The president had already boasted that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month Russia probe ended with a ‘complete exoneration,’ slamming the entire operation as ‘an illegal takedown that failed’ and saying he hopes ‘somebody is going to be looking at the other side.’

‘There was no collusion with Russia, there was no obstruction and none whatsoever and it was a complete and total exoneration. It’s a shame that our country had to go through this. To be honest, it’s a shame that your president has had to go through this,’ Trump said in West Palm Beach, Florida before he boarded Air Force One to return to Washington D.C.

Trump called the concept that his 2016 campaign aides would collude with agents of Russia the ‘most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,’ and claimed the Mueller probe was illegal, an argument he has long made. ADVERTISING

‘Before I even got elected it began. And it began illegally. … This was an illegal takedown that failed, and hopefully somebody is going to be looking at the other side. So a complete exoneration, no collusion, no obstruction,’ Trump emphasized. 

He also tweeted a victory message: ‘No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!’

Trump has yet to take questions from reporters about the final chapter in the made-for-TV scandal that has hung over most of his time in office. 

Mueller concluded that Trump and his campaign did not collude with Russians in order to improve his chances of beating Democrat Hilary Clinton.

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President Trump claimed a ‘complete exoneration’ in the investigation

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Robert Mueller attended church near the White House on Sunday

But the findings will not be an end to the investigations surrounding the president. Instead they likely signal a new stage that will involve round after round of congressional subpoenas and hearings as House Democrats probe how Mueller came to his findings. 

The special counsel did not draw a conclusion ‘one way or the other’ as to whether the president obstructed justice, according to the findings, but left that decision to Attorney General William Barr. 

Barr explained it was a joint decision between him and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein – who was in charge of Mueller’s investigation during the majority of its existence – not to charge the president.

He explained that the two men concluded ‘the investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.’

He wrote in his letter to Congress that long-standing Justice Department tradition of not indicting a sitting president had nothing to do with the decision.

‘Our determination was made without regard to, and is not based on, the constitutional considerations that surround the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president,’ he wrote.

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The painfully cold weather system that put much of the Midwest into a historic deep freeze lingered on Thursday and continued to break historic records with parts of Illinois and Iowa recording temperatures of -38F and -30F respectively. 

The frigid conditions canceled more than 2,300 flights and over 1,500 delays on Thursday, while the number of deaths blamed on the cold climbed to 13.

Chicago’s temperature dropped to a low of around -21F on Thursday, slightly above the city’s lowest-ever reading of -27F in January 1985. Milwaukee’s low was -25F. Minneapolis recorded -24F, and wind chills were as low as -38F, an improvement from a day earlier. Rockford, Illinois, saw a record low temperature of -31F on Thursday, while Cedar Rapids, Iowa, set a daily record low of -30F.

The extreme cold also settled in over the Northeast on Thursday. In western New York, a storm that dumped up to 20 inches of snow gave way to subzero temperatures and dangerous wind chills. The arctic conditions caused problems from Buffalo to Brooklyn, where about 200 firefighters battling an early morning blaze in a commercial building took turns getting warm on buses. 

The phenomenon caused surreal scenes throughout the region, including Lake Michigan freezing over, parts of Niagara Falls solidifying into frozen stillness and blocks of ice covering the river in downtown Chicago.

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