WASHINGTON, DC—The United States had long awaited the results of a probe into whether its president, Donald Trump, had conspired with Russian agents to meddle with the 2016 election. A 4-page summary of the report has been publicized, surprising many in concluding that there does not appear to be evidence of any such conspiracy.
However, upon closer inspection, it appears that either there is a misspelling in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's findings, or he has been incorrectly investigating whether President Trump had "collided" with Russian agents. Indeed, the summary that was released by Attorney General Bill Barr did not contain the word "collusion" once, but used multiple instances of the word "collision" and variations thereof.
For example, the summary states, in part, "Following more than 2,800 subpoenas of related parties, and through review of more than 260 hours of video and audiotapes, there is no clear evidence leading to the conclusion that there was direct physical contact made between any part of the Trump campaign and any Russian actors. They may have spoken, emailed, phoned, and so on, but when physically near each other, they seem to have kept their distant to an amicable 18 to 48 inches."
The summary specifically acknowledged physical contact in the form of handshakes and other greetings, but made it clear that such was not due to clumsiness or distraction, "so we can't really call that a collision."
Many questions obviously remain at this point as the nation works to understand what the purpose of the last 2 years of investigation were for. It is possible that a typo in the original request for Mueller's investigation led to this massive misunderstanding in what he and his team were to be doing, but it seems difficult to believe that he would have missed the nonstop talk about "collusion" in the news cycles.
Now more than ever, the nation is waiting with anticipation for the full report, which is reportedly more than 300 pages long. Its release is expected soon, however, it may be delayed given these new questions about its focus.