Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report has settled—or all but settled—important questions about the Trump-Russia matter.
Did Russia intervene in the 2016 election with the conscious and articulated intent to help elect Donald Trump? Yes.
How important were these interventions to the outcome? Large, possibly decisive.
Did the Trump campaign know that Russia was doing the intervening? From the beginning, cybersecurity experts said Russian hackers had obtained leaked Democratic emails. The Mueller report decisively refutes Julian Assange’s alternative explanation—the lie that WikiLeaks had an “inside source.”
Read: The Mueller report could alienate the voters Republicans need
Did the Trump campaign know of these interventions in advance? Uncertain. Mueller reports that people in and around the Trump campaign frantically sought advance information about WikiLeaks, but the evidence about whether they succeeded has been redacted to protect an ongoing legal matter.
Did the Trump campaign welcome Russian interventions? Yes.
Did the Trump campaign assist these interventions? Not as a corporate entity, no, but its campaign manager did for his own business reasons.
Did the Trump campaign commit any crimes along the way? While many of the elements of crime were present, the relevant players—especially Donald Trump Jr.—were arguably too feeble-minded to meet a courtroom test of criminal intent. Paul Manafort and Roger Stone aside, the Mueller report assesses the senior figures in the Trump campaign as credulous dupes of Russian spy agencies, not as partners and co-conspirators.