This is an OZY Special Briefing, an extension of the Presidential Daily Brief. The Special Briefing tells you what you need to know about an important issue, individual or story that is making news. Each one serves up an interesting selection of facts, opinions, images and videos in order to catch you up and vault you ahead.

WHAT TO KNOW

What Happened? On Thursday, the Department of Justice released a 448-page, lightly redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report investigating Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. As previewed by Attorney General William Barr 3 1/2 weeks ago, Mueller found no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin but did not reach a firm legal conclusion on whether the president obstructed justice.

The report reveals that Trump tried repeatedly through a variety of means to curtail the investigation — but that his subordinates ignored or resisted his wishes.

Much of the information in the report had already been revealed publicly. We’d heard through media leaks, for example, about White House counsel Don McGahn refusing and threatening to resign after Trump asked him to have then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions fire Mueller. Through congressional testimony, we knew Trump requested FBI Director James Comey’s “loyalty” before he was canned. And then, of course, there are Trump’s own tweets and interviews, including his floating the idea of a pardon for former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. So what’s new?

Particularly on the “collusion” side, much of the new information — or lack thereof — favors the president. For example, Mueller found no evidence that Trump had advance knowledge of the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in which a Russian lawyer who offered “dirt” on Hillary Clinton sat down with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Manafort. He also found no evidence that Trump directed a change in the Republican Party platform at the 2016 convention on arming Ukraine to make it more favorable to Russia. Instead, a campaign aide just wanted it to reflect what Trump had said publicly.

But in the 10 potential incidents of obstruction, there are notable new wrinkles about how Trump scrambled to fight the investigations. After Sessions recused himself from overseeing the investigation, the White House counsel’s office notes indicate that the president should avoid his attorney general: “No comms/Serious concerns about obstruction.” But Mueller documents repeated attempts by Trump to get Sessions to “unrecuse,” for which he would be a “hero.” “I’m not going to do anything or direct you to do anything,” Trump told his attorney general at one point. “I just want to be treated fairly.”

Trump often raged against Mueller’s probe, saying privately that it was “the end of his presidency.”

For example, in July 2017, he directed former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to tell Sessions to say publicly that the Mueller investigation was “very unfair” and limit it to protecting against future election interference. Lewandowski didn’t want to act on the request, so he asked White House deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn (a former Sessions aide) to do so. Dearborn declined.

“If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state,” Mueller’s team wrote. “Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment.”