But when it came to the nascent industry, the first sales on Jan. 1, 2014, were more a starting block than a finish line.

In the decade since legalization, Colorado has refined laws, catalyzed new ones and served as a litmus test for the rest of the country as states followed its lead. Today, cannabis is recreationally available for sale in 24 states — .

Here are some of the notable local moments along the way.

2014

Jan. 1: Retail sales of marijuana begin across the state in cities, towns and counties that allow it, from Telluride to Denver. The newly legal industry opens after more than 55% of Colorado voters approved Amendment 64 on Nov. 6, 2012. The state already allowed medical marijuana.

January: The Colorado Department of Transportation replaces mile marker 420 along Interstate 70 in eastern Colorado with mile marker 419.99 to thwart those who had swiped the sign bearing the number signifying marijuana culture.

March: The Colorado Supreme Court approves a rule change allowing lawyers in the state to work with marijuana businesses without the threat of ethics sanctions.

April: Colorado’s third-largest city, Aurora, approves regulations for marijuana dispensaries that will allow 24 stores in the city.

May: Denver city officials ask the Colorado Symphony Orchestra to rethink its plans to hold bring-your-own-pot performances, fearing such an event could violate laws prohibiting public consumption of marijuana.

July: State regulators adopt rules regarding the potency, serving size and packaging of marijuana edibles. One rule requires that serving sizes be made easily distinguishable and be limited to 10 mg of THC to prevent overconsumption. Another requires that manufacturers put single-serving edibles in child-resistant packaging.

October: Colorado’s health department proposes a ban on sales of nearly all forms of edible marijuana at recreational pot shops — but then quickly backs off amid an outcry.

November: Owners of marijuana shops on Denver’s South Broadway corridor band together in a new marketing campaign, naming the cannabis-heavy district the “Green Mile.”

November: Monthly recreational cannabis sales ($29.5 million) outpace medical marijuana sales (nearly $29 million) for the first time.

December: Nebraska and Oklahoma file suit, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down Colorado’s marijuana legalization law.

2015

January: In the first full year of recreational pot sales, Colorado reports that nearly $700 million of marijuana was sold in 2014. Medical marijuana accounted for a majority, but recreational sales would soon take over in annual figures.

January: The University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law adds marijuana business law — the nation’s first class geared toward representing marijuana clients — to its curriculum.

February: For the second time in two years, then-U.S. Rep. Jared Polis introduces legislation to effectively legalize and tax marijuana at the federal level. He later wins the Colorado governor’s election in 2018.

February: A documentary entitled “Rolling Papers” is released, spotlighting The Denver Post’s continued coverage of the emerging cannabis market.

June: Employers’ zero-tolerance drug policies trump Colorado’s medical marijuana laws, the Colorado Supreme Court rules. The high court rules that businesses can fire employees for the use of medical marijuana — even if it¶¶Ňőap off-duty. Many businesses also prohibit employees from using recreational marijuana.

October: The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City asks a federal judge in Denver to dismiss a lawsuit asking the court to force its hand and issue a master account to a credit union for marijuana businesses, saying that to do so would compel it to “facilitate criminal activity.”

2016

February/March: State marijuana regulators issue repeated recalls of large amounts of retail pot grown and allegedly treated with unapproved pesticides.

March: The U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear Nebraska and Oklahoma’s proposed lawsuit against Colorado’s legal marijuana laws.

April: The Denver City Council passes new industry limits that cap the number of marijuana storefronts and cultivation facilities in the state’s largest market, while providing new protections for saturated neighborhoods.

June: A security guard is fatally shot at an Aurora dispensary.

June: Englewood bans social-use marijuana clubs, saying it has no regulations on the books to deal with them.

July: A study from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus finds that emergency room visits and poison-control calls for children 9 and younger who consumed pot in Colorado jumped after recreational marijuana stores opened.

November: Denver voters pass Initiative 300, which allows social marijuana use at some businesses.

2017

January: Fewer travelers visit Colorado in 2016 and the Colorado Tourism Office cites waning interest in legal weed.

March: A new in Colorado is set. With nearly $132 million in revenue, March bests the previous high of $127.8 million set in September 2016.

April: The first drive-thru cannabis store — called the Tumbleweed Express — .

April: Organizers of the annual Civic Center 4/20 marijuana rally in Denver catch flak after piles of trash are left in the park following the weed celebration.

2018

January: Colorado politicians on both sides of the aisle lambast U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to end an Obama-era policy, known as the Cole Memo, that allowed for marijuana legalization to spread in U.S. states despite pot being federally unlawful. Enforcement never occurs.

February: A study from researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder finds that .

November: Tiny Edgewater, west of Denver, puts $3 million from marijuana tax revenues toward building a $13 million municipal complex with a library, police station, fitness center and city offices.

December: Boulder County health officials report increasing cases of cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, a vomiting condition tied to chronic users of marijuana.

2019

January: Denver announces it will help thousands of people clear low-level marijuana convictions from their criminal records through an online program and a series of clinics.

February: Sales of cannabis in Colorado top $6 billion since legalization took effect five years earlier.

June: Colorado surpasses $1 billion in tax revenue from marijuana sales since recreational use was legalized.

September: Public health experts scramble to determine what¶¶Ňőap causing a mysterious and sometimes fatal lung disease among people who use e-cigarettes with THC-infused oil.

2020

March: Customers rush Denver marijuana shops after then-Mayor Michael Hancock issues a stay-at-home order intended to stop recreational sales in light of the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic. He walked back the order’s applicability to the industry mere hours later.

August: The first vending machine selling cannabis products debuts in Colorado.

November: Colorado dispensaries sell more marijuana in the first 10 months of 2020 than they did during the entire year in 2019, itself a record-setting sales year. Sales receive a huge boost from pandemic-induced lockdowns and mandates.

December: Aurora becomes one of the first Colorado cities to permit marijuana delivery.

December: The Democratic-controlled U.S. House approves a bill to decriminalize and tax marijuana at the federal level. But to date, no legislation has reached the president¶¶Ňőap desk.

2021

January: Marijuana hits $10 billion in sales since legalization.

June: Gov. Polis signs into law HB21-1317, the most substantial marijuana regulatory measure since legalization. It aims to crack down on youth access to high-potency THC products.

August: A former University of Denver student cited for possessing marijuana in Wyoming becomes the first applicant in Denver for a marijuana retail store license under the city’s new social equity program.

September: The Aurora City Council turns down a cannabis hospitality licensing program in a 5-5 tie vote that doomed it to failure. It would have permitted smoking lounges, tasting rooms and touring cannabis buses in Colorado’s third-largest city.

December: Colorado records its highest-ever sales for marijuana since legal commerce began in 2014 — more than $2.2 billion was spent by cannabis consumers in 2021. The record presages a crash to come over the next two years.

2022

April: JAD’s Mile High Smoke, Colorado’s first marijuana “bar” where patrons can drink a non-alcoholic, THC-infused beer and order a gram of pot served with a side of rolling papers, opens in Adams County.

June: Moffat, a 120-person town in the San Luis Valley, considers changing its name to Kush as extensive grow operations pop up.

July: Colorado’s medical marijuana sales fall to their lowest point since retail sales of cannabis began eight years earlier, at a little more than $18 million during the month.

July: Polis vows to issue an executive order that will prevent the state from holding out-of-state convictions for most marijuana-related offenses against people applying for professional licenses in Colorado.

2023

April: Colorado’s marijuana industry dubs weed sales “the worst” in five years on the iconic April 20 date celebrating cannabis, as the industry contends with too much supply, not enough demand and increased competition from other states.

August: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends that the Drug Enforcement Administration consider reclassifying marijuana as a lower-risk drug. To date, it remains a Schedule I substance, meaning it¶¶Ňőap perceived to have no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.

October: Marijuana hits $15 billion in sales since legal recreational sales took effect in 2014.

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The announcement by Inspector General Michael Horowitz came shortly after Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco made the request for an internal investigation. Horowitz said he would examine whether the data subpoenaed by the Justice Department and turned over by Apple followed department policy and “whether any such uses, or the investigations, were based upon improper considerations.”

Horowitz said he would also investigate similar Trump-era seizures of journalists’ phone records.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and another Democratic member of the panel, California Rep. Eric Swalwell, said Apple notified them last month that their metadata had been subpoenaed and turned over to the Justice Department in 2018, as their committee was investigating the former president’s ties to Russia. Schiff was then the top Democrat on the panel, which was led by Republicans.

While the Justice Department routinely investigates leaked information, including classified intelligence, subpoenaing the private information of members of Congress is extraordinarily rare. The disclosures, first reported by The New York Times, raise questions about what the Justice Department’s justification was for spying on another branch of government and whether it was done for political reasons.

In a statement, White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said the Trump administration’s conduct is “shocking” and “clearly fits within an appalling trend that represents the opposite of how authority should be used.”

Bates said one of President Joe Biden’s top reasons for seeking the presidency was “his predecessor’s unjustifiable abuses of power, including the repugnant ways he tried to force his political interests upon the Department of Justice.”

The Trump administration’s secretive move to gain access to the data came as the president was fuming publicly and privately over investigations — in Congress and by then-special counsel Robert Mueller — into his campaign’s ties to Russia. Trump called the probes a “witch hunt,” regularly criticized Democrats and Mueller on Twitter and dismissed as “fake news” leaks he found harmful to his agenda. As the investigations swirled around him, he demanded loyalty from a Justice Department he often regarded as his personal law firm.

Swalwell and Schiff were two of the most visible Democrats on the committee during the Russia probe, making frequent appearances on cable news. Trump watched those channels closely, if not obsessively, and seethed over the coverage.

Schiff said the seizures suggest “the weaponization of law enforcement by a corrupt president” and urged the Justice Department to do “a full damage assessment of the conduct of the department over the last four years.”

Senate Democratic leaders immediately demanded that former Attorneys General Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions, who both oversaw Trump’s leak probes, testify about the secret subpoenas. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin said in a statement that “this appalling politicization of the Department of Justice by Donald Trump and his sycophants” must be investigated. They said Barr and Sessions are subject to a subpoena if they refuse.

Prosecutors from Trump’s Justice Department had subpoenaed Apple for the data. The records of at least 12 people connected to the intelligence panel were eventually shared by the company, including aides, former aides and family members. One was a minor.

The subpoena, issued in February 2018, requested information on 73 phone numbers and 36 email addresses, Apple said. It also included a non-disclosure order that prohibited the company from notifying any of the people, the company said in a statement. The subpoena didn’t include any context about the investigation and it would have been “virtually impossible for Apple to understand the intent of the desired information without digging through users’ accounts,” the company said.

Apple informed the committee last month that the records had been shared and that the investigation had been closed, but did not give extensive detail. The committee official and the two others with knowledge of the data seizures were granted anonymity to discuss them.

The Justice Department obtained the metadata — often records of calls, texts and locations — but not other content from the devices, like photos, messages or emails. The order prohibiting Apple from discussing the subpoena, or notifying the people whose records were being seized, was extended three times, one each year, Apple said.

“We regularly challenge warrants, subpoenas and nondisclosure orders and have made it our policy to inform affected customers of governmental requests about them just as soon as possible,” the company statement said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement that the data seizures “appear to be yet another egregious assault on our democracy” by the former president.

“The news about the politicization of the Trump Administration Justice Department is harrowing,” she said.

The committee official said the House intelligence panel will ask Apple to look into whether additional lawmakers were targeted. The Justice Department has not been forthcoming on questions such as whether the investigation was properly predicated and whether it only focused on Democrats, the official said.

It is unclear why Trump’s Justice Department would have targeted a minor as part of the probe. Swalwell, confirming that he was told his records were seized, told CNN on Thursday night that he was aware a minor was involved and believed that person was “targeted punitively and not for any reason in law.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee was not similarly targeted, according to a fourth person who was aware of the probe and granted anonymity to discuss it.

There’s no indication that the Justice Department used the records to prosecute anyone. After some information related to the Russia investigation was declassified and made public during the later years of the Trump administration, some of the prosecutors were concerned that even if they could bring a leak case, conviction would be unlikely, one of the people said.

Federal agents questioned at least one former committee staff member in 2020, the person said, and ultimately, prosecutors weren’t able to substantiate a case.

The news follows revelations that the Justice Department had secretly seized phone records belonging to reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN as part of criminal leak investigations. Following an outcry from press freedom organizations, the Justice Department announced last week that it would cease the practice of going after journalists’ sourcing information.

___

Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

Trump was enraged that Pence was refusing to try to overturn the election. In a series of meetings, the president had pressed relentlessly, alternately cajoling and browbeating him. Finally, just before Pence headed to the Capitol to oversee the electoral vote count last Wednesday, Trump called the vice president¶¶Ňőap residence to push one last time.

“You can either go down in history as a patriot,” Trump told him, according to two people briefed on the conversation, “or you can go down in history as a pussy.”

The blowup between the nation’s two highest elected officials then played out in dramatic fashion as the president publicly excoriated the vice president at an incendiary rally and sent agitated supporters to the Capitol, where they stormed the building — some of them chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”

Evacuated to the basement, Pence huddled for hours while Trump tweeted out an attack on him rather than call to check on his safety.

It was an extraordinary rupture of a partnership that had survived too many challenges to count.

The loyal lieutenant who had almost never diverged from the president, who had finessed every other possible fracture, finally came to a decision point he could not avoid. He would uphold the election despite the president and despite the mob. And he would pay the price with the political base he once hoped to harness for his own run for the White House.

“Pence had a choice between his constitutional duty and his political future, and he did the right thing,” said John Yoo, a legal scholar consulted by Pence’s office. “I think he was the man of the hour in many ways — for both Democrats and Republicans. He did his duty even though he must have known, when he did it, that that probably meant he could never become president.”

Former Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, one of Trump’s most outspoken Republican critics and a longtime friend of Pence before they drifted apart over the president, said he was relieved the vice president had finally taken a stand.

“There were many points where I wished he would have separated, spoke out, but I’m glad he did it when he did,” Flake said. “I wish he would have done it earlier, but I’m sure grateful he did it now. And I knew he would.”

Not everyone gave Pence much credit, arguing that he should hardly be lionized for following the Constitution and maintaining that his deference to the president for nearly four years enabled Trump’s assault on democracy in the first place.

“I’m glad he didn’t break the law, but it¶¶Ňőap kind of hard to call somebody courageous for choosing not to help overthrow our democratic system of government,” said Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-N.J. “He’s got to understand that the man he’s been working for and defending loyally is almost single-handedly responsible for creating a movement in this country that wants to hang Mike Pence.”

The rift between Trump and Pence has dominated their final days in office — not least because the vice president has the power under the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office with support of the Cabinet. The House planned to vote on Wednesday demanding that Pence take such action or else it would impeach Trump.

Pence sent a letter late Tuesday making clear that he has no intention to invoke the amendment. But Trump was nervous enough about it that he finally broke five days of the cold shoulder to invite his vice president to the Oval Office on Monday night to smooth over their split. The official description of the hourlong conversation was “good”; the unofficial description was “nonsubstantive” and “stilted.”

The clash is the third time in 20 years that a departing president and vice president came to conflict in their last days. After Vice President Al Gore lost his presidential campaign in 2000, he had a bitter fight with President Bill Clinton in the Oval Office over who was to blame.

Eight years later, just days before leaving office, Vice President Dick Cheney castigated President George W. Bush for refusing to pardon I. Lewis Libby Jr., the vice president¶¶Ňőap former chief of staff, for perjury in the CIA leak case.

Trump came into office with no real understanding of how his predecessors had handled relationships with their running mates. In the early days, when it became clear that there would be no organizational chart or formal decision-making process, Pence made himself a regular presence in the Oval Office, simply showing up with no agenda, often walking into a policy discussion for which he had received no briefing materials.

He arrived in the West Wing each morning, received an update about when the president was coming down from the residence and then simply stationed himself in the Oval Office for most of the day. He was almost never formally invited to anything and his name was rarely on official meeting manifests. But he was almost always around.

Calm and unflappable, Pence took on the role of confidant for Cabinet secretaries and other officials fearing Trump’s ire, advising how to broach uncomfortable topics with the president without triggering him. Not angering Trump “was a key objective of his,” observed David J. Shulkin, the former secretary of Veterans Affairs. “He tried very hard to straddle a very tough line.”

But that meant Pence’s own views were often opaque.

“Were the policies and the statements being put out, were they ones that he completely agreed with?” Shulkin asked. “Or was it his strategy that it is better to be in the room, it is better to be a trusted party to help moderate some of those strategies and the way to do that is not to publicly disagree? I think that was a really hard one to figure out, exactly where he stood.”

Pence ultimately discovered that loyalty to Trump only matters until it does not. Tension between the two had grown in recent months as the president railed privately about Pence. The vice president¶¶Ňőap allies believed Trump was stirred up in part by Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, who told him that Pence aides were leaking to reporters. That helped create a toxic atmosphere between the two offices even before Election Day.

When Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results were rejected at every turn by state officials and judges, Trump was told, incorrectly, that the vice president could stop the final validation of the election of President-elect Joe Biden in his role as president of the Senate presiding over the Electoral College count.

Pence’s counsel, Greg Jacob, researched the matter and concluded the vice president had no such authority. Prodded by Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, two of his lawyers, Trump kept pressing.

Pence’s office solicited more constitutional opinions, including from Yoo, a prominent conservative at the University of California at Berkeley who served in Bush’s administration.

In the Oval Office last week, the day before the vote, Trump pushed Pence in a string of encounters, including one meeting that lasted at least an hour. John Eastman, a conservative constitutional scholar at Chapman University, was in the office and argued to Pence that he did have the power to act.

The next morning, hours before the vote, Richard Cullen, Pence’s personal lawyer, called J. Michael Luttig, a former appeals court judge revered by conservatives — and for whom Eastman had once clerked. Luttig agreed to quickly write up his opinion that the vice president had no power to change the outcome, then posted it on Twitter.

Within minutes, Pence’s staff incorporated Luttig’s reasoning, citing him by name, into a letter announcing the vice president¶¶Ňőap decision not to try to block electors. Reached on Tuesday, Luttig said it was “the highest honor of my life” to play a role in preserving the Constitution.

After the angry call cursing Pence, Trump riled up supporters at the rally against his own vice president, saying, “I hope he doesn’t listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that he’s listening to.”

“He set Mike Pence up that day by putting it on his shoulders,” said Ryan Streeter, an adviser to Pence when he was the governor of Indiana. “That¶¶Ňőap a pretty unprecedented thing in American politics. For a president to throw his own vice president under the bus like that and to encourage his supporters to take him on is something just unconscionable in my mind.”

Pence was already in his motorcade to the Capitol by that point. When the mob burst into the building, Secret Service agents evacuated him and his wife and children, first to his office off the floor and later to the basement. His agents urged him to leave the building, but he refused to abandon the Capitol. From there, he spoke with congressional leaders, the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — but not the president.

A Republican senator later said he had never seen Pence so angry, feeling betrayed by a president for whom he had done so much. To Trump, one adviser said, the vice president had entered “Sessions territory,” referring to Jeff Sessions, the attorney general who was tortured by the president before being fired. (A vice president cannot be dismissed by a president.)

On Thursday, the day after the siege, Pence stayed away from the White House, avoiding Trump. The next day, he went in, but spent most of the day at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door, where he held a farewell party for his staff.

But aides said Pence did not want to become a long-term nemesis of a vindictive president, and by Monday he was back in the West Wing.

Unlike Trump, Pence plans to attend Biden’s inauguration, then expects to divide time between Washington and Indiana, possibly starting a leadership political committee, writing a book and campaigning for congressional Republicans.

But no matter what comes next, he will always be remembered for one moment.

“We’re very lucky that the vice president isn’t a maniac,” said Joe Grogan, Trump’s domestic policy adviser until last year. “In many ways, I think it vindicates the decision of Mike Pence to hang in there this long.”

The bill, called the SAFE Banking Act, passed 321-103 on the strength of near-unanimous support from Democrats and nearly half of Republicans. Its prospects in the Senate are uncertain, but supporters said the amount of Republican support in the House was a good sign.

“This is a sign the time has come for comprehensive cannabis reform,” said Morgan Fox, a spokesman for the National Cannabis Industry Association. “The fact that we got almost half the Republicans is a huge sign we’re moving in the right direction toward sensible policies.”

Thirty-three states have legalized cannabis for medical or recreational use. But the federal prohibition on the drug has made it difficult for businesses in the multibillion-dollar industry to get bank accounts, loans and other financial services.

The bill would allow businesses legitimately operating under state laws to access loans, lines of credit and other banking services, while sheltering financial institutions from prosecution for handling marijuana-linked money.

More financial institutions began banking with the industry as legalization spread and as the Obama administration instituted policies that allowed them to do so, with some important caveats. But the Trump administration rescinded those guidelines under former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Many pot businesses have had to conduct sales and pay vendors or taxes in cash, making them potential robbery targets — and making it harder to detect theft, tax evasion and money laundering.

Supporters of the banking bill, including Democratic Reps. Denny Heck of Washington and Ed Perlmutter of Colorado, characterized it as a public safety measure. In urging lawmakers to vote yes, Heck relayed the story of a 24-year-old Marine veteran, Travis Mason, who was shot and killed during a robbery of a dispensary in suburban Denver in 2016.

“Because the federal law did not allow for that business to be banked, to be within the guardrails of the financial system, an evil person walked in that night and shot Travis dead,” Heck said. “That does not have to happen. It is not hypothetical.”

Rob Nichols, president of the American Bankers Association, called the vote “a significant step forward for public safety, transparency and common sense.”

“By helping to provide clarity for the financial sector in those states where cannabis is legal, this bill will help banks meet the needs of their communities while reducing cash-motivated crimes, increasing the efficiency of tax collections and improving the cannabis industry’s financial accountability,” he said.

Opponents said it would facilitate the spread of marijuana. In a written statement, Kevin Sabet of the anti-legalization group Smart Approaches to Marijuana, noted that hundreds of people have been sickened and several have died after using marijuana vaping products.

“Surely this is not the time to reward Big Marijuana with investment opportunities,” Sabet said. “Granting this industry access to banks will bring billions of dollars of institutional investment from the titans of addiction and vastly expand the harms we are already witnessing.”

Lewandowski, a devoted friend and supporter of President Donald Trump, was following White House orders not to discuss conversations with the president beyond what was already public in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. Trump was cheering him along as he testified, tweeting that his opening statement was “beautiful.”

The hearing underscores what has been a central dilemma for House Democrats all year as they try to investigate — and potentially impeach — Trump. Many of the Democrats’ base supporters want them to move quickly to try to remove Trump from office. But the White House has blocked their oversight requests at most every turn, declining to provide new documents or allow former aides to testify.

On Tuesday, Lewandowski made clear he wouldn’t make life easy for the Democrats. He demanded that Democrats provide him a copy of the Mueller report, sending Democratic staff scrambling to find one. He then read directly from report, showing that he wouldn’t say much beyond what Mueller wrote. Republicans on the panel then forced a series of procedural votes, immediately sending the hearing into disarray.

“He’s filibustering,” a frustrated Nadler said.

Lewandowski eventually began to answer some questions — he told the committee that he doesn’t think “the president asked me to do anything illegal” — but still stuck mostly to what was already in the report, giving Democrats little new information to go on. And he made clear his dislike for the House majority in the opening statement, calling them petty and asserting that investigations of the president were conducted by “Trump haters.”

Democrats say the blockade from the White House and stonewalling from witnesses like Lewandowski just give them more fodder for lawsuits they have filed against the administration — and possible articles of impeachment on obstruction.

Two other witnesses who were subpoenaed alongside Lewandowski, former White House aides Rick Dearborn and Rob Porter, did not show up at all, on orders from the White House.

“This is a cover-up plain and simple,” Nadler said, of the White House orders. “If it were to prevail — especially while the Judiciary Committee is considering whether to recommend articles of impeachment — it would upend the separation of powers as envisioned by our founders.”

The Republican Senate is certain to rebuff any House efforts to bring charges against the president. And moderate Democrats in their own caucus have expressed nervousness that the impeachment push could crowd out their other accomplishments.

Still, the Judiciary panel is moving ahead, approving rules for impeachment hearings last week. Among those guidelines is allowing staff to question witnesses, as will happen for the first time with Lewandowski.

Tuesday’s hearing alternated between combative exchanges between Lewandowski and Democrats and friendly questions from the Republican side of the dais.

“They are going to bring back anybody, as much as they have to, to find something, anything to keep impeachment hopes alive,” Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, told Lewandowski during his round of questioning.

Lewandowski was a central figure in Mueller’s report, which the committee is examining as part of its impeachment probe. Mueller’s investigators detailed two episodes in which Trump asked Lewandowski to direct then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to limit Mueller’s investigation. Trump said that if Sessions would not meet with Lewandowski, then Lewandowski should tell Sessions he was fired.

Lewandowski never delivered the message but asked Dearborn, a former Sessions aide, to do it. Dearborn said he was uncomfortable with the request and declined to deliver it, according to the report.

Under questioning by Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., Lewandowski confirmed as “accurate” that Trump had asked him to deliver the message. At least two Democrats asked if he “chickened out.” Lewandowski said no — he took his kids to the beach instead.

The hearing could be considered an audition of sorts for Lewandowski, who is considering a run for Senate in New Hampshire next year. In the hours before the hearing, he tweeted that his followers should “tune in” to the hearing and used the hashtag “2020.”

The White House issued its orders to Lewandowski in letters released late Monday. White House counsel Pat Cipollone wrote that Lewandowski, who never worked in the White House, should not reveal private conversations with Trump beyond what is in Mueller’s report. He wrote that his conversations with Trump “are protected from disclosure by long-settled principles protecting executive branch confidentiality interests.”

Cipollone also said that Dearborn and Porter were “absolutely immune” from testifying. He said the Justice Department had advised, and Trump had directed, them not to attend “because of the constitutional immunity that protects senior advisers to the president from compelled congressional testimony.”

Porter, a former staff secretary in the White House, took frequent notes during his time there that were detailed throughout the report. He resigned last year after public allegations of domestic violence by his two ex-wives.

Democrats say the White House’s rationale isn’t legally sound and are challenging the idea of “absolute immunity” in court.

As the Russia investigation heated up and threatened to shadow Donald Trump’s presidency, he became increasingly concerned. But the portrait painted by special counsel Robert Mueller is not of a president who believed he or anyone on his campaign colluded with Russians to interfere in the 2016 election.

Instead, the Trump of the Mueller report is gripped by fear that Americans would question the very legitimacy of his presidency. Would Trump, the man who put his name on skyscrapers and his imprint on television, be perceived as a cheater and a fraud?

To Trump, his victory over Hillary Clinton was both historic and overwhelming, though he won millions of votes less than did the Democratic candidate.

If people thought he’d won with the help of Russia, that glorious victory might be tainted.

Just a month after Election Day, on Dec. 10, 2016, reports surfaced that U.S. intelligence officials had concluded Russia interfered in the election and tried to boost Trump’s presidential bid.

The next day, Trump went on Fox News and called the assessment “ridiculous” and “just another excuse.” The intelligence community actually had “no idea if it’s Russia or China or somebody,” he argued.

“It could be somebody sitting in a bed some place,” the Republican president-elect added.

The president’s public narrative quickly shifted. He blamed Democrats and accused his political opponents of putting the story out because they “suffered one of the greatest defeats in the history of politics.”

But the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election to sow discord among American voters and to help get Trump elected was his “Achilles’ heel,” one of his closest aides, Hope Hicks, would tell investigators.

In the months that followed, Trump reacted strenuously to investigations into links between the Russians and his campaign and transition teams.

Michael Flynn, who served on the transition team and would go on to be national security adviser, spoke with Sergey Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. Flynn asked that Russia not retaliate against the United States because of sanctions announced by the Obama administration; the ambassador later told Flynn that Russia would hold back.

In the weeks that followed, Trump paid careful attention to what he saw as negative stories about Flynn. He grew increasingly angry when a story broke pointing out that Flynn had discussed sanctions with Kislyak.

By mid-February, Flynn was forced to resign.

A day later, as Trump was set to meet with FBI Director James Comey, the president had lunch with his confidant and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. He told Christie he believed the Russia investigation would end because of Flynn’s departure.

“Flynn met with the Russians. That was the problem. I fired Flynn. It’s over,” Trump said.

That couldn’t have been further from the truth.

The fear — and Trump’s anger — continued for months as the Russia investigation ensnared some of his closest confidants. Over and over, he would tell advisers that he thought the public narrative about Russian election interference was created to undermine his win. It was a personal attack, he insisted.

On May 9, 2017, Trump fired Comey. Trump would later admit in an interview that he had considered “this Russia thing” when he decided to fire Comey.

Days later, Trump held an Oval Office meeting with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, White House lawyer Don McGahn and Sessions’ chief of staff Jody Hunt to interview candidates to be the next FBI director.

Sessions walked out of the room to take a call from his deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. When he returned, he informed Trump that Rosenstein had appointed a special counsel to investigate possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Trump feared that his presidency, still in its infancy, could be over. And he was furious his aides hadn’t protected him.

The president slumped back in his chair.

“Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m f—ed. This is the worst thing that ever happened to me,” he said.

For months, as the Russia investigation grew and more people in Trump’s inner circle appeared to be under intense scrutiny from federal investigators, Trump became completely preoccupied with press coverage of the probe. The message was persistent: It raises questions about the legitimacy of the election.

At rallies and on Twitter, Trump decried what he said was a politically motivated “witch hunt.”

In the end, the redacted version of Mueller’s report cleared the Trump campaign of colluding with Russian efforts to influence the election.

Trump crowed that the report found “No Collusion.” But he ignored Mueller’s finding that Russian meddling was very real and was intended to support Trump’s campaign.

Did Russia’s efforts lead to Trump’s victory? Mueller doesn’t venture an opinion, much as he does not decide whether Trump committed obstruction of justice.

But how could Trump have obstructed justice if there was no collusion to hide?

The lack of an underlying crime doesn’t really matter, Mueller argued. Trump still had a motivation to obstruct the investigation — fear that people would question the legitimacy of his election.

Rosenstein’s departure had been expected following the confirmation of William Barr as attorney general. The White House nominated a replacement for the department’s No. 2 slot weeks ago.

In his resignation letter to Trump, Rosenstein paid tribute to Trump, even praising the president’s sense of humor, despite being the subject of some of Trump’s most biting jabs. Trump once retweeted an image that showed Rosenstein and other officials jailed for treason.

Rosenstein intended to leave around mid-March but stayed on for the completion of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Mueller last month submitted his report to the Justice Department, and Rosenstein was part of a small group of department officials who reviewed the document and helped shape its public release. After Mueller didn’t reach a conclusion on whether Trump had obstructed the investigation, Barr and Rosenstein stepped in and determined the evidence wasn’t enough to support such an allegation.

Rosenstein appointed Mueller in May 2017 following the recusal of then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions and oversaw much of his work. His exit leaves the department without the official most closely aligned with the probe as officials grapple with public and congressional scrutiny of the special counsel’s findings and the department’s handling of the report.

He not only supervised Mueller’s work for much of the last two years but also defended the investigation against attacks from congressional Republicans and Trump, who has blasted the probe as a “witch hunt.” In so doing, Rosenstein sometimes found himself at odds with Trump. He was nonetheless spared the brunt of anger directed at Sessions, whose recusal from the Russia investigation infuriated the president, leading to his forced resignation last November.

As deputy, Rosenstein was a central character in some of the most consequential, even chaotic, moments of the Trump administration. He wrote a memo criticizing James Comey that the White House used as justification for the firing of the FBI director, then a week later appointed Mueller to investigate the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. That investigation swiftly grew to include whether the firing of Comey constituted obstruction of justice.

Integral to the start of the investigation, Rosenstein was also present for the very end, standing silently on stage behind Barr two weeks ago when the attorney general cleared the president of obstruction, praised the president’s cooperation with the investigation and maintained several times that there had been no collusion between the campaign and Russia.

In his resignation letter, Rosenstein said most deputies stay in their post for about 16 months; Rosenstein will have served about two years.

“I am grateful to you for the opportunity to serve; for the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations; and for the goals you set in your inaugural address: patriotism, unity, safety, education, and prosperity, because ‘a nation exists to serve its citizens,'” Rosenstein wrote.

The deputy attorney general position is a hugely significant job, responsible for overseeing the daily operations of the Justice Department and the work of United States attorneys across the country. Trump has nominated Deputy Transportation Secretary Jeffrey Rosen as Rosenstein’s replacement.

Though Rosenstein’s exit was orderly, his relationship with the president had waffled over time. His job status appeared perilous last September following news reports that he had discussed secretly recording Trump and invoking a constitutional amendment to remove him from office. He hung on for several more months and appeared to turn the page, at least publicly, after a private meeting with Trump aboard Air Force One.

Rosenstein appointed Mueller after Sessions, who ordinarily would have overseen the investigation, recused himself in March 2017 because of his close involvement in the Trump campaign. The appointment came one week after Trump fired Comey, an action Rosenstein laid the groundwork for by writing a memo that sharply criticized Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

The White House initially cited the memo as justification for the firing, but Trump has said he was thinking of “this Russia thing” when he fired Comey.

Over the next two years, with Sessions recused from the Russia investigation, Rosenstein set the boundaries of Mueller’s investigation, approved investigative steps and, in place of the rarely seen special counsel, twice announced criminal indictments from the Justice Department podium against Russians accused of election interference.

The investigation overshadowed the rest of Rosenstein’s work even as he joined Sessions in talking up the president’s agenda, including announcements on combating violent crime and opioid addiction.

Rosenstein endured in the job beyond Sessions, but there were moments when his position appeared in the balance.

Trump lamented to The New York Times in July 2017 that “there are very few Republicans in Baltimore,” a reference to Rosenstein’s prior job as the U.S. attorney in Maryland. Rosenstein was appointed to that position by Republican President George W. Bush and remained for the entire Obama administration.

That same summer, Trump tweeted: “I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt”

Trump lashed out the following April after the FBI raided the office of his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, and months later retweeted the image that showed Rosenstein, Comey and other investigators behind bars.

In September, The New York Times reported that after Comey’s firing, Rosenstein and other top law enforcement officials had discussed secretly recording the president to expose chaos inside the White House and invoking the 25th Amendment, which allows the Cabinet to seek the removal of a president deemed unfit for office.

The Justice Department issued statements challenging the reporting, but former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe — who was in the room — has said he got the sense that Rosenstein was “counting votes” about which Cabinet members he could enlist in the effort.

Rosenstein arrived at the White House days after the reporting expecting to be fired, but he was instead allowed to stay on after private conversations with Trump’s then-chief of staff, John Kelly, and the president himself.

The guidance, issued – coincidentally or not – just before pot advocates’ national celebration of 4/20, confirms what immigration and marijuana advocates have cautioned is a legal gray area that exposes would-be citizens to greater barriers because they’ve broken a federal law.

Although recreational marijuana use is legal in 10 states and decriminalized in 14 more, it is still classified as an illegal substance federally.

“The policy guidance . . . clarifies that an applicant who is involved in certain marijuana-related activities may lack good moral character if found to have violated federal law, even if such activity has been decriminalized under applicable state laws,” the guidance states.

Earlier this month, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, a Democrat, sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General William Barr asking that he clarify and adjust policy that threatens permanent residents’ path to citizenship if they have worked in the marijuana industry. Colorado was one of the first two states to legalize recreational marijuana use, in 2012. The expansion of marijuana use beyond prescribed medical purposes has cultivated a thriving retail cannabis industry in the state.

In his letter, Hancock wrote:

“This week, I met with two legal immigrants – one from Lithuania, another from El Salvador – who have lived here for more than two decades. They have graduated from our schools. They have paid their taxes. They are working to achieve the American dream and complying with the processes in place to become a part of our great society, but were denied naturalization solely because of their cannabis industry employment.

“Denver understands the need for federal laws and regulations regarding citizenship and immigration, but we are seeing the heartbreaking effects that those federal laws and regulations are having on our residents. However, under current federal policy, lawful, permanent residents like the Denver residents I have met with are being denied naturalization and may lose their legal status based on their lawful employment in the cannabis industry.”

The war on drugs has disproportionately hurt communities of color, and this is just another example of that, said Michael Collins, director of national affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance. But Collins views this particular crackdown as more indicative of the Trump administration’s views on immigration than drug policy.

“Taking a step back, this has nothing to do with cannabis – this has to do with this administration never passing up an opportunity to prosecute immigrant communities,” Collins said. “They see cannabis as a ripe opportunity for persecuting these individuals.”

“The Trump administration has used the war on drugs since the beginning to go after migrant populations,” Collins added, pointing to President Donald Trump’s rationale that a border wall would keep drugs out of the country and his blaming of migrants for the opioid epidemic.

In an emailed statement, USCIS spokeswoman Jessica Collins said the agency is “required to adjudicate cases based on federal law. Individuals who commit federal controlled substance violations face potential immigration consequences under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which applies to all foreign nationals regardless of the state or jurisdiction in which they reside.”

During the Obama administration, the federal government eased up on enforcing federal laws against marijuana, allowing states to chart their own paths on the issue. In January 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded that policy, arguing that it was his job to enforce federal laws.

“I don’t have an attorney general.”

Now that Attorney General William Barr gave a news conference marked by a remarkably dishonest effort to pre-spin the Mueller report, and now that we have seen much of the report itself, the upshot of the day’s events can be summed up in one, similar sentence:

“We don’t have an attorney general.”

On Thursday morning, Barr tried to explain why he declined to bring obstruction of justice charges against Trump, even though Mueller did not exonerate him of it. Barr appealed to us to consider how victimized Trump felt, when considering the extensive efforts to derail the investigation detailed in the report, noting that Trump “was frustrated and angered by his sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents and fueled by illegal leaks.”

This appeal is stunning, particularly when viewed alongside the report’s details, which paint an exceptionally damning picture of Trump’s conduct over the course of two years. What’s more, in light of all these findings, Barr’s four-page letter summarizing Mueller’s report looks even more irresponsible in retrospect.

Barr’s letter merely claimed Mueller had collected evidence on “both sides” of the question of whether Trump had committed criminal obstruction of justice, and said he and deputy Rod Rosenstein had decided charges weren’t warranted – without sharing any of the evidence that Mueller had collected so we could evaluate their decision ourselves.

That gave Trump and his propagandists a way to spin Mueller’s report as full exoneration for two weeks.

We still don’t have a persuasive or detailed explanation as to why they didn’t bring charges. But we do have much of the evidence Mueller collected. And the misconduct is extremely grave.

Mueller’s report concludes that Trump extensively tried to exert “undue influence” over the investigations into Russian conspiracy and Trump obstruction of justice. Remarkably, Mueller concludes that Trump failed in his mission, not because he didn’t try, but because his underlings wouldn’t carry out his orders:

“Our investigation found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations. The incidents were often carried out through one-on-one meetings in which the President sought to use his official power outside of usual channels. These actions ranged from efforts to remove the Special Counsel and to reverse the effect of the Attorney General’s recusal; to the attempted use of official power to limit the scope of the investigation; to direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony. . . .”

“The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.”

Now let’s look at some of the specific acts of misconduct the Mueller report details:

– Mueller confirmed the accounts that former FBI Director James Comey supplied: Trump demanded his loyalty and pressed Comey to fire national security adviser Mike Flynn. Trump falsely claimed that neither of these things happened, but the report sides with Comey’s versions of events.

– Mueller details that after Trump fired Comey, the White House flatly lied to cover up the fact it was Trump’s decision. Trump called Rosenstein — who had written that memo providing the pretext that the firing was about the FBI’s unfair treatment of Hillary Clinton — and asked him to conduct a news conference explaining the firing. But Rosenstein refused, saying that if he did that, he’d have to tell the media the truth, which was that it was Trump’s decision, and not his. A White House spokesman subsequently told the falsehood to the media.

– The report notes that when Trump became aware he was being investigated for obstruction of justice, Trump’s misconduct grew substantially more serious: “At that point, the President engaged in a second phase of conduct, involving public attacks on the investigation, non-public efforts to control it, and efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation.”

– The report details that Trump repeatedly ordered White House counsel Don McGahn to instruct Rosenstein to fire Mueller. The report says McGahn “decided to quit because he did not want to participate in events that he described as akin to a Saturday Night Massacre,” but he ultimately stayed and deflected the requests.

– When press reports emerged about Trump telling McGahn to have Mueller fired, Trump instructed McGahn to lie to the public and claim that the president had never ordered him to remove the special counsel. McGahn refused.

– The report has new details on how Trump misled the country about the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting. It recounts that top Trump adviser Hope Hicks wanted to disclose that Russians had offered Donald Trump Jr. information helpful to the campaign. But the president nixed that, explicitly ordering Hicks to issue a statement that falsified the true purpose of the meeting.

– The report confirms new details about Trump’s pressure on top intelligence officials to impede the investigation. It says Trump may have pressed Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats to subvert the investigation, with one aide to Coats suggesting (in the report’s words) that Trump wanted him to “get it over with” or “end it.”

– Trump also called a second top official and asked him to publicly refute news stories linking him to Russia. A third official called it (in the report’s words) the “most unusual thing he had experienced in 40 years of government service.”

– Trump directed his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to tell then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to give a speech announcing he was directing Mueller to focus his investigation only on “election meddling for future elections.” Lewandowski was unable to arrange a meeting with Sessions.

It’s important to note that in many of these cases, Trump initially lied about this conduct, which has now been confirmed. What we are left with is this: Trump will not be prosecuted for obstruction of justice, but that does not mean he did not obstruct justice. He clearly did.

Trump tried to subvert, undermine, discredit, and even halt the Russia investigation — an investigation that was necessary to develop a full accounting of a hostile foreign power’s well-organized campaign to help elect him president, an accounting he did not want to happen. Trump’s actions were an appalling offense to the integrity of our legal system and the office he holds.

One other point: The position taken by the president’s team has long been that Trump cannot violate obstruction of justice statutes by definition because any interference in investigations is within his power as head of the executive branch. In Trump’s lawyers words, as “chief law enforcement officer,” Trump “could, if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon if he so desired.”

This is essentially what Barr told Trump in an unsolicited memo, which is probably why he got the job.

But importantly, in his report, Mueller rejected this argument:

“In sum, contrary to the position taken by the President’s counsel, we concluded that . . . we had a valid basis for investigating the conduct at issue in this report. In our view, the application of the obstruction statutes would not impermissibly burden the President’s performance of his Article II function to supervise prosecutorial conduct or to remove inferior law-enforcement offices. And the protection of the criminal justice system from corrupt acts by any person — including the President — accords with the fundamental principle of our government that “no (person) in this country is so high that he is above the law.”

Mueller also conspicuously declined to conclude that “no criminal conduct occurred,” and he declined to reach the judgment that Trump “clearly did not commit obstruction of justice.”

The report is a clear message from Mueller to Congress and the public. Barr may not prosecute Trump; indeed, his intent to protect the president is why he’s attorney general today. But Congress can still conclude that the multitudinous acts of obstruction the report lays out provide more than ample reason to take action. It’s just a matter of deciding to do it.

Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent write opinion for The Plum Line blog.

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WASHINGTON — After nearly two years of waiting, America is about to get some answers straight from Robert Mueller — but not before President Donald Trump’s attorney general has his say.

Attorney General William Barr says he will allow Congress to view special counsel Robert Mueller’s report with nothing redacted other than grand jury information.

Barr says three other categories of information also were redacted in the publicly released report, including information pertaining to ongoing prosecutions and sensitive intelligence sources and methods.

Barr says he hopes that giving Congress access to the less redacted report and his upcoming testimony on Capitol Hill “will satisfy any need Congress has for information regarding the special counsel’s investigation.”

Barr has “no objection” to Mueller testifying before Congress about his investigation. Mueller remains a Justice Department employee, and Barr could have blocked Mueller from speaking to Congress. Democrats have discussed calling Mueller to testify but have yet to formally ask.

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee is asking Mueller to testify before his panel as soon as possible about his report on the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Chairman Jerrold Nadler released a three-sentence letter to Mueller requesting his appearance, minutes after Attorney General William Barr ended a news conference in which he described the special counsel’s report. The New York Democrat tweeted that Congress and the public need to hear directly from Mueller to “better understand his findings.”

Nadler wrote in his letter that he wants Mueller to testify by May 23 and asked for his “prompt attention” to the request.

Barr also says President Donald Trump did not exert executive privilege over any information included in Mueller’s report.

He said the White House counsel reviewed a redacted version of the report before Trump decided not to invoke executive privilege. Barr said “no material has been redacted based on executive privilege.”

Barr spoke Thursday at a news conference with reporters. The news conference, first announced by Trump during a radio interview, provoked immediate criticism from congressional Democrats.

The Justice Department on Thursday is expected to release a redacted version of the special counsel’s report on Russian election interference and the Trump campaign, opening up months, if not years, of fights over what the document means in a deeply divided country.

Even the planned release of the nearly 400-page report quickly spiraled into a political battle Wednesday over whether Barr is attempting to shield the president who appointed him and spin the report¶¶Ňőap findings before the American people can read it and come to their own judgments.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Barr had “thrown out his credibility” and “the DOJ’s independence.” And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “The process is poisoned before the report is even released.”

“Barr shouldn’t be spinning the report at all, but it¶¶Ňőap doubly outrageous he’s doing it before America is given a chance to read it,” Schumer said.

Hours before Barr’s press conference, Pelosi and Schumer issued a joint statement calling for Mueller to appear before Congress “as soon as possible.”

Trump himself was in a high state of alert ahead of the report¶¶Ňőap release. He repeated what has become a near daily refrain of criticism of the Russia investigation using his favored Twitter account. “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!” he wrote.

Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said Barr would address the department¶¶Ňőap interactions with the White House over Mueller’s report, whether executive privilege was invoked and the process Barr used to black out portions of the document.

He was to be accompanied by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversaw the investigation after Mueller’s appointment in May 2017. Mueller and team will not attend, special counsel spokesman Peter Carr said.

After the news conference, the report was to be delivered to Congress on compact discs between 11 a.m. and noon and then posted on the special counsel’s website.

Barr formulated the report¶¶Ňőap roll-out and briefed the White House on his plans, according to a White House official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The White House declined to comment on an ABC News report that it had been briefed on the contents of Mueller’s report beyond what Barr has made public.

At a later date, the Justice Department also plans to provide a “limited number” of members of Congress and their staff access to a copy of the Mueller report with fewer redactions than the public version, according to a court filing.

The report was expected to reveal what Mueller uncovered about ties between the Trump campaign and Russia that fell short of criminal conduct. It was also to lay out the special counsel’s conclusions about formative episodes in Trump’s presidency, including his firing of FBI Director James Comey and his efforts to undermine the Russia investigation publicly and privately.

The report was not expected to place the president in legal jeopardy, as Barr made the decision that Trump shouldn’t be prosecuted for obstruction of justice. But it is likely to contain unflattering details about the president¶¶Ňőap efforts to control the Russia investigation that will cloud his ability to credibly claim total exoneration. And it may paint the Trump campaign as eager to exploit Russian aid and emails stolen from Democrats and Hillary Clinton’s campaign even if no Americans crossed the line into criminal activity.

The report¶¶Ňőap release provides a test of Barr’s credibility as the public and Congress judge whether he is using his post to protect Trump.

Barr will also face scrutiny over how much of the report he blacks out and whether Mueller’s document lines up with a letter the attorney general released last month. The letter said Mueller didn’t find a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government but he found evidence on “both sides” of the question of whether the president obstructed justice.

Barr has said he is redacting grand jury and classified information as well as portions relating to ongoing investigations and the privacy or reputation of uncharged “peripheral” people. But how liberally he interprets those categories is yet to be seen.

Democrats have vowed to fight in court for the disclosure of the additional information from the report and say they have subpoenas ready to go if it is heavily redacted.

House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., joined the chairs of four other House committees in calling for Barr to cancel his news conference. But Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, defended Barr and accused Democrats of “trying to spin the report.”

Collins said Barr has done “nothing unilaterally,” saying he had worked with Rosenstein and Mueller’s team “step by step.”

Mueller is known to have investigated multiple efforts by the president over the last two years to influence the Russia probe or shape public perception of it.

In addition to Comey’s firing, Mueller scrutinized the president¶¶Ňőap request of Comey to end an investigation into Trump’s first national security adviser, his relentless badgering of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions over his recusal from the Russia investigation and his role in drafting an incomplete explanation about a meeting his oldest son took at Trump Tower with a Kremlin-connected lawyer.

Overall, Mueller brought charges against 34 people — including six Trump aides and advisers — and revealed a sophisticated, wide-ranging Russian effort to influence the 2016 presidential election. Twenty-five of those charged were against Russians accused either in the hacking of Democratic email accounts or of a hidden but powerful social media effort to spread disinformation online.

Five former Trump aides or advisers pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate in Mueller’s investigation, among them Trump’s campaign chairman, national security adviser and personal lawyer.