Special counsel Robert Mueller's report states that President Trump directed his communications team three separate times to mislead the public over the nature of the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian intelligence intermediary, Natalia Veselnitskaya.

The meeting was about Russians passing dirt to the Trump campaign. Trump tried to pretend it was something different.

That meeting involved Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and others. As I've noted, Veselnitskya is a Russian intelligence agent veiled as a civilian attorney. And Mueller's report makes clear, via testimony and communications evidence, that the understood purpose of the meeting was Veselnitskaya's offering of negative information on Hillary Clinton.

But Mueller notes that when the story of the Trump Tower meeting was about to break, Trump directed senior communications official Hope Hicks, to avoid the story entirely. Then, when it did break, Trump rejected his son's suggestion of delivering a basic, but more honest accounting of what had transpired.

Instead, "the president then dictated a statement to Hicks that said the meeting was about Russian adoption (which the president had twice been told was discussed at the meeting). The statement dictated by the president did not mention the offer of derogatory information about Clinton."

That statement was released to the media.

Here's the legal angle: Mueller notes that the effort at deception does not amount to obstruction of justice because it was not specifically designed or effected to mislead the special counsel's office or Congress.

So Trump was not obstructing justice: He was simply trying to lie to the entire country about a matter of national interest.