An investigation into possible illegal activities by Donald Trump, the president of the United States, and people involved in his election campaign, is over.
The investigation, which was headed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, took two years. Mueller and his team were trying to find out whether Trump or his associates accepted illegal help from Russia when he was running for president in 2016. (It’s against the law in the United States for people from a foreign country to give money or other valuable things to a candidate in a US election.)
On March 22, Mueller gave his final report on the investigation to the Attorney General of the United States, William Barr. Barr released his own summary of the report on March 24.
In his summary, Barr said the investigation found that several people working for the Russian government had interfered in the 2016 election in order to help Trump become president.
However, the summary continued, the investigation did not find proof that Trump or anyone on his campaign team worked with the Russian government to interfere in the campaign.
As a result of the investigation, Mueller charged 26 Russians with crimes connected to the 2016 election. He charged six people who worked for Trump with lying to FBI agents during the investigation.
CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS
By Kathleen Tilly
Writing/Discussion Prompt
This investigation took two years. Why do you think it took so long? What do you think the investigators may have been doing during this time? How do you think they got the information they needed in order to find out whether Trump and his associates got illegal help from Russia?
Reading Prompt: Making Inferences
If the result had shown that Trump and/or his associates got illegal help from Russia, what do you think would have happened?
Junior
Use stated and implied ideas in texts to make inferences and construct meaning (OME, Reading: 1.3).
Intermediate
Develop and explain interpretations of increasingly complex or difficult texts using stated and implied ideas from the texts to support their interpretations (OME, Reading: 1.3).
Language Feature: Writing numbers
Read the article and circle all of the numbers that appear in the text. Some are written as words and others are digits. Why are written in two different ways?
