The Department of Justice has released a version of the Mueller report with fewer redactions, and it shows that Roger Stone, WikiLeaks, and Julian Assange were all investigated for hacking into the Democratic National Committee's computer network.
CNN published the less-redacted version of the 2019 report put together by former FBI Director Robert Mueller, who served as the special counsel to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. The newly released version of the 448-page report indicates that Mueller had Stone, a close confidante of President Donald Trump, Assange, and his WikiLeaks organization in his sights — but never charged them with crimes related to the DNC hack.
"While the Office cannot exclude the possibility of coordination between Stone and WikiLeaks or that additional evidence could come to light on that issue, the investigation did not obtain admissible evidence likely to meet the government's burden to prove facts establishing such coordination beyond a reasonable doubt," a portion of the less-redacted report reads.
"The Office also considered whether WikiLeaks and anyone connected to the Trump Campaign had liability in connection with WikiLeaks' months-long releases of stolen emails and other documents, possibly with the aim of influencing the 2016 presidential election."
The report added that Mueller's team of investigators "concluded that substantial questions exist about whether the release of emails could be treated as an 'expenditure,' whether the government could establish willfulness, and whether prosecution of this conduct would be subject to a First Amendment defense. In combination, those factors created sufficient doubt that the Office could obtain and sustain a conviction" about WikiLeaks.
Mueller investigated whether Trump or his campaign had an improper relationship with the Russians leading up to the 2016 election, but Mueller's team did not find evidence to suggest this happened.
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