Rachel Maddow Parses The Facts of The Mueller Report: It ‘Should Have Been a Presidency-Stopping’ Event

MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow parsed out the facts of the 2019 Mueller report Saturday after The Weekend Primetime co-host Antonia Hylton claimed the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign has been “whitewashed” over the years.

Maddow made a special appearance on the show to remember former special counsel Robert Mueller, who died Saturday at the age of 81.

“Yeah, the findings are pretty simple, actually,” Maddow began. “And I think that part of the sort of political game that Mueller lost around the release of his findings was making it seem like it was complex or too too difficult to explain to somebody on the back of an envelope. But it was pretty simple.”

Maddow continued:

They found definite, absolutely conclusive evidence that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump become president, that the Trump campaign was aware of it and expected to benefit from it, and that they took steps to obstruct the investigation into it.

There were more than two dozen people who were charged with felonies. They charged the Russians, they charged the Internet Research Agency. They charged multiple figures from the Russian government and intelligence services. They charged Trump’s campaign chairman, they charged Trump’s deputy campaign chairman. They charged Trump’s national security advisor. They charged a number of people who were associated with the campaign. And those findings that Russia helped, that Trump knew Russia was helping him, and that Trump tried to make sure that the investigation into it didn’t proceed unimpeded.

“That should have been enough. And and it really wasn’t,” Maddow added. “And there was an important element of the way that Mueller drew his conclusions, which is that he basically said, ‘You know, under DOJ rules, we don’t charge sitting presidents. And if we can’t charge him, then I can’t really lay out the evidence against him either, because that would amount to an accusation that’s unfair to make because he’s not able to rebut it in court because we’re not going to bring him into court.’ But I think there were other ways to approach that that would have made it more clear to the American public.”

Maddow added, “Robert Mueller got outplayed by Bill Barr, and that was the end of what should have been a showstopping, certainly presidency-stopping investigation with damning conclusions.”

Watch the clip above via MS NOW.

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