The special counsel will make no more indictments but his work, if made public, could yet damn the president and open new lines of inquiry

It was, said Rudy Giuliani, lawyer to Donald Trump, like waiting for a baby to be born. Then he reached for a darker simile: it was more like waiting for a jury to deliver its verdict.

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“I’ll hand out cigars if it’s good news,” he told the Washington Post.

At about 4.30pm on Friday, the wait was over. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election was handed to the justice department. But it was still not clear if the baby was a boy or a girl, or if the jury found the defendant guilty or not guilty.

The conclusions of the Mueller investigation remained under lock and key, Washington’s biggest secret, fuelling feverish speculation. As Attorney General William Barr considers how much of the report to make public, a moment of truth that could break the Trump presidency, millions of Americans remain on the edge of their seats over the defining questions of whether he colluded with Moscow to win election and sought to obstruct justice once in the White House.

But one fact was established with certainty this week: after an investigation costing millions of dollars and spanning 674 days, hundreds of interviews, thousands of documents and criminal charges against 34 individuals – including six in Trump’s inner circle – Mueller will not recommend any further indictments. It therefore appeared that Trump’s son, Don Jr, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were off the hook.

Reports there will be no new indictments confirm what we’ve known all along: there was never any collusion with Russia Steve Scalise

This was despite both men attending a meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 with a Russian lawyer to hear potentially damaging information about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. “If it’s what you say I love it,” Don Jr wrote in an email to Rob Goldstone, a British publicist who arranged the meeting. Prosecutors said the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was an agent for the Kremlin. Don Jr and Goldstone claim that she offered nothing of substance and wasted their time.

Kushner, now a senior White House adviser, asked Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak in December 2016 to set up a secure communications channel at the Russian embassy. He also met that month with Sergei Gorkov, a Russian espionage officer who heads a Russian state-owned bank under US sanctions. Kushner has insisted there was no discussion of sanctions or specific policies.

Anderson Cooper, a host on CNN, told viewers on Friday night: “This is a good night certainly for the president, for his family. Don Jr was in the meeting in Trump Tower, he’s not going to be indicted. Jared Kushner, questions about him, he’s not going to be indicted.”

Former attorney general Jeff Sessions, who told Congress he was not aware of any communications between the Trump team and Russia before conceding that he met Kislyak at least twice during the campaign, Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser accused by the FBI of “collaborating and conspiring” with the Kremlin, and Jerome Corsi, a rightwing pundit seen as a possible conduit between Trump adviser Roger Stone and WikiLeaks, also looked set to avoid criminal charges.

With the president a thousand miles away at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, his most partisan allies claimed vindication and saw cause for celebration. Steve Scalise, the No 2 House Republican, said: “The reports that there will be no new indictments confirm what we’ve known all along: there was never any collusion with Russia. The only collusion was between Democrats and many in the media who peddled this lie because they continue to refuse to accept the results of the 2016 election.”

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Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, tweeted: “Democrats … have already moved from crying collusion to arguing that the Mueller report is just the beginning. Give me a break. The American people know what a politically motivated smear campaign looks like, and that’s exactly what this is.”

Giuliani took a swipe at a former director of the CIA who described Trump’s comments at a joint press conference with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki last summer as treasonous. “John Brennan said that Potus action re Russian collusion was nothing short of treasonous,” the former New York mayor tweeted. “Well even very aggressive prosecutors brought no charges of collusion. As a patriot I trust Brennan is relieved. He should apologize for a charge that was damaging to our country. Treason??”

The tweet failed to acknowledge that “collusion” is not a legally defined offence. That is not likely to stop Trump pushing such arguments in his re-election campaign next year, painting himself – and his supporters – as victims of the deep state, Democrats and “fake news media”.

But analysts urged caution, noting it is possible that Mueller, a former FBI director, is not bringing charges against some individuals because he has referred their cases to other prosecutors. It is also still possible his report will be damning, establishing collusion or obstruction of justice in the court of public opinion if not a court of law, fuelling demands for Trump’s impeachment and mortally wounding his chances of re-election.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Donald Trump speaks to reporters before leaving for Florida. Photograph: Ting Shen/Xinhua/Barcroft Images

Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, wrote on his Lawfare blog: “The president should wait before popping the champagne corks over this and tweeting in triumph. Yes, in the best-case scenario for the president, Mueller is not proceeding further because he lacks the evidence to do so. But even this possibility contains multitudes: everything from what the president calls “NO COLLUSION!” to evidence that falls just short of adequate to prove criminal conduct to a reasonable jury beyond a reasonable doubt – evidence that could still prove devastating if the conduct at issue becomes public.”

‘Principal conclusions’

So all eyes turn to Barr, who was attorney general under George HW Bush in the early 1990s and returned to the role under Trump last month. In a letter, he said he could send Congress a summary of Mueller’s report, or “principal conclusions”, as soon as this weekend. Unlike the watertight special counsel’s office, Congress is known to leak like a sieve.

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Democrats demanded the full report be released. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate leader Chuck Schumer said it was “imperative” Barr should not give Trump a “sneak preview” of the findings and that the White House should not be allowed to interfere in decisions about what is made public.

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The chairs of six House committees insisted in a joint letter: “We also expect the underlying evidence uncovered during the course of the special counsel’s investigation will be turned over to the relevant committees of Congress upon request ... Anything less than full transparency would raise serious questions about whether the Department of Justice policy is being used as a pretext for a cover-up of misconduct.”

Trump said this week he does not object to the report being made public and Barr promised that he is “committed to as much transparency as possible”. But it remains uncertain whether he will choose to divulge everything.

The Mueller report is hardly the end of the matter. With Democrats in control of the House, they have launched myriad investigations into Trump, his presidency, his family and his business interests. They are armed with subpoena power and could yet put Don Jr, Kushner and others through the wringer.

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Indeed, there has been speculation in Washington that anticipation of Mueller’s findings proving anticlimactic spurred House judiciary committee chairman Jerrold Nadler to target 81 individuals and groups. Kushner is reportedly cooperating with the committee’s investigation into whether Trump obstructed justice by firing perceived enemies, such as FBI director James Comey, from the justice department and abused his power by possibly dangling pardons or tampering with witnesses.

Adam Schiff, chairman of the House intelligence committee, told CNN he still intends to pursue “whether the president and others around him were acting as agents of a foreign power”.

Trump is in legal jeopardy on yet another front. His personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty last year to campaign finance violations in a case overseen by federal prosecutors in New York, who said in court filings that Cohen carried out the crimes at the direction of Trump. The US attorney’s office in Manhattan is also looking at the spending of Trump’s inaugural committee and business practices at the Trump Organisation, the family’s company.

But for now, America is contemplating a pivotal moment in its modern political history. The Mueller investigation has cleaved Washington and the nation, with the president working furiously to discredit it as a “hoax” and “witch hunt” and the anti-Trump resistance yearning for it to be the secret weapon that finally brings him down. The only person who did not seem to be talking about it this weekend was the perpetually silent, sphinx-like and straight-as-an-arrow Robert Mueller himself.