Moments after news broke that Robert Mueller had submitted his report to the attorney general, some in the media were already hailing it a success.
MSNBC host Chuck Todd was quick to point to Mueller’s “track record” as part of the investigation, before taking a shot at President Trump’s “witch hunt” characterization.
“I want to remind people … these are the guilty pleas that he got, the indictments that he’s gotten,” Todd said on the left-leaning network.
“Manafort, Cohen, Flynn, Papadopoulos, Gates, van der Zwaan, Pinedo, Kilimnik, Stone, 25 different members of Russian intelligence and Russian officials. This was not a –– if this was a witch hunt, it’s the most successful witch hunt in American history.”
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A senior DOJ official told Fox News shortly after the report was submitted that Mueller is "not recommending any further indictments.”
As part of Todd’s panel, MSNBC national security reporter Ken Dilanian echoed the host’s sentiments by saying, “He caught a lot of witches.”
“It’s a remarkable record, it’s much more than we could have at the beginning of this investigation,” Dilanian said.
“Not only the vast expanse of charges against Russians and laying out… how the Russians attacked our electoral system, but indictments of people very close to the president. The campaign chairman, his personal lawyer, so in that respect it has been a very significant investigation that will go down in history.”
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The veteran reporter then added: “Many people will be surprised that no member of the Trump campaign, no one around Trump has been charged with conspiring with that Russian election interference effort.”
Mueller has charged 26 Russian nationals while three Russian companies have been charged with interfering in the 2016 presidential election.
But none of the Trump associates connected to Trump have been charged with crimes related to collusion, though Mueller’s team charged former Trump associate Roger Stone in January with lying about his communications with WikiLeaks, which published hacked Democratic emails during the election.
Other convictions include: former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, who both pleaded guilty to making false statements in 2017.
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Former campaign adviser Rick Gates in 2018 pleaded guilty and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was convicted and later pleaded guilty in a separate financial crimes case dating back before the 2016 election.
Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to making false statements in a case brought by Mueller in November.
Alex van der Zwaan, a London-based lawyer, pleaded guilty to making false statements this year, and Richard Pinedo, a California man, pleaded guilty to identity fraud in 2018.
Fox News’ John Roberts, Brooke Singman, Jake Gibson and Alex Pappas contributed to this report.
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