When the long-awaited report on Russian collusion in the 2016 election and obstruction of justice by the Trump administration, better known as The Mueller Report, came out, I was eager to read it. I had enough of the media and political spinning and wanted the information from the source, the Special Counsel’s office lead by former FBI Director Robert Mueller.

When I downloaded the PDF report from the Department of Justice’s Web site moments after its release, I was a little overwhelmed - it was over 400 pages, and I’d have to print it to read, as I certainly wasn’t going to read it on my phone or computer. Staring at the redactions that permeated the pages as I scrolled through it, I thought to myself there had to be a better way to read this.

That lightbulb over my head led me to Amazon, and to my wonderment I saw a couple of versions of said report, which just came out for pre-order. In one click I had added myself to a queue of unknown quantities of people who wanted to read the report the old-fashioned way.

The book, The Mueller Report, The Final Report of the Special Counsel into Donald Trump, Russia and Collusion, arrived a few weeks later, just in time for a work trip. But as I should have anticipated, this was no quick read - written by lawyers, why would it be? Plus I spent as much time reading it on flights as I did talking with people sitting around me, wondering about it as much as I was, so it took even longer.

Eventually I finished the 472 pages of the book, which was longer than the report as it included extra materials, such as the powers of the Special Counsel. The report itself was shorter than the original for instead of showing 33 redacted physical lines, for example, it just mentioned 33 lines were not included. My takeaways were mostly on the content with a little from the report itself.

Details on what was being called hacking – As someone who works in Web technology and social media, it was not enough for me to just hear there was “hacking,” for I wanted all the details of what was being called that. What was in the report satisfied that to a certain extent, listing accounts on Twitter and Facebook and what was posted and by whom. Where I wouldn’t necessarily call it hacking, I do believe there was a deliberate attempt to influence people. However as no analytics were presented with the account activity, it is open as to its effectiveness.

Michael Cohen was Executive Vice President of Trump Organization – In any press mention of Donald Trump’s personal attorney I ever heard, I never heard of his title in Trump’s business. I heard he was a personal lawyer, fixer, handler, bodyman and various other labels that were slang not to compliment him. Granted you can give anyone any title in your own business, but if EVP was his title, why did the media never use it?

The infamous Trump Tower meeting yielded nothing – There was a lot of talk about a June 9, 2016 meeting among Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, then-campaign staff member (and later campaign chair) Paul Manafort and representatives from Russia. But after reading the testimonies from those in the meeting and what followed it, nothing came from it. Was their intent? That wasn’t even clear as it seemed like if there was to be some collusion, these weren’t the people capable of colluding!

Speaking of which, collusion wasn’t even considered – On pages 167 to 168 of the book it states, and I quote, “… this Office’s focus in resolving the question of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as described in federal law, not the commonly discussed term ‘collusion.’” So all this time - years - and all of everyone saying collusion, and the label wasn’t applicable? And none of the TV talking heads who are lawyers knew that?

Richard Pinedo was jailed for fake bank accounts as a result of the investigations – There were other charges against others, but I heard very little about it in the mainstream media. One was Richard Pineda, who was sentenced to prison for providing fake identification information to the Russians who were running the “hacking” social media campaigns. Presumably this information was used to eventually make payments to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter for promoted posts. Perhaps information on Pinedo was released to the media, and they chose not to promote it widely?

Trump didn’t “recall” a lot in his responses – The book includes the written responses to questions sent to President Trump in lieu of live testimony by the office of the Special Counsel. Most of them began with “I don’t remember” or “I don’t recall,” all of which did not come as a surprise to me.

I got lost a lot in the second part – The second part of the report was focused on obstruction by President Trump and his staff. Much of this presented a case, then a very long description of the applicable laws and case laws that applied to the case followed by a conclusion. This was a difficult read for me as it consisted of so many legal terms, as well the phrasing of legal descriptions doesn’t exactly follow any rules of prose. As I am not familiar with any of these laws and case laws referenced, there was little meaning to reading the middle of each case, and as much as I tried not to, on occasion I skipped to the end.

If you are interested in hearing something from the horses’ mouth, as the phrase goes, I would recommend reading The Mueller Report yourself. Again it is not a quick read, and not always an easy one, but everything is in there in its source that has been translated by the media for the general consumers.

As I give away every book I read, I will give this one to the first person who makes a comment to this blog post. Don’t post your address, as I will follow-up with you outside of this. Note I have moderation on comments, and they will not appear right away. This offer is open to anyone, anywhere in the world. Make sure to follow the comments to see if you are the lucky winner!

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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