Bill Maher interviewed “curatorial journalist” Seth Abramson on Friday night’s episode of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” to help him connect the dots behind what is really happening with the Mueller report.

Maher began by grilling Abramson — author of “Proof of Collusion: How Trump Betrayed America” — on how Mueller came up with nothing. “On the question of collusion, I think we have to understand that the Mueller investigation hasn’t really ended. It has simply transformed into now 20 pending federal and state investigations in jurisdictions all around the country,” he responded.

The real issue beyond collusion, Abramson argues, is “whether [U.S. President] Donald Trump sold American foreign policy in exchange for personal profit. That’s still being looked at by some of these jurisdictions.”

U.S. Attorney General William Barr said last Wednesday that a redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election will be released this week.

Seth Abramson: Proof of Collusion | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)

Trump claimed “total and complete exoneration” after Barr released a four-page summary of the Mueller report last month, despite Barr writing at the time that “the Special Counsel states that ‘while the report does not conclude that the President has committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.’”

Maher asked Abramson to weigh in on Barr’s vow to now investigate the origins of the Mueller report and Barr’s assertion that there was “spying” on the 2016 Trump presidential campaign.

“Our allies, our friends were worried about our national security so five of their intel agencies told us, ‘Hey, there are meetings happening in Europe between Trump advisers and Russians that are incredibly concerning.’ That’s what got everything started,” Abramson explained, citing the fact that the investigation began before the infamous Steele Dossier, which Trump claims initiated the investigation.