this is bbc world news, the headlines. a long—awaited report from us special counsel robert mueller into russian meddling in the us election has committed the president did not commit a crime but this is bbc world news today. has stopped short of exonerating i'm samantha simmonds. our top stories. us president donald trump has said: him. a cruise ship that was stranded "no collusion, no obstruction, complete and total exoneration" off the coast of norway with after a long—awaited report from us special counsel robert mueller, hundreds of people on board has now into russian meddling in the 2016 docked safely at a nearby port. the election, has concluded that the president did not commit a crime. viking sky was hit by a huge storm on saturday. british prime minister theresa may has held crisis talks with senior ministers and brexiteers in an effort to breathe life into her twice defeated divorce deal after reports her cabin was planning hello and welcome to topple her. to world news today. our breaking news this hour. a total and complete exoneration of the president of the united states. that's how the white house is describing the long awaited muller report into russian interference in the presidential election of 2016. after a two year long investigation, a four page letter summarising the report has been handed to us congressional leaders. it says the probe did not find that

any members of the trump campaign team colluded with russia. on the allegation of obstruction of justice by mr trump, the mueller report says it has not concluded that the president committed a crime. but the special counsel adds that it also does not exonerate him. the attorney general, william barr, has been considering the report since it was handed over on friday. president trump has always denied wrongdoing, repeatedly denouncing the mueller inquiry as a witch hunt. this is president trump speaking a little earlier. so after a long look, after a long investigation, after so many people have been so badly hurt, after not looking at the other side, where a lot of bad things happened. a lot of horrible things happened. a lot of very bad things happened for our

country, it was just announced there was no collusion with russia, the most ridiculous thing i've ever heard, there was no collusion with russia. there was no obstruction and none whatsoever. and it was a com plete none whatsoever. and it was a complete and total exoneration. it's a shame that our country had to go through this, to be honest it's a shame that your president has had to go through this, before i even got elected it by good afternoon and it began ill legally and hopefully somebody‘s going to look at the over side, this was an illegal take down, that failed. and hopefully, somebody will be looking at the other side, so will be looking at the other side, so it's complete exoneration, no collusion, no obstruction, thank you

very much. thank chris buckler is in washington. take us back to when the report was published. you can see that the president is delighted as he boarded that plane to come back to washington from florida, where he spent the weekend playing golf. and i suspect that many of his supporters will feel he has a right to be delighted after this report from the special counsel robert mueller. of course we haven't seen the full report, we have seen a summary the full report, we have seen a summary of it, coming from the us attorney general bill barr, and much of it is very good for the president. it says for example, on theissue president. it says for example, on the issue of russian interference in the issue of russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, that yes, there was interference by russia and individuals linked to the russian government but that the trump campaign was not involved, there was no collusion with the

trump campaign, the special counsel own report, he says the investigation did not establish that members of the trump campaign conspired or co—ordinated with the russian government in its election interference activities and there are even suggestions that specifically russia had reached out to the trump campaign, but there is no evidence of collusion, and of course that is what the president has shouted time and time again. on the other issue though, of whether he obstructed justice, although president trump says he has been exonerated, that is not quite how this reads. certainly the special counsel has been looking into the actions and words of the president, during the campaign and beyond, and the special counsel investigated what he describes as potentially obstruction of justice what he describes as potentially obstruction ofjustice concern, and has this conclusion. the special counsel specifically did not draw a conclusion, one way or the oh as to

whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction, he states while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him, and what it says is we left that decision to the us attorney general bill barr, and he has decided not to go ahead, that the evidence gathered does not constitute a crime, he said he did that based not just constitute a crime, he said he did that based notjust on the evidence, so he did thatjust based on the evidence, not this issue that has been mentioned time and time again, this constitutional consideration, that normally a sitting president should not be indicted. he said that was not a consideration, as far as bill barr is concerned there isn't evidence of a crime being committed. but democrats will seize on those words, that although the special counsel says the report does not conclude the president committed a crime it does not exonerate him. 0k, chris, for now, thanening you. earlier i spoke to our north american editorjon sopel who explained what the publishing of the report means.

well, yeah, we'vejust got what richard was talking about, that official reaction now we've had from sarah sanders, the president's press secretary, and they have been very reluctant to say a word until they had the detail of it and there was just a holding statement, all over the weekend. a very quiet weekend in terms of twitter out put from donald trump, but the official statement from sarah sanders says the special counsel did not find any collusion and did not find any obstruction. attorney general barr and deputy attorney general rosenstein further determined there was no obstruction. the findings of the department ofjustice are a total and complete exoneration of the president of the united states. i heard richard there, a critic of donald trump, saying this goes on, there may have been obstruction ofjustice, there needs to be further inestigation. i think in most american people's eyes they have a limited attention span, the headline they are going to hear today, is that the president is in the clear, and i think in real political terms, he is,

and i think this is an enormous fillip for his presidency. this has been a cloud hanging over him for nearly two years. in political terms, where does this go now? criminally there aren't going to be any charges, certainly at the moment, but we have been discussing the issue of impeachment with several commentators saying they have in front of them now, with the summary of this report at least, without the full version, does, will lead to his critics saying, there are enough grounds to investigate the possibility of an impeachment. what is your assessment? well, what the mueller report says, there are two separate questions we need to disentangle. one is the legal and the other is the political. the legal question i think has become problematic, while the mueller report says look, we didn't find obstruction ofjustice but we don't exonerate the president either. the deputy attorney general and the attorney general have looked at this and said we don't believe there is enough to bring a case of obstruction ofjustice as a result of that. that is one of the high crimes and misdemeanors that can lead to impeachment.

that is the legal position. let us go to the political side of this now. the politics of it are that democrats are very, very wary, senior democrats, about trying to impeach the president because they feel the political effect of that will be to unite the republican party, unite donald trump's supporters into thinking that this is just some kind of political hatchetjob on a president they don't like. that happened to bill clinton at the end of his second term over the monica lewinsky affair. that did the republicans far more harm than it did bill clinton and the democrats. bill clinton left office with record approval ratings. what the democrats need to do is be careful they don't increase donald trump's approval ratings, and so i think the senior democrats will be looking at this report and saying, if we are going to beat donald trump it will be at the ballot box, in november 2020, and not before. i'm nowjoined by elizabeth wydra, president of the constitutional accountability center.

she joins us from washington. welcome to you, thank you for being with us, what is your assessment of the findings of this report, the summary the findings of this report, the summary at least? well, the summary is very interesting, i think frankly, it raises more questions at this point than it answer, and i think we are going to see particularly members of congress jump particularly members of congress jump on that to try to get the whole mueller report released to them as you have noted, the report that is summarised here does not make a decision on whether to prosecute the president for obstruction of justice, and they say that the evidence does not establish that anyone from the trump campaign couuded anyone from the trump campaign colluded with russia as the president likes to say, that doesn't necessarily mean there is no evidence of that, just that the evidence of that, just that the evidence does not establish, does that establish beyond a reasonable doubt. we don't know. i have to say the president probably is happy that he is not you know, getting indicted

today or any one of his family but it isn't entirely all good news for him as he might have made it soon in his comments from the tarmac. he was clearly very happy, he said he has been totally common rated. do you think we are going to get the publication of the full report? —— exonerated. it seems unlikely. publication of the full report? —— exonerated. it seems unlikelylj think exonerated. it seems unlikely.” think that will be a major fight. this is something that the american people have been following very closely, for the last two years, almost, it is something that is gravely important to the health and future of our democracy, we have no question here that the russians did interfere in the 2016 election, and the question is whether or not the president of the united states had any cooperation in that, encouraged that, etc, and so when you have such a weighty issue that was investigated so thoroughly, you want to see what evidence is out there,

and while we have a decision a p pa re ntly and while we have a decision apparently by the mueller team, that there isn't enough evidence to actually prosecute on this collusion claim, that is not necessarily the standard of evidence that the american people use when they go the ballot box, frankly that even congress uses when it goes through its oversight function. a lot of folks who were credit ims —— critics of trump expected the mueller report to swoop in and save them from this administration, the constitution lays out clearly what you do, when you have a corrupt president, and it doesn't lay that responsibility at the feet of a special counsel, it lays it at the feet of the people, at the ballot box or if it comes to that, at the feet of congress, to decide on whether or not to impeach the president. i think this is the end of one chapter in this saga for our democracy in the us but it certainly is not the end of the

story. the senior or a senior justice department official says she doesn't know how long the attorney general will take to make a decision about which portions of the report to make publish is it his decision alone? you said there will be a fight, there may be a lot of shouting and screaming from certain sections of congress but will that make any impact at all? it might, you know, we have seen in cases before, where the white house has tried to assert executive previous lord janner certain elements of information relating to potential wrongdoing, we saw this back in watergate and in that instance the case made its way to the supreme court of the united states, so obviously, we have the department of justice and the white house, being able to make some initial decisions about what can be made public but i would imagine if that information is not, is not fully a reflection of who is in the mueller report, is no

sufficient for the people, their elected leaders to make decisions about, you know, what democratic a cts about, you know, what democratic acts should go forward. that is small d democracy, i think there could be a fight the court t there could be a fight the court t there could be a political battle, and you know, we could see the grand jury, even, come out and have the court in that instance, the court that oversaw the grand jury come and say you don't need to hide behind civil procedure that is one of the elements that bor noted as keeping certain information private, to say you can allow that to go forward. we saw that in watergate as well. there is precedent for having a very fulsome disclosure of information andi fulsome disclosure of information and i think that all parties involved agree, at least, on the general level, that that is what would be healthy for the american democracy. the chair of the us house

judiciary committee who is a democrat said the special counsel states while the report does not conclude the president committed a crime it also does not exonerate him. gerry nadler keen to stress that point. we know there is a different threshold for a criminal prosecution, as there is for an impeachment proceed, do you think there will be an increasing number of democrats calling for impeachment or will they be more wary of the fa ct or will they be more wary of the fact it will be a call to arms and shore up support for president trump, if they go down that road? well, i think there are really two issues here. one is a political issue, which is whether or not there issue, which is whether or not there is this broad support among the public for impeachment and our elected leaders are unquestionably going to take that into account. we saw speaker nancy pelosi saying she didn't think it was worth it to put the country through that, but then there are constitutional issue, and there are constitutional issue, and the constitution sets forth impeachment as the metaphor removing

a president in office, who has committed as the constitution says high crimes and who has engaged in extraordinary corruption, who has so damaged the democratic institutions of the united states, and that is something that our elected leader ofs in congress have to take very seriously, and i think one step before we get to the real question of impeachment proceedings, is this issue of releasing the evidence that is, that was collected during this extensive mueller investigation, because as you said, the decision whether or not to prosecute is based on whether or not you can establish something a court of law beyond a reasonable doubt. that is a very specific threshold, but the threshold for whether or not someone has committed acts that so endanger the constitutional democracy of the us, that the constitution compels

members of dong engage in impeachment proceedings, that is something else. so i think that is going to be a major reason for chairman nadler and other members of congress to really fight to get the full information, and all of the evidence that was collected by the mueller team. you know, we have this vast expenditure of resources, to get this information, and it should be used by our elected leader, to make those important decisions, no matter what they decide, if they decide that you know, they agree that there isn't enough here, to determine that the trump campaign couuded determine that the trump campaign colluded with the russian government, if they decide that, you know, that is where the evidence will lead, but i think that the american people and our elected leaders need to see that evidence themselves. 0k, thank you very much for your analysis, your thoughts this evening. let's remind you of the key findings from special counsel

robert mueller‘s report. firstly, it says that there is no evidence that the trump campaign colluded with russia to influence the 2016 presidential election. and it also did not find sufficient evidence to conclude that president trump obstructed justice. but it says that its findings do not exonerate president trump either. i'm nowjoined by kim wehle, former assistant us attorney. i spoke to you earlier on getting those findings, we are delighted to you back with us. now we have heard from president trump and we have had time to digest the news further and to see comments from gerry nadler further stressing the point that he's very insistent on the fact that the report does not exonerate president trump, what is your analysis of where we are at in the last hour or so? i think that there will be a lot of, i think distortion or misinformation to the public with respect to what this report mean, and not necessarily in a nefarious

way, i say this because for law lawyersers for prosecutors, the standard is high, the question is, is there enough evidence to indict and to prosecute and to convict? that is a different question from whether there is evidence of wrongdoing, and it looks like from this summary, from mr barr, he makes clear that there is evidence on both sides of the equation with respect to obstruction ofjustice for example. so we do have problematic fa ct, example. so we do have problematic fact, they don't rise to the level of crimes, and i think that is an important distinction, the other thing that is interesting is a matter of the structure here, is that mr rosenstein and mr barr together made the determination that there was not sufficient evidence to prosecute for obstruction of justice, mr mueller didn't make that determination, he said that he can't exonerate the president, and of course, barr wrote a letter to the white house, prior to his nomination

for attorney general, saying that you know, challenging the question of whether a president could obstruct justice by of whether a president could obstructjustice by firing an fbi director, so that is a little tricky, it is important to have the full report to really be able to evaluate how important it is with respect top the next step, which is the political ramifications of the president's actions. the other thing it is important to emphasise with respect to conspiracy, and co—ordination, we are still using the word collusion, that is a tricky word. it is not a legal word. what is publicly available, there was collusion in that there were communications for sure, between the trump campaign and the russian, the question is, was there conspiracy, thatis question is, was there conspiracy, that is a legal term, it requires proof of a meeting of the minds, and then this report specifically talks about co—ordination, which my understanding a counter intelligence term, so these are wonky legal terms that don't necessarily mean no

collusion, don't necessarily mean full exoneration which is why we need to see what is behind these kind of broad brush strokes in these three—pieces of paper, we need to see the full report and potentially the documentary evidence and transcripts of the grand jury that give rise to the conclusions. as a former assistant attorney you will have some idea of the pressure the attorney general will come under now to release this report in full, he was at pains to say he will be taking it under advicement and will not be rushed into a decision but there will be a huge amount of pressure and as we were saying with our previous guest possibly some kind of more legal proceedings to force him do this, this could be a protracted process, couldn't it. force him do this, this could be a protracted process, couldn't itm could be a protracted process but the court, if this goes to the court, the courts are aware of how important that is, and there certainly is a mechanism for expediting a really important case from the district court, the lower

level court to the an late court then the supreme court. so it won't niecely take —— necessarily takes months and month, i could be a couple of months or a couple of weeks and the stream court would be primed to resolve this expeditiously, it could be resolved by the supreme court, it shouldn't be resolved really by trump appointees, both as much as i respect barr and rosenstein, i have no reason to doubt their debs in this process, but it —— independence in this process, the presidency should be checked by the other two branches of government, the congress, which is going to continue with its investigations, which is appropriate, consistent with its constitutional obligation and when you are talking about a question, a constitutional question, a legal question, that should be resolved by the courts, and so americans can go home and rest easy that we have a definitive conclusion on the matter, which i don't think this piece of paper gives us, we have to be

careful not to overreach the way the president understandably given the political implications, overreach and say this is exoneration, no collusion, i don't think that is a fair assessment of this piece of paper. in terms of other investigations as you said, congress has its own investigation, legal investigations going on into the trump family's affair, the term the report does not exonerate president trump from having committed a crime what from the legal avenues that the robert mueller investigation is done, dust, closed, hisjob is done, what needs to happen if other people are persuaded other crimes do neat investigating? well, it looks like there are ongoing investigations in there are ongoing investigations in the southern district of new york, colombia, that office is going to prosecute roger stone and the other piece of this document, it talks about basically, the two conspiracy indictments that came out of special

counsel mueller‘s investigation in february of 2018, and july 2018, one involved basically distorting social media platforms, the russian, planted fake information and people social media account, that is one element. the other piece is hacking into the dnc. what is report doesn't talk ant is whether the president engaged in some kind of quid pro quo with respect to trump tower moscow, he said to the russians listen, i will ease sanctions in exchange if you could give me something that helps many me in my business. it is enclea rly helps many me in my business. it is enclearly whether that question was investigated by special counsel mueller. it is not in the core mandate from rosenstein's referral, which gives him authority, to investigate matters arising related to, but we don't know, so i think that is an open question, whether there is still more stuff relating to the russians that another branch of the department ofjustice could be

looking at, the fbi could be looking at for all we know, or there might be as you know, as ben reported, state investigations relating to tax problems for example, or some financial transaction problems, that is all still to be resolved and we will have to wait, if anything comes out that. those are different questions then, the three narrow things addresses here, obstruction of justice, hacking, wikilea ks things addresses here, obstruction ofjustice, hacking, wikileaks and the social media distortions that the social media distortions that the russians engaged in in order to sway the election. good to get your analysis. thank you for being let's take a look at some of the key dates in the nearly two—year—long investigation by robert mueller. in october 2017, president trump s former campaign advisor george papadopoulos pleads guilty to lying to the fbi about his contacts with russian officials. two months later, michael flynn, the presidents national security adviser, pleads guilty to lying to the fbi about his discussions

in 2016 with the russian ambassador to the united states. in november of 2018, president trump's personal attorney michael cohen pleads guilty to lying to congress about the length of discussions in 2016 on plans to build a trump tower in moscow. this year, in january, long—time trump associate roger stone was arrested, accused of lying to congress on the advance knowledge he had of plans by wikileaks to release democratic party campaign emails. us officials say the emails were stolen by russia. and in march former trump campaign chairman paul manafort was sentenced forfinancial crimes, receiving seven and a half years in two separate cases. a report has been handed to us congressional leaders. leaders. it

concluded the president did not commita concluded the president did not commit a crime. stay with us. plenty more coming up. it has been a glorious sunday across much of england and wales, further north a different story. with stronger winds and showers, thanks to this area of low pressure. it looks like it will be a windy end to the day, certainly for the first pa rt the day, certainly for the first part of the night in the north east of scotla nd part of the night in the north east of scotland with the showers dying away. the winds will turn lighter, with lengthy clear sky, it will be a chilly one, central and northern areas a touch from of frost out of town. from monday we start on a chilly note but dry with lots of sunshine round, so a nice picture through the day for much of england and wales, apart from a bit of fair weather cloud in the afternoon. further north we have a weak frontal

system, bringing thicker cloud to much of scotland, so a dull day, a few showery bursts of rain in the north and west but milder than what we have had today with temperatures reaching ten or 11. further south glorious conditions, the top temperatures round 13 celsius and the winds will be light. high pressure sticks with us for the rest of the week. we will the be tapping into drierairso of the week. we will the be tapping into drier air so that means we will see more sunshine around with that drierair, so see more sunshine around with that drier air, so temperatures will respond, so it should be very mild to the owned the week, so the rest of the week is looking dry, thanks to high pressure, plenty of sunshine but night also be chilly, maybe a touch of mist and fog. this is tuesday's picture then, not much to talk about. it will be a chilly start, best of the sunshine, england and wales, fair weather cloud and we will have a frontal system brushing past the north of scotland which will bring thicker cloud and rain, double figure values for all, highs of 13 or 1a celsius on tuesday,

those temperatures creeping up. similar picture on wednesday, a chilly start but dry, bright, lots of sunshine, light winds, again fair weather cloud into the afternoon, and again that frontal system bringing rain to the north and west of scotland. 13 degrees for aberdeen, we could be looking at 15 in central and southern and eastern england. those temperatures will begin to creep up to the end of the week. we are looking at 17 and 18 in the south—east. the winds remain light but nights will be on the