U.S. Rep. Ed Case, Hawaii’s newest congressman who had promised to take a wait-and-see approach to the investigation of President Trump by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, said Thursday he was shocked by revelations in the 448-page redacted version of the report.

Speaking to reporters at the State Capitol, Case said an unedited version needs to be released immediately, and that Congress should turn to the courts if the Trump administration is unwilling to do so.

“Clearly what I have read of the report is highly disturbing and although Mr Mueller did not find overt collusion, certainly many, many people turned a blind eye” to Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential election, Case said.

“There is compelling evidence” that a number of people engaged in activities that “could rise to the level of a crime,” said Case, a moderate Democrat.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Contrary to Trump’s assertion that the report found there was no collusion with Russia or obstruction of justice, Case said the report makes a strong case for the opposite.

“He has not been exonerated … Nobody can read that report and consider that the president has been exonerated.”

Case said that the summary of the report released in March by Attorney General William P. Barr misled the American public.

“I think you see a pretty deliberate effort to cherry-pick for interpretations” that would place Trump in a favorable light, Case said.

President Trump has called the investigation a “witch hunt” that is interfering with getting things done in Washington.

Case acknowledged that the investigation has been “highly divisive,” but added, “the fact that (investigations) are polarizing and disruptive does not mean that you don’t do them. That is our job.”

His views were echoed from Vietnam by U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono.

“Despite the Attorney General’s attempt to spin the Mueller Report in Donald Trump’s favor, it’s clear the Special Counsel’s investigation found serious wrongdoing by the President and many of his associates,” the Hawaii Democrat said in a statement Thursday.

Hirono is participating in a military fact-finding mission to Asia with Senate colleagues.

“The Special Counsel also confirmed what our intelligence community had already unanimously concluded: that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 election to elect Donald Trump,” she said.

“Although the Special Counsel felt he couldn’t meet the high bar necessary to prove criminal conspiracy with the Russians, he demonstrated that Donald Trump and his campaign were willing to engage with our foremost adversary to gain an advantage in the 2016 election. This is just wrong, plain and simple.”

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

The redacted report released Thursday provided evidence that the Russians had sought to interfere with the U.S. election to derail the campaign of Hillary Clinton and promote Trump.

“The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion,” the report stated.

It also found that the Russians had hacked the Democratic National Committee’s computer network, causing sensitive emails to be publicly released, some of them through the organization Wikileaks.

At a press conference in Washington on Thursday, Barr said the full Mueller report did not find “any evidence that members of the Trump campaign or anyone associated with the campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its hacking operations.”

In early April, Case told voters at a town hall meeting in Ewa Beach that he did not believe the initial Mueller report, as represented by Barr, merited an effort to impeach the president. But he said that he would be willing to pursue the impeachment of Trump if he believed the facts showed that the president had behaved unacceptably.

“I am not shy about exercising that responsibility if I feel it’s warranted,” Case said at the time.

On Thursday, Case said that he continues to believe that impeachment may not be the way to proceed.

But he urged people to read the report for themselves.

“You can’t read this report without re-evaluating your conclusions to date,” Case said.