Mueller says deleted information could have changed the course of his investigation

Robert Mueller.
(Image credit: Brendan Smialowski / Getty Images)

Attorney General William Barr announced definitively on Thursday that there was "no collusion" between President Trump, his campaign, or any Americans and the Russian government during the 2016 election. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report, though, was decidedly more hesitant about making such confident claims. In a key part of the text highlighted by The Associated Press' Zeke Miller, Mueller notes that his investigation was hindered by witnesses invoking "their Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination," by witnesses living overseas, and that "even when individuals testified or agreed to be interviewed, they sometimes provided information that was false or incomplete."

The most concerning caveat, though, was that Mueller admitted "relevant communications" were deleted by some of the individuals who were interviewed by the special counsel's team, or were otherwise encrypted or written using an application that didn't provide "long-term retention of data." As a result, "the Office was not able to corroborate witness statements through comparison to contemporaneous communications or fully question witnesses about statements that appeared inconsistent with other known facts."

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Jeva Lange

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.