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‘The Biggest Piece Mueller Left Out’

“The money trail is the most important part of the unanswered questions," says former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.

hirsh-michael-foreign-policy-columnist
hirsh-michael-foreign-policy-columnist
Michael Hirsh
By , a columnist for Foreign Policy.
Then-FBI Director Robert Mueller testifies during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 13, 2013. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Then-FBI Director Robert Mueller testifies during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 13, 2013. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Then-FBI Director Robert Mueller testifies during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 13, 2013. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Michael McFaul served as U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014 and was a key architect of former President Barack Obama’s Russia strategy. McFaul later had strained relations with the Kremlin and was banned from traveling to Russia; he also played a cameo role in U.S. President Donald Trump’s notoriously compliant Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin last year, when Putin floated the idea of allowing his investigators question McFaul in exchange for U.S. access to Russian military intelligence officials from the GRU indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team for interference in the 2016 U.S. election. On Thursday, the day the long-awaited, redacted Mueller report was released, McFaul, a scholar at Stanford University, shared his reactions with Foreign Policy.

Michael Hirsh is a columnist for Foreign Policy. He is the author of two books: Capital Offense: How Washington’s Wise Men Turned America’s Future Over to Wall Street and At War With Ourselves: Why America Is Squandering Its Chance to Build a Better World. Twitter: @michaelphirsh

Tag: Russia

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