5 big takeaways from the Mueller report

By Samuel Smith, Deputy Managing Editor Thursday, April 18, 2019

FBI Director Robert Mueller testifies at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, U.S. | Reuters/Jason Reed

Mueller team not satisfied with Trump’s written testimony

Thursday’s report explains that Trump was not voluntarily interviewed by investigators. Although Trump submitted written answers to investigators' questions, the investigators found Trump’s written responses to be “inadequate.”

Mueller’s team did not subpoena for Trump’s testimony. The report explains that at that point, the investigators had made “significant progress” and produced substantial evidence for the report.

“We thus weighed the costs of potentially lengthy constitutional litigation, with resulting delay in finishing our investigation, against the anticipated benefits for our investigation and report,” the report states. “[W]e determined that the substantial quantity of information we had obtained from other sources allowed us to draw relevant factual conclusions on intent and credibility, which are often inferred from circumstantial evidence and assessed without direct testimony from the subject of the investigation.”