The Ministry of Justice prepares the Mueller report in the coming days

Officials from the Ministry of Justice are preparing for the end of the 2016 investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 investigation over nearly two years of the intervention of the special advocate Robert S. Mueller III and believe that a confidential report could be published in the coming days, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The special advocate's investigation has taken Washington into account since it began in May 2017, and it seems to be coming to an end more and more, creating new waves of shock in the political system. Mueller could hand over his report to Attorney General William P. Barr next week, according to a person familiar with the case who, like other people, spoke under the guise of anonymity to discuss delicate deliberations.

The regulations require Mueller to submit to the Attorney General a confidential explanation as to why he decided to charge certain individuals, as well as the people he investigated and why he decided not to charge these individuals. The settlement then calls the Attorney General to report the investigation to Congress.

[William P. Barr won’t promise to make Mueller report public]

An adviser to President Trump said the president's relatives feared the report would contain information about Trump and his team that are politically damaging, but not criminal behavior.

Even before being confirmed by the Senate, Barr had had preliminary discussions about the logistics surrounding the conclusion of the Mueller investigation, said a second person. However, at that time, Barr had not been informed of the content of Mueller's investigation, so the conversations were limited.

CNN announced Wednesday for the first time that Mueller could send a report to Barr next week.

A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for the Department of Justice.

Mueller's report and the summary of the Attorney General's findings are not detailed. Legislators demanded that Mueller's report be made public, but Barr did not make that commitment, saying he intends to be as honest as regulation and service practice allow. However, he emphasized the practices of the Department of Justice, which insist on saying little or nothing about behavior that does not lead to criminal charges.

The special council office, which had 17 lawyers, is now reduced to 12, and some of these lawyers have recently been in contact with their former leaders about returning to work, according to people familiar with the discussions. With the exception of four of the remaining 12 lawyers, all are detailed in other offices of the Department of Justice.

The end of the special advocate investigation would not mean the end of the criminal investigations related to the president. Federal prosecutors in New York, for example, are investigating whether corrupt payments have been made as part of Trump's inaugural funding.

If Mueller actually closes the store, his team's lawyers are likely to return to their original positions, but may continue to sue in the cases initiated by the special board office.

This was the case of two lawyers, Brandon Van Grack and Scott Meisler, who officially left the office but are still working on cases initiated by Mueller.

When the special advocate pleaded the case against Roger Stone, a longtime advisor and friend, accusing him of lying in Congress, lawyers from the US Attorney's Office in Washington were assigned to him as soon the beginning – an indication that Mueller is waiting to hand over the investigation soon.

The remaining four prosecutors who are not part of the Department of Justice are some of the most senior lawyers of the special advocate: Aaron Zebley, who is in fact Mueller's chief of staff; James Quarles, who is a senior executive in the office; Jeannie Rhee, lead prosecutor in the case against Michael Cohen, former Trump personal attorney; and Greg Andres, senior prosecutor in the trial of Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign president.

According to people familiar with the work of the special advocate, Mueller envisioned it as a fact-finding mission, not necessarily as a prosecution, and for that reason she did not Intended to let the office work to see at the end of the indictments filed.

Mueller's work led to criminal proceedings against 34 people. The six Trump associates and advisers pleaded guilty.

Among those who pleaded guilty was Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security advisor; former campaign manager, Rick Gates; and George Papadopoulos, former campaign advisor, as well as Manafort and Cohen.

Most of the people accused in the Mueller investigation are Russians. Since there is no extradition treaty with this country, it is unlikely that these 26 people will see inside a US courtroom.

None of the Americans charged by Mueller is accused of conspiring with Russia to interfere in the elections. Determining whether Trump's associates had plotted with the Kremlin in 2016 was the central issue assigned to Mueller when he got the job, in a time of crisis for the FBI, the Department of Justice and the country.

[Mueller appointed special counsel]

A few days earlier, Trump fired FBI director James B. Comey. The alleged reason for the dismissal was the way Comey had conducted the survey conducted in 2016 on Hillary Clinton, but Trump had said in an interview with NBC shortly after the dismissal that he was thinking about the job. investigation of Russia when he had decided to send back Comey.

Because FBI directors are appointed for a 10-year term in order to guarantee their political independence, Comey's shots rocked Washington, setting off alarms not only at the Department of Justice but in Congress, where legislators feared that the president decides to end the investigation on Russia before it is completed.

After the dismissal of Comey, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein chose Mueller as a special advocate, partly to calm the nascent political crisis.

Mueller, a veteran of the Vietnam War, prosecutor and former director of the FBI, was much appreciated. Politicians on both sides of the aisle – as well as veterans of police and intelligence within federal agencies – had long admired and trusted Mueller, a Republican.

Trump has repeatedly referred to Mueller's investigation as "witch hunt" and accused Mueller's prosecutors of political bias, as many of them had already made donations to Democratic candidates. Some congressional Republicans who support the president have repeatedly attacked Mueller's work as corrupted by Comey's anti-Trump bias and his top FBI advisers.

When Mueller's investigation is over, it will likely trigger a new political storm.

Democrats are already demanding a detailed public accounting of what Mueller has discovered, beyond what public indictments and trial evidence so far predict. Republicans, on the other hand, are about to aggravate their attacks on the special advocate's work as a waste of time and money – and describe the end of the investigation as definitive proof that nothing was left to think that the Trump campaign was colluding with the Kremlin.

Mueller spent much of his time trying to determine if the president was trying to obstruct the investigation. To this end, Mueller interviewed the president's relatives about his private statements about the investigation, his public tweets that attacked law enforcement officials and internal documents likely to bring to light the behavior of Trump.

Months and months of negotiations on a possible interview with Trump have been limited. Ultimately, Mueller and the Department of Justice did not summon the President, which could have led to a fight in the Supreme Court, and Trump's lawyers submitted written answers to the lawyer's questions. special.