How to Read and Download the Mueller Report

News
By published

The redacted version of the Mueller report can now be found online. Here's how to get it.

The redacted version of the Mueller report is now live.

Anti-Trump protesters in Santa Ana, California, in January 2018. Credit: Steve Bruckmann/Shutterstock

(Image credit: Anti-Trump protesters in Santa Ana, California, in January 2018. Credit: Steve Bruckmann/Shutterstock)

The 448-page document has certain passages, and even some items in the table of contents, blacked out. These parts are mostly labeled "HOM" or "Harm to Ongoing Matter," implying that they pertain to ongoing investigations.

You can read and download the Mueller report at https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf.

Unfortunately, the PDF is not searchable, and you can't highlight text, a wise move as the ability to do so often grants readers the ability to copy blacked-out text and then paste it into another document in readable format. That probably won't work here, but we are sure many of you will try. (UPDATE: Johns Hopkins professor Thomas Rid has posted a searchable version online in Google Docs, but we still can't decipher the redacted passages. There's a searchable PDF here.)

MORE: Trump Backs Online Sales Tax: What It Means for You

For anyone who's been living under a rock for the past two years, this is Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III's official report into possible Russian influence on the 2018 general election, snappily entitled "Report on the Investigation Into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election."

Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Until this morning, no one has seen this besides Mueller's team or Attorney General William Barr's closest staffers. Even President Donald J. Trump is having his first look right now.

If you don't mind waiting until tomorrow, Barnes and Noble plans to make the entire report a free download for its Nook e-reader on Friday, April 19. You can pre-order it here. (UPDATE: Not to be outdone, Amazon has the report for Kindle users, but it will cost you $7.99.)

So have fun. Reading through it all will take a couple of days.

Paul Wagenseil
Paul Wagenseil

Paul Wagenseil is a senior editor at Tom's Guide focused on security and privacy. He has also been a dishwasher, fry cook, long-haul driver, code monkey and video editor. He's been rooting around in the information-security space for more than 15 years at FoxNews.com, SecurityNewsDaily, TechNewsDaily and Tom's Guide, has presented talks at the ShmooCon, DerbyCon and BSides Las Vegas hacker conferences, shown up in random TV news spots and even moderated a panel discussion at the CEDIA home-technology conference. You can follow his rants on Twitter at @snd_wagenseil.