
The Mueller Report [pdf] - miobrien
https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf
======
eCa
Quoted from Volume II, page 182:

\----

Conclusion

Because we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did
not draw ultimate conclusions about the President's conduct. The evidence we
obtained about the President's actions and intent presents difficult issues
that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial
judgment. At the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough
investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit
obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the
applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly,
while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it
also does not exonerate him.

~~~
bliblah
This conclusion is the one most prosecutors reach and still decide to pursuit
a lawsuit since they could probably get a settlement or a plea bargain, In
this case you can't since the law / constitution is very murky when it comes
to prosecuting the President and the extent that executive privilege protects
them.

Outside of my personal opinion, it is very clear that this is will continue to
be fought on purely political grounds. Damned be the laws and proper
legislative procedures. Even the presentation of the document this morning was
hyper politicized by both parties while the document does a noble attempt at
neutrality.

~~~
davvolun
You know who should determine if prosecution has basis to pursue? The courts,
not the prosecution.

Mueller and his team attempting to be neutral, in this case, plays into Trump
and the GOPs side and thus the outcome _becomes_ partisan, despite the
intention.

------
Qub3d
Wow, if you check the paragraphs directly before the summary the reports
effectively lays out A) a legal argument that the president _can_ be
prosecuted and B) evidence that he obstructed justice. And then the summary
pulls off this lukewarm "we chose not to make a decision, so he isn't guilty
but neither is he exonerated."

Its really weird, I wonder what on earth Muller and Co. were thinking here. I
almost suspect they reneged on making a choice because they knew that Barr
would fuck with things.

~~~
jadell
They didn't choose to prosecute him because it's Department of Justice policy
not to indict a sitting President. They're leaving it up to Congress to
impeach him first.

------
jkoudys
"The President's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly
unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the
President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests."

------
diggan
Here is the NBC mirror but served over IPFS if someone is having difficulties
reaching it:
[https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmVZoRuiYD8ekwd7vXDj7XiGjqWkANa9GKXuYW2...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmVZoRuiYD8ekwd7vXDj7XiGjqWkANa9GKXuYW2kVw6oQ9/full-
mueller-report.pdf)

Edit: finally fully downloaded the PDF from justice.gov's servers. The files
are identical.

------
M4v3R
The URL is quite interesting. Is this the only report on the whole justice.gov
website?

~~~
penagwin
Yeah I noticed that too. Best guess is they assigned some random "tech guy" to
"put it online" and they must not have a standard for this kind of document?
Doesn't seem like it's a good choice as surely that's terrible future
proofing?

~~~
koheripbal
No, they have tons of releases. This is very odd.

~~~
dragonwriter
> No, they have tons of releases

Tons of releases of special counsel final reports?

I don't think so.

~~~
davvolun
If you only knew...

------
GPUboy
I used ocrmypdf to generate a searchable version here:
[http://35.235.68.220/searchable_report.pdf](http://35.235.68.220/searchable_report.pdf)

~~~
jpindar
This version is good, it doesn't have the incomplete search issue.

------
okket
Mirror (NBC): [https://dataviz.nbcnews.com/projects/20190415-mueller-
report...](https://dataviz.nbcnews.com/projects/20190415-mueller-report-
embed/assets/full-mueller-report.pdf)

------
xutopia
What is the point of getting a redacted report? Why is it redacted?

~~~
KevanM
To protect whistle-blowers, or other assets that require anonymity.

~~~
simlevesque
and the president's childrens...

~~~
dragontamer
Unlikely. Remember that the House Intelligence Committee has a full set of
Top-Secret clearances, as well as the Senate Intelligence Committee.

They're not allowed to tell us any top-secret information, but you can usually
tell if something is getting hidden from the public based on their reactions.
If something is getting hidden, expect Ron Wyden (or other Democrats on those
Committees) to make a big, vague, stink about the matter.

In effect, the existence of those top-secret committees ensures that the
redactions are fair. Unlike most committees, the law states that Democrats AND
Republicans must be as close to 50/50 split on those committees as possible,
due to their great importance in matters such as these.

~~~
dragonwriter
Security clearance has no impact on most of the reasons things are redacted in
this, which are not classification. There will be apparently a version with
fewer (but not no) redactions shared with a limited number of members of
Congress, but there's been no indication that it would be members of the
intelligence committees. (I'd expected members—or maybe just leadership from
both parties—of the Judiciary Committee.)

> In effect, the existence of those top-secret committees ensures that the
> redactions are fair.

No, it doesn't in general, and it most obviously doesn't on matters _like the
Mueller Report_ where redactions aren't even notionally due to classification
and where those conmittees don't get the unredacted versions.

~~~
dragontamer
Hmmm... you bring up some strong points. I'll have to do research later and
confirm / reconfirm my armchair lawyer powers.

But for now, I should note that Volume II of the report has very, very few
redactions.

This is important because Volume I seems to implicitly exonerate Trump (at
least, Muller doesn't seem to think there's anything here).

Volume II however, Obstruction of Justice, seems to be the issue that Congress
should look into. Since Volume II (Obstruction of Justice) is mostly available
to the public / non-secret, I'm feeling pretty confident that Congress has
what it needs to act (or decide to not act). There are a few "HOM" (harm to
ongoing matter) redactions, but the evidence is laid out pretty cleanly.

------
mlthoughts2018
This post appeared to instantly drop from position 1 on the front page to
position 32-33 on the second page of HN just a moment ago.

What could cause such a dramatic and sudden drop, especially for a link that
seems politically neutral (just sharing the report, no editorializing), and
most of the comments seem to be about the redaction process...?

~~~
rootusrootus
It's politics. Many HN readers will flag it immediately for that.

~~~
icebraining
I'm one of the flaggers. While I'm totally ok with politics on HN, it should
have something more than that. Americans have enough places to discuss their
party politics.

~~~
salawat
This belongs _everywhere_.

If we can't sit down and have a civil discussion on a legal proceeding with
impact at the highest levels of our government, we have bigger issues.

This isn't some trivial _wardrobe malfunction political soap opera_. This is
the culmination of an investigation into one of the most destructively
divisive Administrations in modern history. This has the potential to
absolutely undermine the faith of a large swath of the American people in
their government's ability to conduct business on their behalf without being
absurdly vulnerable to outside interference.

This goes so far beyond merely being a partisan shot at Trump. Everyone should
read this. Everyone should take a day to really sit down and absorb all the
details in this report and ask themselves if there is any room in how they
believe their country should operate for these findings to be considered a
sign of the "healthy" operation of the system.

I'm floored to be quite honest. There are fundamental issues and questions
raised by the underlying facts outlined in this report I'm not sure anyone has
ever dreamed of needing to be asked.

Please, read it, don't try to suppress it. For once in your life, _accept and
honor your civic responsibility to be informed._

~~~
icebraining
I know Americans enjoy pretending you rule over the whole world, but I can
assure you it's not my government, nor my country, for that matter.

I don't dispute the importance of the document, but surely the US is not in
such a want of places to publish that HN must be appropriated in order to
allow every citizen to read it. Therefore, I reserve my right to judge it
inadequate for this site, and to flag it accordingly.

And I should tell you that despite your condescending plea, I actually follow
this sordid affair better than most. I suggest you look for other sources of
information, so that you aren't reduced for begging for every important news
report to be included in HN.

~~~
salawat
No condescension was intended. Be you American or not, if you've followed it
as closely as you purport, than surely you've come to the realization the
circumstances could just as easily have originated in your own country rather
than in America. I would hope that none would begrudge you the opportunity to
engage in healthy discourse here.

I'll speak no more on the matter. I've clearly ruffled your feathers, which
was far from my intent. I respectfully and vehemently disagree with your
motivations for contributing to delay crucial conversations being held, yet
nevertheless, wish you a good day.

~~~
icebraining
> No condescension was intended.

You implied (from a reading of a mere 30 words), that I never in my life
"accepted my civic responsibility to be informed."

If it wasn't intended, I can only commend your natural ability.

------
Kye
Question for people who work with text processing: is it possible to use some
kind of statistical analysis to make a guess at what's behind some of the
redactions? I notice a lot of them have big blocks of black with footnote
references, and those footnotes are often _not_ redacated.

------
Larrikin
Was this flagged off the front page?

------
silveira
A good visualization on the whole report
[https://twitter.com/ajchavar/status/1118915893508083712](https://twitter.com/ajchavar/status/1118915893508083712)

------
psawaya
FYI: Volume II starts on page 208

------
jkoudys
FULL EXONERATION! It was only CLINTON that colluded with Russia!

\-- Half your country, somehow.

~~~
bufferoverflow
Innocent until proven guilty is a good standard. They couldn't prove any
guilt, therefore he is considered innocent.

~~~
dragontamer
The Justice Department innately cannot prosecute the President, because the
President can always fire people as the case is made. (Edit: Also President
can theoretically pardon himself) The Justice Department (and the Attorney
General) serves at behest the President.

It is Congress's duty to prosecute the President through impeachment
proceedings. At best, Muller's report should be seen as a gathering of
evidence for a potential impeachment process.

As such, it is very important for Congress to read over the details of this
report, and decide if the level of Obstruction here rises to impeachment
levels. (Remember: President Bill Clinton was impeached on Obstruction of
Justice. It wasn't illegal to have sex with his intern, it was illegal for him
to cover-up the fact).

In either case: there won't be any removal of Mr. Trump from office. Democrats
control the house, but Republicans control the Senate. The impeachment of
Nixon only really happened because Democrats controlled both sides. The House
can technically impeach (just as Bill Clinton was technically impeached), but
the (Republican controlled) Senate can just sit around and do nothing about
it.

Still, its important for Congress to go through the process, even if its a
foregone conclusion.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The Justice Department innately cannot prosecute the President,

That theory is widely disputed.

> It is Congress's duty to prosecute the President through impeachment
> proceedings.

It is Congress’ duty and role to do that for all civil officers of the United
States; this is not exclusive of criminal prosecution. Impeachment is a
separate, not substitute, process which serves to protect the United States
from the unique and special harms of wrongdoers _in office_.

> The impeachment of Nixon only really happened because Democrats controlled
> both sides.

The impeachment of Nixon did not, in fact, happen at all—Andrew Johnson and
Clinton are the only Presidents to have been impeached—though both it and
conviction likely would have (IIRC, whip counts in both houses were part of
the reason for the resignation) had Nixon not resigned.

~~~
dragontamer
> That theory is widely disputed.

Fair point. But it was accepted by the Muller Report, and therefore Muller
decided to not even TRY to prosecute Mr. Trump. (See the introduction of
Volume II of the report).

Perhaps one day, the theory will be tested. But for now, Muller didn't even
want to test that theory. He moved forward assuming it was true.

~~~
dragonwriter
> But it was accepted by the Muller Report

Incorrect, or at best misleading; the Mueller report only accepted that the
Office of Special Counsel was, by the terms of it's creation, bound by a pre-
existing DoJ (Office of Legal Counsel) determination to that effect; that is,
_Mueller_ was not permitted to prosecute due to the existence of the OLC
determination and the terms of Mueller's appointment, irrespective of the
correctness of the OLC opinion as to whether DoJ had the power to prosecute.

~~~
dragontamer
I'm not necessarily saying that Muller believes in that theory... only that he
was operating under that theory within the context of the report.

Perhaps my word "acceptance" was a poor choice. But I want to emphasize that
Muller did not fight against that theory. Whether he was unable to, or whether
he believed the theory is a separate issue. The important bit is that the
Muller Report operated under the assumption that they couldn't indict a
sitting President.

Considering that something like 10 pages of the report looks like its
dedicated to the constitutional powers of Congress (Article I vs Article II
issues), it seems like the report is basically saying "This is Congress's
issue, not Muller's issue. But here's the evidence Muller found."

~~~
dragonwriter
> Considering that something like 10 pages of the report looks like its
> dedicated to the constitutional powers of Congress

It's largely discussng the Constitutional power of Congress to criminalize the
conduct, which relates to the DoJ ability to investigate and prosecute it (the
current DoJ opinion, as communicated in the Mueller report, is that it can
investigate and prosecute the conduct of obstruction when committed by the
President, despite the fact that it cannot prosecute any crime _while_ the
accused is President, which would mean, were the DoJ to be convinced by it's
investigation that the President has obstructed justice, it could prosecute
him, but only _after_ he left office.)

Note particularly that the power being discussed is irrelevant to impeachment,
which does not require a criminal statute as a basis.

> "This is Congress's issue, not Muller's issue. But here's the evidence
> Muller found."

It's expressly laying out why the President’s legal team’s argument that it is
not a DoJ issue for criminal investigation was wrong.

------
krisrm
And now we test the capacity of the justice department's file servers :)

------
jkoudys
You can also, as before, find the indictments and convictions (with hundreds
of pages of attached evidence) from the investigation:
[https://www.justice.gov/sco](https://www.justice.gov/sco)

Numerous convictions for top-level members of the campaign. Detailed
operations of the Internet Research Agency, including the many US identities
stolen and their work with Cambridge Analytica. Indictments against the
"Russian Lawyer" from the Trump Tower meeting that imply she's a spy. Over
$60M taken from pro-Russian sources leading up to the invasion of Crimea, that
was laundered through NYC real estate.

Don't go into reading the report thinking you'll find something new in there
that'll blow your mind. You've already had plenty of giant scandals sitting on
a public government server for months.

~~~
jchw
I don't know why anyone expected this to be a bombshell. If what we knew
already wasn't enough, I have no idea what it would actually take to end this
presidency. On the flip side, I have the strangest feeling we're going to see
better polling numbers during the next U.S. presidential election.

~~~
rootusrootus
IMO it's not much different than the situation with Nixon. It took an
explicit, textbook demonstration of obstruction of justice, printed on paper
and signed by the president, before the tide turned against him.

Edit: It was tape recording, not paper. Not sure how I forgot that detail.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I was a bit too young to follow Watergate in detail. Could you be more
explicit about what the president signed?

~~~
rootusrootus
My memory is a bit crap this morning it seems. Wasn't on paper, it was a tape.
I was thinking of the transcripts but those were only released in redacted
form. The actual tape recorded Nixon ordering the acting head of the FBI to
halt the investigation. Up until that moment Nixon was pretty safe, congress
was held by Republicans. But there was no escaping the obstruction of justice
when that tape was released on August 5, 1974, and he resigned a few days
later.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Ah, OK. I remember the tapes.

------
apexalpha
So not to be a cynic here, but from the outside (EU) it looks kinda like there
is merit to the presidents claims of this investigation being a with hunt and
what not.

The media also blew this so out of proportion that I was more or less stunned
by the fact that there _wasn 't_ an impeachment at the end.

Whatever you think of Trump if he really didn't collude then the media have
some internal retrospecive to do, I think.

------
DBYCZ
The "Harm to Ongoing Matter" Report

~~~
moftz
Right, there are tons of things still going on. The report doesn't help other
than to publicly say that there are a lot of not-innocent people involved.

------
yingw787
It's disappointing that the PDF is not machine-readable; definitely a
regression from the Obama years: [https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-
press-office/2013/0...](https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-
office/2013/05/09/executive-order-making-open-and-machine-readable-new-
default-government-)

Can anybody give percentages of redactions for relevant sections and
breakdowns for reasons ("Harm to Ongoing Matter", "Grand Jury", etc.)? I
skimmed the report and saw a handful of pages completely blacked over, and I
believe those revolve around Internet Research Funding and associations with
the Trump campaign.

I'll wait until Congress receives the full, unredacted report and closed-door
testimony from the Special Counsel and hear what Schiff et al. have to say
before making a judgment, but ultimately the fact that the 2016 election came
this close in the first place was a severe failing in and of itself.

~~~
legitster
PDFs have a hidden meta layer of text. It is INSANELY easy to "block out" text
thinking you are redacting it, but it is still right there in the document.

The only safe way to handle document redaction is convert a PDF to a series of
images. Let someone on the public side do all the work of converting it to
text.

~~~
yingw787
Ahh I didn't think about this. I was thinking more in the lines of Photoshop,
where you can have multiple layers and then compress them together when
exporting and lose the metadata. But yes, this is definitely sensitive enough
to not take any chances.

------
silveira
A good start would be OCR this whole thing.

~~~
OrgNet
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YrssnhOJvk7YcgHOdwuqbolf8K9...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YrssnhOJvk7YcgHOdwuqbolf8K9sHZjg/view)

~~~
jpindar
This one has the incomplete search issue.

------
jpindar
>the searchable copies of the Mueller Report now circulating have been
incompletely OCRed. It looks like OCR failed on any line that included any
redaction at all, so there's substantial text that will still not show up in
search

For example, the word "Sanders" appears on page 23, but this instance does not
show up in searches.

[https://twitter.com/qwrrty/status/1118980162324959233](https://twitter.com/qwrrty/status/1118980162324959233)

------
dandersh
The bit about Trump ordering Lewandowski to deliver a dictated message to
Sessions to limit the investigation to future elections (Volume II pg. 90-94)
is something new and interesting.

~~~
davidcollantes
"The message said that Sessions should publicly announce that, notwithstanding
his recusal from the Russia investigation, the investigation was "very unfair
" to the President, the President had done nothing wrong, and Sessions planned
to meet with the Special Counsel and "let [him] move forward with
investigating election meddling for future elections." Lewandowski said he
understood what the President wanted Sessions to do." \-- Page 217 on the OCR
version that is going around.

------
who-knows95
Is this the full report?

~~~
atoav
There are multiple sections which are censored with "HOM" (Harm to Ongoing
Matter) and "Personal Privacy"

------
hellllllllooo
Can anyone explain the criteria for redaction and who gets to decide in this
case? The DoJ? A brief skim through shows whole pages redacted.

~~~
Ygg2
I assume that relevant agencies redact anything that could possibly compromise
their field agents, informants, etc.

~~~
ticmasta
While specific agencies may be consulted and influence what is redacted, the
AG is the individual tasked with actually blacking it out

------
joshmn
Page 59 has Trump Jr's interaction with Wikileaks. (67 in the pdf)

------
bubbabojangles
I thought the whole thing was redacted, but it's just getting hugged to death.

~~~
humblebee
Mirrored on IPFS:
[https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmQpAGbPda8yZ2VMT27FbG1DvJnaXbw5kyGRjEw...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmQpAGbPda8yZ2VMT27FbG1DvJnaXbw5kyGRjEwvPLZXHW)

~~~
diggan
Is this from NBC or from the justice.gov server?

Edit: can confirm it's identical to the NBC mirror (can't confirm the
justice.gov one as haven't finished downloading it yet)

~~~
humblebee
I downloaded it from justice.gov

------
VikingCoder
Can someone convert this into a Searchable PDF? Using OCR?

~~~
humblebee
[https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmVM5vkWxopNKRNszADnCKcPp66XEbsNBT2HsnF...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmVM5vkWxopNKRNszADnCKcPp66XEbsNBT2HsnFfkCbWXJ/)

That contains both the original report and one I ran through ocrmypdf (version
6.1.2) from the Ubuntu 18.04 repo.

------
hotdogs
It says part I of II, is the second part located anywhere?

~~~
bacondude3
> FYI: Volume II starts on page 208

— psawaya
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19691575](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19691575)

~~~
hotdogs
Ah, thanks, I didn't see a table of contents for it so I figured it'd be a
separate doc.

------
taytus
Would love to see the traffic spike on this one!

~~~
32032141
report.pdf 21.12M 1.84MB/s eta 2m 18s

Seems to be handling it.

~~~
taytus
I meant # of views :)

------
jchw
Is it me, or did this actually get removed from the front page? Perhaps anti-
SPAM due to how fast it's rising?

~~~
clessg
Most likely it got flagged. Articles involving politics tend to get flagged on
HN.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
Does this article meet conditions where flagging it actually justifies action?
To me, I cannot see how it could.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
It could upset some Republicans. HN at some point decided to hide any sort of
controversial story.

It arguably doesn’t much matter in this case, where it’s hard not to hear
about it in some way. In other cases, it strikes me as an abdication of
responsibility.

Most recently, as but one example, when the tech community embarked on their
ethics-in-astronomy harassment campaign against a female programmer: HN was
one of the fora where this actually happened, but all submissions of stories
on it, from reputable mainstream news sources, were quickly flagged into
oblivion.

~~~
icebraining
I didn't follow that particular story, but in all other cases I've seen,
discussing those stories has just generated more shit posts. It's unreasonable
to assume the next one will suddenly generate a calm and constructive
discussion.

------
terryschiavo22
It's weird to think that more work has gone into this one report than I will
put into my career in my lifetime.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
It’s less than a tenth of an F-35, to put things in perspective. And the
Manafort restitution alone almost pays for it.

