(April 18, 2019) — We learned today that when Donald Trump was first told that Robert Mueller had been appointed special counsel, he said, “This is the end of my presidency. I’m f*cked,” according to the just-released, heavily redacted Mueller report.¹

Why? It’s spelled out in the 108 pages it takes Mueller to detail all of the Trump campaign’s “links to and contacts with” the Russian government, a hostile foreign government that was trying to undermine our democracy and elect Trump.

For instance, Mueller documented that Donald Trump Jr. had direct electronic communications with Wikileaks and that “by the late summer of 2016, the Trump Campaign was planning a press strategy, a communications campaign, and messaging based on the possible release of Clinton emails by WikiLeaks.”²

The Mueller report then details 11 “episodes” where Trump may have obstructed justice, as he sought to hide his campaign’s connections with Russia, but noted that it was Congress’ job to investigate and determine consequences for these acts.³

Let’s be clear: Congress must do its job and immediately begin hearings on Trump’s obstruction of justice and hold Trump accountable, including possibly through impeachment.

Trump’s team, including Attorney General William Barr, have already begun an Orwellian campaign to deceive the public and spread misinformation about what is in the report. But this is not 1984, and we won’t fall for it.

MoveOn is ready to pull out all the stops to ensure that Congress investigates Trump’s lies and obstruction, but we need your help.

“Even in its incomplete form,” House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler said today, “the Mueller report outlines disturbing evidence that President Trump engaged in obstruction of justice.”⁴

That evidence includes repeated and blatant efforts by Trump to get White House Counsel Don McGahn to lie about efforts to fire Robert Mueller, multiple requests made to Jeff Sessions to “un-recuse” himself and stop the investigation outright, messages sent to Michael Flynn’s lawyers asking for a “heads-up” about any information relating to Trump in his trial, direct requests from Trump’s lawyers that Michael Cohen lie to Congress about Trump’s involvement with Russia and Vladamir Putin, and more.

We have always known that the corruption and criminality of the Trump administration were unlike anything we had seen in the modern era, and the Mueller report provides detailed, painstakingly investigated evidence confirming that assertion.

Now, it is up to Congress, beginning with the Democratically controlled House, to do absolutely everything in its power to respond to Mueller’s findings, to investigate Trump for obstruction of justice, and to hold him accountable.

With your help, here’s what we’ll do:

• Flood Congress with calls demanding Democrats begin obstruction hearings and impeachment proceedings. For months, Democrats have said that the Mueller report must be completed before Congress can act. Now that they have the report, they must respond to Mueller’s call to action and hold Trump accountable for his lies and obstruction of justice.
• Support efforts to release the full report to the public via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Let’s be clear: What we have seen today is not the full report, and it is clear that William Barr has no plans to release the unredacted version. It is our right to see the report, and we must demand that the government abide by FOIA laws and release the full report to the public.
• Highlight the most important segments of the report in videos, dgital ads, and other visually striking tactics. The report is over 400 pages long and contains sentence after sentence of shocking information. MoveOn’s social media team and Video Lab are already hard at work pulling out information and creating easily digestible videos and ads to ensure that the public can understand what we learned today.

Trump wants us to think that the release of the report today is the end of this story. That is why he chose William Barr to be his attorney general, why Barr released a misleading summary of the report and held a press conference once again mischaracterizing the report before its release, and why Trump’s allies are doing everything they can today to control the narrative about the content of the report.

This is a massive undertaking and will require substantial funding to do well and do quickly. But we won’t give in.

This story is far from over, and it will only be through real people-power that we ensure that Donald Trump and his cronies are held responsible for their corrupt, criminal actions.

Thanks for all you do. 

David, Brian, Karine, Stephen, and the rest of the MoveOn team

Sources:

1. “Live updates: Trump, when told of appointment of special counsel Mueller, said: ‘This is the end of my presidency,’ report says,” The Washington Post, April 18, 2019

2. “The Mueller Report: Excerpts and Analysis,” The New York Times, April 18, 2019

3. “Mueller links Trump and campaign to 11 instances of potential obstruction,” The Guardian, April 18, 2019

4. “Dems blast Barr, claim ‘disturbing’ evidence against Trump in Mueller report,” NBC News, April 18, 2019