“President Trump and his lawyers decided from the start to fully cooperate with the special counsel’s investigation, gambling in 2017 that they could hasten its end if they gave prosecutors unfettered access to White House aides and other Trump associates,” the New York Times reports.

“Now some of the witnesses named in the report, who have departed the White House but rely on access to Mr. Trump for their livelihoods, fear his ire. Some have begun calling current and former administration officials and others in the president’s orbit to seek clues about Mr. Trump’s state of mind, according to four special counsel witnesses who spoke on the condition of anonymity.”

“One called friends and colleagues in the days before the report was released to see whether he could have the Justice Department redact his name from Mr. Mueller’s report… The idea went nowhere.”

Lawfare: “The Mueller Report describes, in excruciating detail and with relatively few redactions, a candidate and a campaign aware of the existence of a plot by a hostile foreign government to criminally interfere in the U.S. election for the purpose of supporting that candidate’s side. It describes a candidate and a campaign who welcomed the efforts and delighted in the assistance. It describes a candidate and a campaign who brazenly and serially lied to the American people about the existence of the foreign conspiracy and their contacts with it. And yet, it does not find evidence to support a charge of criminal conspiracy, which requires not just a shared purpose but a meeting of the minds.”

“Here is the other bottom line: The Mueller Report describes a president who, on numerous occasions, engaged in conduct calculated to hinder a federal investigation. It finds ample evidence that at least a portion of that conduct met all of the statutory elements of criminal obstruction of justice. In some of the instances in which all of the statutory elements of obstruction are met, the report finds no persuasive constitutional or factual defenses. And yet, it declines to render a judgment on whether the president has committed a crime.”

“Now, the House must decide what to do with these facts.”

Politico identifies five mysteries the Mueller report didn’t resolve:

• Did a computer link exist between the Trump Organization and Moscow’s Alfa Bank?
• Did Cambridge Analytica have ties to Russia or WikiLeaks?
• What was the NRA’s relationship with the Trump campaign, and with Russia?
• What did WikiLeaks know about the source of the stolen emails?
• What about the infamous video tape alleged in the Steele dossier?

President Trump stepped up his attacks against special counsel Robert Mueller early Saturday morning, claiming Mueller’s recently released report “was written as nastily as possible” by “true Trump Haters,” The Hill reports.

Trump lashed out at Mueller calling him “highly conflicted” and once again declaring the special counsel’s investigation “the greatest Witch Hunt in U.S. political history.”

New York Times: “Interviews with Donald McGahn, the former White House counsel, were cited 157 times, more than any others. The special counsel relied on Mr. McGahn’s answers most often in the section of the report that covered obstruction of justice.”

“Interviews with four associates of Mr. Trump — Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, Michael Cohen and George Papadopoulos — were cited more than 320 times. All four were found guilty of crimes relating to the investigation.”

“President Trump seethed Friday over the special counsel’s portrayal of his protracted campaign to thwart the Russia investigation and directed much of his ire at former White House counsel Donald McGahn, whose ubiquity in the report’s footnotes laid bare his extensive cooperation in chronicling the president’s actions,” the Washington Post reports.

“Some of the report’s most derogatory scenes were attributed not only to the recollections of McGahn and other witnesses but also to the contemporaneous notes kept by several senior administration officials — the kind of paper trail that Trump has long sought to avoid leaving.”

CNN: “Perhaps more angering to a leader who detests weakness — but doesn’t necessarily mind an amoral reputation — were the number of underlings shown ignoring his commands, privately scoffing at the ‘crazy shit’ he was requesting and working around him to avoid self-implication.”

“Now, those close to him say Trump is newly furious at the people — most of whom no longer work for him — whose extensive interviews with the special counsel’s office created the epic depiction of an unscrupulous and chaotic White House. And he’s seeking assurances from those who remain that his orders are being treated like those of a president, and not like suggestions from an intemperate but misguided supervisor.”

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds President Trump’s approval rate has dropped to just 37% to 56% — down from 43% to 54% just three weeks ago.