Politics

2020 Democratic Candidates Silent In Wake Of Mueller Findings

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• Democrats running for office in 2020 are silent on special counsel Robert Mueller’s completed report.
• Many Democrats have already claimed Trump colluded with Russia, despite Mueller’s findings.
• The 2020 Democrats contacted were all given a deadline, with plenty of time to respond. 

Democrats running for president in 2020 would not answer questions regarding the results of special counsel Robert Mueller after multiple inquiries from The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Mueller, who submitted his completed report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election Friday, did not find any collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia.

“The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” Attorney General William Barr’s letter states.

Regardless of the letter, 2020 Democrats still are silent on their acceptance on the Trump campaign did not collude with Russia in order to win the 2016 presidential election. TheDCNF contacted 12 Democratic campaigns as well as Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, with a deadline, in order to give them enough time to respond.

The 12 Democrats contacted included: New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, California Sen. Kamala Harris, New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, former Texas Rep. Beto O’ Rourke, entrepreneur Andrew Yang, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.

Warren’s office refused to give TheDCNF contact info for her presidential campaign. Booker’s office also would not provide TheDCNF with campaign contact information. However, TheDCNF ran into Booker on Capitol Hill on Monday, and asked him if he accepted Mueller’s findings of zero collusion.

Booker responded to TheDCNF by saying, “I’ve got to look at the report when it’s actually released. Again, I think there’s going to be a lot in the report that’s going to continue this journey which is an investigation to really cripple matters.”

Out of the 13 contacted, not one of the 2020 hopefuls responded to the question, asking them if they accept the Mueller report’s findings of no collusion, besides Booker. This comes as multiple Democrats already claimed Trump colluded with Russia, before Mueller’s report was completed.

California Democratic Reps. Eric Swalwell, Adam Schiff and Maxine Waters, as well as Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal did not wait for Mueller to finish his investigation to claim that the Trump campaign was guilty of collusion.

“Here you have a president who I can tell you and guarantee you is in collusion with the Russians to undermine our democracy,” Waters said in September of 2017. Waters also said that Mueller’s report is “going to lead right to, not only collusion, obstruction of justice, money laundering.”

“The evidence is pretty clear that there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians,” Blumenthal told MSNBC in February 2018.

Swalwell published a Powerpoint titled “Evidence of Collusion,” which did not show any evidence of collusion with Russia in February 2018.

Schiff said on Feb. 17 there was “pretty compelling evidence” that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.

Ever since Mueller completed the report, both Democrats and Republicans have called for the full report to be made public. Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan said Sunday that anything related to Mueller’s probe should be released to the public.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler requested a number of documents from the White House and sent letters seeking information from people and organizations close to Trump on March 4.

Nadler sent the requests to 81 groups, people and organizations, searching for Constitutional abuses and corruption by Trump. The New York Democrat said the requests for documents are to “begin investigations, to present the case to the American people about obstruction of justice, about corruption and abuse of power.”

Democrats and cable news pundits have begun to say the Mueller report is a cover up, even though it has not been released.

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Paul Ingrassia and Wyatt Dobrovich contributed to this report.