Analysts on CNN, the cable news network that’s openly anti-President Donald Trump, admitted on air late March 22 that the report submitted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller vindicated Trump.
The admission comes as a stark reversal for a network that regularly attacks Trump and has suggested with scant evidence over the past two-plus years that the president would be found guilty of collusion by Mueller.
The contents of Mueller’s report have not been made public but he told Attorney General William Barr that he would not issue any additional indictments.
In the end, the yearslong investigation ended with no evidence linking any American with Russian influence on the 2016 election.
A roundtable on CNN discussed how there would not be any additional indictments on Friday night.
“If they get great news, the great news is, first of all, there’s no more indictments … he’s now vindicated,” said political analyst Gloria Borger. She criticized Trump for being critical of Mueller and his team full of registered Democrats, noting that the president often called the probe “a witch hunt.”
Analyst Jeffrey Toobin chimed in.
“Let’s be specific. This is really good news for a lot of people around Donald Trump,” he said.
“Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Jerome Corsi—the writer who had a draft indictment presented to him by Mueller’s office and they decided not to go forward with this. Let’s be fair here. There has been a lot of suspicion around certain people. And a lot of negative things have been said and imputation of criminal activity. Mueller has said, ‘I am not proceeding.’ There is no better news to receive than you are not being indicted by the United States government.”
Shimon Prokupecz, a correspondent, noted: “There’s been so much speculation from everywhere, a lot of pundits certainly … all speculating ‘more’s coming, Robert Mueller’s going to indict this one,’ that’s not happening. It’s very clear, and that is a very important point.”
Evan Perez, a reporter at the outlet, added: “After an investigation that has frankly clouded his administration since the beginning of his presidency, the president can begin to probably breathe a little easier that the idea that his vindication is coming.”
“He knows that so far from the Mueller investigation, the public information that’s been released by Robert Mueller, there’s been nothing that comes close to what looks like collusion or conspiracy, which has been at the focus of this investigation, the idea that there was somebody in the president’s campaign who was colluding with the Russians,” Perez said.
“None of that has come forward.”
In other parts of the night, some of the analysts claimed that Trump is not clear of danger and criticized Mueller.
“In the indictments that Mueller has told a story. But he has told an incomplete story. He has not said whether the Trump campaign was involved with the Russian government or Russian interest. He has not said one way or the other and I think he’s obliged to answer that question,” Toobin said.
“They sort of dropped these bread crumbs, but it will be very interesting and I think Congress certainly has every right to demand the answers to those questions,” added Sara Murray, a correspondent.
But Prokupecz seemed to suggest that the analysts were reaching.
“I don’t know that Mueller will even reach those conclusions. This is a criminal investigation. His whole point was investigating crimes, whether or not I can bring charges, whether or not I can indict people, whether or not there is more investigative steps that I need to take for criminal reasons,” he said.
“What the President may have done here, who he was communicating with, who Roger Stone was communicating with. That may be a political issue here. That’s not for Robert Mueller to decide or his team or the FBI to decide, so we may see some of that here.”
He added, “We may see just instances where there was not enough to prove this. There was not enough to prove that. So, we didn’t pursue charges here. We declined. We don’t want to see a repeat, certainly the Attorney General does not want to see a repeat of the James Comey situation where he stood up and he went through everything that Hillary Clinton did bad. This attorney general, this department of justice, this FBI does not want to go through it.”
