President Donald Trump on Friday held a lengthy conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin in which they discussed the end of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who informed White House reporters of the call between the two leaders, emphasized that both men discussed how they each “knew there was no collusion” between them.
Mueller’s report methodically documented how Russian intelligence services, at Putin’s behest, worked to undermine Democrat Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign while giving a boost to Trump’s.
And although Mueller did not establish that the Trump campaign and Russia engaged in a criminal conspiracy together, he did document several times in which the Trump campaign sent encouraging signals to the Russian government that it welcomed their help — most infamously at the infamous Trump Tower meeting between top Trump campaign officials and Russian operatives, as well as Trump openly encouraging Russia to release emails that he believed Russia may have hacked from Clinton’s email server.