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The Office has concluded its investigation into whether “any federal official, employee, or any other person or entity violated the law in connection with the intelligence, counter­ intelligence, or law-enforcement activities directed at the 2016 presidential campaigns, individuals associated with those campaigns, and individuals associated with the administration of President Donald J. Trump.”

This report is a summary. It contains, in the Office’s judgment, that information necessary to account for the Special Counsel’s prosecution and declination decisions and describe the investigation’s main factual results. It then sets forth some additional observations.

The Office made its criminal charging decisions based solely on the facts and evidence developed in the investigation and without fear of, or favor to, any person. What is stated below in the Mueller Report is equally true for our investigation:

This report describes actions and events that the Special Counsel’s Office found to be supported by the evidence collected in our investigation. In some instances, the report points out the absence of evidence or conflicts in the evidence about a particular fact or event. In other instances, when substantial, credible evidence enabled the Office to reach a conclusion with confidence, the report states that the investigation established that certain actions or events occurred. A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.^[1]

Conducting this investigation required us to consider U.S. criminal laws, the Constitutional protections our system provides to individuals, and the high burden placed on the government to prove every element of a crime “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Moreover, the law does not always make a person’s bad judgment, even horribly bad judgment, standing alone, a crime. Nor does the law criminalize all unseemly or unethical conduct that political campaigns might undertake for tactical advantage, absent a violation of a particular federal criminal statute. Finally, in almost all cases, the government is required to prove a person’s actual criminal intent – not mere negligence or recklessness – before that person’s fellow citizens can lawfully find him or her guilty of a crime. The Office’s adherence to these principles explains, in numerous instances, why conduct deserving of censure or disciplinary action did not lead the Office to seek criminal charges.

There are also reasons why, in examining politically-charged and high-profile issues such as these, the Office must exercise – and has exercised – special care. First, juries can bring strongly held views to the courtroom in criminal trials involving political subject matters, and those views can, in turn, affect the likelihood of obtaining a conviction, separate and apart from the strength of the actual evidence and despite a court’s best efforts to empanel a fair and impartial jury. Second, even when prosecutors believe that they can obtain a conviction, there are some instances in which it may not be advisable to expend government time and resources on a criminal prosecution, particularly where it would create the appearance – even if unfounded – that the government is seeking to criminalize the behavior of political opponents or punish the activities of a specific political party or campaign. At the same time, prosecutors should not shy