On Friday, Special Counsel Robert Mueller submitted his completed report on Trump and Russia to Attorney General William Barr for review. The Justice Department hasn't yet released details of the report. Barr is expected to summarize the findings for lawmakers over the weekend, including a few key conclusions drawn from the report on Saturday night.
It's currently unclear how much will be shared with Congress or with the public. The Justice Department has a policy prohibiting the disclosure of inquiries that don't result in criminal charges, which means certain key elements of the report may not be released.
Although the investigation uncovered numerous criminal actions committed by Trump associates, including both Americans and Russians, no Americans were charged with conspiracy to interfere in the 2016 election. No new indictments are expected to result from the report.
Although the ramifications of the report are uncertain, Trump went on the attack, dismissing Mueller's report as "ridiculous" and "illegitimate" because Mueller was not elected. Trump also said it was unfair that he had to deal with the report though he'd "won one of the greatest elections of all time."
Trump was also his typical pugnacious self in other capacities this week. He abruptly scrapped North Korean sanctions just one day after his own Treasury Department enacted them, saying that he didn't want there to be further sanctions because he "likes" Kim Jong Un. Trump also once again took shots at Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell this week, claiming that he was to blame for the US economy's failure to reach past a 4% economic growth rate in 2018.
The renewed criticism comes even as Trump's own White House admits that the $1.5 trillion tax cut brought on by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, will not yield the promised 3% annual growth rate. The administration's Council of Economic Advisers admitted that labor regulation cuts, a $1 trillion infrastructure plan, and further tax rollbacks would be needed to produce an average 3% growth rate originally promised through 2028. Without these boosts, the growth rate is projected to drop to 2.6% in 2021 and continue to decline until it reaches 2% in 2026, when most of the current tax cuts will expire. GDP growth in 2018 was 2.9%. Given the current gridlock between the Democrat-controlled House and the Republican-controlled Senate, it's unlikely that all changes allegedly needed to produce 3% growth will occur.
In other economic news, the Trump administration indicated that the president will nominate his former campaign adviser Stephen Moore to the Federal Reserve. Moore helped draft Trump's tax plan. He's been described as a hack, a pundit, and a Trump loyalist.
In terms of other investigations, the House Oversight and Reform Committee has received thousands of documents from subpoenas submitted to officials affiliated with Trump, though the White House itself has ignored the requests. The committee is also turning its attention to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, who allegedly used Facebook's
- https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/us/politics/mueller-report.html
- https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-takes-political-offensive-mueller-report-people-stand/story?id=61868273
- https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/21/trump-fed-for-economy-growth-1288783
- http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/trump-economists-admit-3-growth-promise-wont-happen.html
- https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/opinion/stephen-moore-federal-reserve-trump.html
- https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-deutsche-bank-fraud-investigation-1370805