Richard Fausset and Maggie Astor

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, campaigning in South Carolina on Friday night, told reporters that “those facts, that truth, needs to be laid out for all Americans to be able to make informed decisions going forward, whether at the ballot box” or in their discussions with their senators and representatives.

O’Rourke, asked if he supported impeaching Trump, said he believed the president and his 2016 campaign “at least sought to collude with the Russian government to undermine our democracy” and that Trump “sought to obstruct justice” once in office.

“I think those are grounds enough for members of the House to bring up the issue of impeachment,” he said. “But whether they do or not, this will ultimately be decided by the American public at the ballot box in South Carolina and in every state of the union.”

No voters brought up the Mueller report to O’Rourke as he spoke to them Friday in Charleston. But Marnee Robinson, 62, a local entrepreneur, said in an interview that the report — and questions about Trump and Russia — were her No. 1 issue as a voter.

“It flows from the top,” she said of what she believed to be questionable behavior, or worse. “Everyone is compromised in some way.”

Robinson said she was already convinced, given the convictions of several Trump associates, that the president had failed to drain the Washington “swamp” as promised.

Now, with the Mueller report filed, she said, “We need to clean it up and focus on the serious stuff.”

For the most part Friday night, in the hours after the announcement of the report, Democratic candidates reacted over Twitter or in remarks at events rather than in any back-and-forth conversations with voters.

Several candidates, in calling for the swift release of the report, also sought to gather new supporters and their email addresses by putting out “petitions” calling for complete transparency from the Justice Department.

“The Trump Administration shouldn’t get to lock up Robert Mueller’s report and throw away the key,” Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., argued on Twitter, asking people to sign a petition and provide their names and emails. Such information is often used for future fundraising solicitations.

Within hours of Mueller’s completing his investigation, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and the campaign arm of House Democrats were already placing ads on Facebook demanding the full report’s release, with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee seeking 100,000 signatures for its online petition.

With no detailed information available about the report, Warren and Booker — as well as Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Kamala Harris, D-Calif. — sought to focus attention and pressure on how quickly Attorney General William Barr would release the full report.

“Attorney General Barr — release the Mueller report to the American public. Now,” Warren wrote on Twitter.

Gillibrand made similar demands and also retweeted the news of the report along with three words: “See you Sunday.” That is when Gillibrand plans to formally kick off her 2020 campaign in front of Trump International Tower in New York.

Harris, in addition to calling for the report to be released “immediately,” called on Barr to “publicly testify under oath about the investigation and its findings.”

Harris, Warren and Gillibrand also joined Booker and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in asking supporters to sign their petitions calling for the report’s immediate release.

Five other candidates — Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii; Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington; former Rep. John Delaney; and Julián Castro — also called for the release of the full report.

“As Donald Trump said, ‘Let it come out,'” Sanders wrote on Twitter. “I call on the Trump administration to make Special Counsel Mueller’s full report public as soon as possible. No one, including the president, is above the law.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/us/politics/mueller-report-2020-candidates.html" id="4ba717fb-64ad-3e13-a4c3-22a3d959bc5b">The New York Times</a>.

2020 Candidates Demand Full and Immediate Release of Mueller Report

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Democratic presidential candidates wasted no time Friday evening demanding the immediate public release of the long-awaited report from Robert Mueller, with several saying that Americans deserved to know any findings about President Donald Trump, Russia and the 2016 election in order to form judgments about Trump and the 2020 race.

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Richard Fausset and Maggie Astor

Articles written by the author

2020 Candidates Demand Full and Immediate Release of Mueller Report