Guide to the Mueller Report’s Findings on “Collusion” - Ryan Goodman - Just Security

Guide to the Mueller Report’s Findings on “Collusion” - Just Security: Essential reading on the Mueller Report: an annotation plus key findings, drawing on investigative reports and Special Counsel court filings.



by Ryan Goodman

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report focuses only on whether crimes were committed. It addresses two Russian conspiracies to interfere in the 2016 election—one involving a social media influence campaign and the other involving the hacking and dissemination of stolen emails. The Report then addresses whether Trump Campaign associates knowingly entered an agreement with the Russian government to assist those conspiracies.

As many experts have noted, what’s missing from the Mueller Report is the Special Counsel’s counterintelligence findings. We don’t know what the Special Counsel’s Office or the FBI have assessed, for example, with respect to whether Trump associates engaged in reciprocal efforts with Russian agents without entering a criminal agreement to do so, whether Americans have been witting or unwitting Russian assets, and what leverage or influence Moscow may have over particular individuals.

As a shorthand, we may use the term “collusion” to refer to these kinds of activities, which would be implicated in a counterintelligence analysis—though, as Asha Rangappa and I have written, the more analytically precise issues to consider are whether Trump Campaign associates “coordinated with, cooperated with, encouraged, or gave support” to the Russia/WikiLeaks election interference activities. Those are important questions regardless of whether such activities amounted to crimes, regardless of whether individuals’ actions and intentions can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, regardless of whether Americans acted as unwitting Kremlin assets in support of Russian operations, and regardless of whether individuals and organizations can be prosecuted without endangering First Amendment interests.

Although the Mueller Report does not squarely address these questions of “collusion” that fall outside the scope of potential criminal liability, it can be mined for substantive information that provides some meaningful answers.

What follows is a detailed guide to the Mueller Report’s evidence on collusion. The analysis discusses affirmative evidence and countervailing evidence in the Report, references the Special Counsel’s court filings and reliable news reports that help shed additional light on information in the Report, and identifies significant loose ends that the investigation was unable to answer.