Washington: The US Department of Justice on Saturday released 500 pages of interview summaries and emails related to former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report detailing Russian meddling in the 2016 US election, after a court battle with BuzzFeed News.

Revealing Trump’s former campaign deputy chair, Rick Gates.Credit:AP

The documents, some of which were posted by the online news outlet, include summaries of FBI interviews with Rick Gates, US president Donald Trump's former deputy campaign chair, and Steve Bannon, the former presidential adviser.

The documents help explain why Mueller and his team spent months investigating the possibility that Donald Trump's campaign may have had advanced knowledge of releases of emails stolen allegedly by Russia and released publicly by WikiLeaks.

Interview summaries show that Gates told the FBI of various moments that led him to believe that Trump and others might have learned of WikiLeaks' plans ahead of time.

An attorney for Gates, who has been cooperating with prosecutors since pleading guilty in February 2018 to conspiracy and lying to the FBI, did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is in custody in the UK.Credit:AP

Ultimately, Mueller did not charge anyone associated with Trump's campaign of working with Russia or WikiLeaks to release stolen information, and Mueller's 448-page report did not accuse anyone of having advanced knowledge of WikiLeaks' plans.

The documents also include email correspondence between Bannon and Jared Kushner, Trump's senior advisor and son-in-law, as well as a "proposal to obtain" and analyse emails belonging to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, which was sent to Bannon by a conservative activist.

BuzzFeed filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking all documents related to the investigation by former FBI director Mueller, and a lawsuit to get access to the documents.

Reuters, The Washington Post

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