The completion of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation marks a potential turning point in Donald Trump's presidency. | Alex Wong/Getty Images ‘Total EXONERATION’: Trump savors post-Mueller victory lap The president and his allies were quick to say ‘I told you so,’ arguing that Democrats and the media were blinded by their disdain for him.

PALM BEACH, Fla. — For more than two years, President Donald Trump has been telling anybody who’ll listen that his campaign didn’t collude with Russia.

On Sunday, he got some backup from special counsel Robert Mueller.

“The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” Mueller wrote in his final report, according to a four-page summary of the findings made public on Sunday by Attorney General William Barr.

Within minutes, the president and his advisers declared victory.

“No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!” Trump tweeted, later telling reporters before boarding Air Force One, “It’s a shame that our country had to go through this.”

It was a triumphant moment for a president who has felt under siege since taking office more than two years ago. The mood on the flight back to Washington on Sunday night was celebratory, according to aides. The president and his senior staff monitored cable news coverage, and Trump called friends and allies to get their feedback.

Trump even sat in the cockpit of Air Force One for the landing at Joint Base Andrews.

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said Trump felt vindicated by the news. “He’s just very happy with how it all turned out,” Gidley said.

By the time Trump got back to the White House on Sunday night, his sense of relief was palpable. “I just want to tell you, America is the greatest place on Earth,” he told reporters waiting on the South Lawn.

The president learned about Mueller’s conclusions just like the rest of the world: by reading Barr’s letter. Trump huddled with his lawyers in his private quarters at Mar-a-Lago after wrapping up an afternoon of golf with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee and one of the recipients of Barr’s letter, former Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.

As the lawyers, Pat Cipollone and Emmet Flood, ran through Barr’s letter, Trump perked up, delighted at what he was hearing.

“This is very good,” the president said, according to an aide.

Sunday’s news marked a rare high point for the president, who has weathered a wave of damaging episodes, from the recent Senate vote rebuking his order declaring a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border to allegations of an illicit affair with a porn star.

Trump, who has obsessed over the investigation in private for months, was quick to declare an unmitigated victory, claiming he was exonerated when the letter explicitly said he was not. The president and his aides strategically repeated the word “exonerated” after the letter’s release.

Asked why the president kept saying he’d been exonerated despite the report’s saying that was not the case, Gidley told reporters traveling with Trump on Air Force One: “Prosecutors don’t exonerate, they prosecute. They don’t prove a negative. That’s just silly.”

Trump’s allies quickly launched a public I-told-you-so campaign, arguing that Democrats and the media were blinded by their alleged disdain for the president.

“After more than 2 years of non-stop conspiracy theories from CNN, MSNBC, BuzzFeed and the rest of the mainstream media, as well as daily lies and smears coming from Democrats in Washington, the Mueller Report proves what those of us with sane minds have known all along, there was ZERO collusion with Russia,” the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. said in a statement.

He continued: “Sadly, instead of apologizing for needlessly destabilizing the country in a transparent attempt to delegitimize the 2016 election, it’s clear that the Collusion Truthers in the media and the Democrat Party are only going to double down on their sick and twisted conspiracy theories moving forward.”

Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, used the report to construct a new message against the Democratic Party ahead of 2020, arguing that Mueller’s findings proved that Democrats “failed once and they will fail again” in their efforts to prove wrongdoing by the president.

“Their dirty tricks have not ended,” Parscale said in a statement that accused Democrats of pursuing a “frantic, chaotic, conspiracy-laden roller coaster for two years.”

Barr’s letter comes after Trump spent a relaxing weekend at his private Mar-a-Lago club, playing golf and socializing with his longtime defenders. Aides said he was in good spirits, buoyed by the widespread belief among his supporters that the final report would be a bust.

In lieu of his typical tirades against what he called the Mueller “witch hunt,” he dashed off a pair of simple tweets Friday morning, breaking an unusual, nearly 40-hour streak of Twitter silence.

“Good Morning, Have A Great Day!” he wrote just after 8 a.m., followed by, “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN !” Trump later made the short trek to his nearby golf course for a round with Mulvaney, Graham and Gowdy.

White House aides and others close to Trump insisted early Sunday that the president was in good spirits, despite the impending release of a summary of Mueller’s findings. It helped that Trump began the day in his favorite weekend getaway, mingling with like-minded Mar-a-Lago guests and spending hours on the golf course away from cable news and Twitter, which has often set the president off.

“The president is in a remarkably good mood,” Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani told POLITICO on Sunday morning. “He’s never terribly bothered by these things. The only time the president has ever been bothered is when they go after other people. When they go after the people that work with him, he feels they’re paying a very unfair price.”

In the hours leading up to the public release of Mueller’s findings, Trump received overwhelming reassurance from senior advisers, attorneys and friends that he shouldn’t be worried, according to people familiar with the matter.

To bolster their case, many of those same confidants pointed to the revelation that Mueller’s office would not recommend any further indictments. Critics of the president have long questioned whether any of his family members who served on Trump’s 2016 campaign would become entangled in Mueller’s finding, with a particular focus on the president’s eldest son.

Speaking before the release of Barr’s letter, Giuliani said he was not concerned that Mueller still had sealed indictments related to the Russia investigation, after a senior Justice Department official told reporters on Friday that the special counsel would not be filing any new indictments tied to his investigation. Barr’s statement on Sunday put that question to rest.

Some Trump advisers were shocked that he resisted tweeting about the pending Mueller news for much of the weekend. But aides said Trump was largely pleased with public criticism of Mueller over the weekend from his friends and advisers and didn’t feel compelled to join in.

The first official statement from the White House about the report’s findings came from White House press secretary Sanders, not Trump, who is often the first administration official to weigh in on breaking news — usually via Twitter.

The president’s supporters took glee in publicly bashing Democrats and reporters for spending so much time obsessing over the Mueller investigation.

“Mainstream media now at a crossroads. Will they admit fault for fake Russia hoax and go back to actual journalism or continue with their @realDonaldTrump Derangement Syndrome,” David Bossie, a Trump ally, wrote on Twitter soon after news broke that Mueller had completed his investigation. “I think I know the answer.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Ronna McDaniel called for Democrats to put an end to “their baseless investigations and political crusade against President Trump for the good of the country.” At least two investigations involving the president’s inaugural committee and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York remain ongoing, neither of which is controlled by congressional Democrats.

Barr, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and their senior aides spent Saturday reviewing Mueller’s report before the release of the summary on Sunday afternoon. Justice Department officials are also embarking on a larger review of the whole Mueller document amid a clamor from lawmakers for its near complete release.

Mueller’s office, meanwhile, is closing up shop.

Barr said in his Friday letter to Congress that he’d be consulting with the special counsel about what information he could release to Congress and the public about the nearly two-year-old Russia investigation. At the same time, Mueller spokesman Peter Carr said the special counsel planned to conclude his service in the “coming days” while a few support staff remain on board to shutter the office.

Carr also confirmed on Sunday morning that plans were being implemented to hand off Mueller’s active cases, with the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., taking over Roger Stone’s trial, which is slated to begin in early November, and the sentencing for Rick Gates that has been repeatedly delayed over the last year while the former Trump campaign deputy cooperated in several ongoing investigations.

Federal prosecutors in Washington will also handle Mueller’s case against Concord Management and Consulting, Carr said. The Russian-based company, led by a close associate of President Vladimir Putin, has hired American lawyers and is demanding a trial to fight back against charges that it helped orchestrate the massive online campaign to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

No final decisions have been made yet, Carr added, over who will take the lead on two other high-profile active Mueller cases: the sentencing for Michael Flynn, the former Trump national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, and efforts to force compliance with a subpoena against Andrew Miller, a Stone associate who last month lost in federal appeals court in his attempt to have the Mueller appointment tossed out as unconstitutional.