WASHINGTON — Robert S. Mueller III laid out roughly a dozen episodes that revealed that President Trump was intent on using his position to protect himself and his associates from the investigation into links between his campaign and the Russian government’s covert operation to manipulate the 2016 election.

Mr. Mueller, the special counsel, relied on statements from the president’s own advisers to detail how Mr. Trump tried to install loyalists atop the Justice Department to oversee the inquiry, fired the head of the F.B.I. and even encouraged the top White House lawyer to go back on what he told investigators.

But Mr. Mueller, in a report released Thursday, declined to reach any conclusion about whether Mr. Trump illegally obstructed justice. Citing a Justice Department view that sitting presidents cannot be indicted, the special counsel said it would be inappropriate to analyze the evidence while Mr. Trump is in office and busy running the country because it would be unfair to accuse him of an offense without giving him an opportunity to clear his name in court.

Mr. Mueller’s rationale for demurring for now stood in stark contrast to Attorney General William P. Barr. Mr. Mueller noted that Mr. Trump would lose immunity when he left office, and that his investigation had preserved evidence for that moment. Mr. Barr, however, pronounced last month that the evidence Mr. Mueller gathered was insufficient to charge Mr. Trump with obstruction, regardless of the constitutional problems with charging a sitting president.