The Department of Justice has released a less redacted copy of a memo laying out the scope of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) after the current and former Judiciary Committee chairmen requested it.
The memo, “The Scope of Investigation and Definition of Authority,” was sent on Aug. 2, 2017, to Mueller by Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general at the time.
The unredacted bullet points include four names, beginning with former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page. It tasks Mueller with determining whether Page committed a crime by “colluding with Russian government officials” as they interfered in the 2016 election.
Mueller also was tasked with investigating whether former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort likewise colluded with the Russian government, whether he committed crimes related to his work in Ukraine, and whether he committed a crime by taking loans from a bank CEO who was pursuing a job in the Trump administration.
The memo makes the same collusion allegation regarding former Trump campaign volunteer George Papadopolous, and also asks Mueller to look into whether he was an unregistered agent of the government of Israel.
The memo asks Mueller to probe four questions regarding Michael Flynn, the former Trump national security adviser who was fired less than a month into the job: whether he committed crimes by talking to Russian government officials during the Trump transition, whether he lied to the FBI about contacts he had with the Russian government, whether he failed to report foreign contacts and income on his background investigation application and whether he properly registered as an agent for the Turkish government.
The scope memo also permitted Mueller to add additional avenues of investigation with approval from Rosenstein’s office.
By Daniel Lippman and Kyle Cheney
