiate or decline a prosecution," the special counsel's office "did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President's conduct." The report "does not conclude that the president committed a crime",[19][255] but specifically did not exonerate Trump on obstruction of justice, because investigators were not confident that Trump was innocent after examining his intent and actions.[256][257] The report concluded that Congress has the authority to take further action against Trump on the question of obstruction of justice, stating that no one is above the law.[26][27][257