US Still Unprepared for Russian Election Interference, Robert Mueller Says | Trump-Russia Investigation

The United States remains unprepared for inevitable Russian attacks on its elections, warns in a new book former special counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated Russian interference in 2016 and Donald Trump’s ties to Moscow.

“It is … clear that Americans have not learned the lessons of Russia’s attack on our democracy in 2016,” Mueller writes in a foreword to Interference: The Inside Story of Trump, Russia and the Mueller Investigation by Aaron Zebley, James Quarles and Andrew Goldstein, prosecutors who worked for Mueller from 2017 to 2019.

Mueller continued: “As we detailed in our report, the evidence is clear: The Russian government engaged in multiple, systematic attacks designed to undermine our democracy and favor one candidate over another.”

That candidate was Trump, the Republican who beat Democrat Hillary Clinton for the White House.

“We were not prepared then,” Mueller wrote, “and despite the many efforts of dedicated people across the government, we are not prepared today. This threat deserves the attention of all Americans. Russia has attacked us before and will do so again.”

Interference will be published in the US next week. The Guardian has obtained a copy.

Zebley, Quarles and Goldstein tell the story of the Mueller investigation, from its beginnings in May 2017 after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey to its conclusion in March 2019 with the steps taken by William Barr, Trump’s second attorney general, to obscure and dismiss Mueller’s findings.

Mueller did not find collusion between Trump and Moscow, but he brought criminal charges against three Russian entities and 34 individuals, including a Trump campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who was jailed. Mueller also outlined 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice by Trump. While he did not indict Trump, citing Justice Department policy regarding sitting presidents, Mueller said he was not exonerating him either.

Mueller now says Zebley, Quarles and Goldstein “care deeply about the rule of law and know the importance of making decisions with integrity and humility,” adding: “Those qualities matter most when some refuse to play by the rules and others urge you to respond in kind.”

FBI director from 2001 to 2013, Mueller was 72 and widely admired for his rectitude when he was appointed special counsel. His former prosecutors describe a White House meeting preceding the appointment. In a tense atmosphere, Mueller entered “through a maze of passageways beneath the Eisenhower Executive Office Building,” avoiding the press. Trump, who wanted Mueller back as FBI director, “did most of the talking,” but despite praising Mueller, Mueller declined the offer. As the authors write, Trump “would later claim that Bob came to the meeting asking to be FBI director” and that Trump “turned it down.”

“This was false,” prosecutors wrote.

Shortly after the White House interview, The New York Times reported on Comey’s memos about Trump’s request to end an investigation into Michael Flynn, the national security adviser who resigned after lying about his contacts with the Russian ambassador. Shortly afterward, Mueller was appointed special counsel.

Trump escaped sanctions stemming from Mueller’s work but lost the White House in 2020, when he was defeated by Joe Biden. The book by Zebley, Quarles and Goldstein comes as a new election looms, with Trump in a tight race with Vice President Kamala Harris, and shortly after U.S. authorities detailed how pro-Trump influencers were being paid large sums by Russia. On Tuesday, a new threat intelligence report from Microsoft said Russia was accelerating its covert influence efforts against Harris.

U.S. presidential elections are often the subject of “October surprises,” last-minute scandals that can swing an election. In 2016, October was marked by the Access Hollywood scandal, in which Donald Trump bragged about sexual assault, and by WikiLeaks’ publication of Democratic emails hacked by Russia.

In Interference, Zebley, Quarles, and Goldstein recount how Mueller’s team came to the conclusion that Russia had backed Trump in 2016. They also detail attempts to interview Trump that were blocked by his lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani. Describing how the former New York mayor betrayed his promise to keep an April 2018 meeting confidential by speaking openly, if inaccurately, to the press, the authors say that Mueller “decided he would never meet or speak with Giuliani again—and he never did. For Bob, it was a matter of trust.”

More than six years later, Giuliani faces criminal charges stemming from his work to overturn Trump’s 2020 defeat, as well as costly civil litigation. Trump also faces civil penalties and criminal charges, having been convicted on 34 counts in New York for bribe payments made before the 2016 election.

While Zebley, Quarles and Goldstein are focused on the Russia investigation, they are expressing dismay at the U.S. Supreme Court, to which Trump appointed three right-wing justices and which has twice this year cast doubt on his criminal cases.

The authors describe how Mueller’s team decided not to subpoena Trump for in-person testimony, given the delays that one Trump lawyer said would result from the inevitable “war” over the issue. Looking ahead, the authors envision new Supreme Court opinions that will shape such clashes in the future.

According to the authors, Fischer v. United States narrows the scope of the obstruction of justice statute “that was at the heart of the second volume of our report.” Most dramatically, in Trump v. United States, the Court held “that a president enjoys absolute immunity from criminal prosecution when performing ‘essential’ constitutional functions … and ‘presumptive’ immunity for all ‘official actions.’”

Although the Court ruled that a president is not immune from “unofficial actions,” Zebley, Quarles and Goldstein caution that it nonetheless “severely limited the areas of presidential conduct that can be subject to criminal investigation—allowing a president to use his power in wholly corrupt ways without the possibility of prosecution.”