A few things you might have missed from the Mueller report

Special counsel Robert Mueller's report focuses on the seminal questions of whether President Donald Trump's campaign colluded with the Russians and whether the president sought to illegally obstruct the investigation.

But tucked into the 448-page document are vivid anecdotes and meaningful revelations about a colorful cast of characters entangled in Mueller's investigation.

Here are some:

FILE - In this Dec. 1, 2017, file photo, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn leaves federal court in Washington. (AP PhotoSusan Walsh, File)

THE EMAIL HUNT

Even as Russians hacked Democratic email accounts, a haphazard group of Americans launched a parallel effort of their own: to find tens of thousands of emails deleted from Hillary Clinton's personal email server.

It had become an object of fascination for Trump, who asked multiple people around the campaign to find the missing emails.

FILE - In this Nov. 6, 2017, file photo, Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, leaves the federal courthouse in Washington. (AP PhotoJacquelyn Martin, File)

Among them was Trump's future national security adviser Michael Flynn, who enlisted the help of a former Senate staffer named Barbara Ledeen and Peter Smith, an investment adviser who'd been active in Republican politics.

The report documents multiple steps the two took to find the emails. Smith, for instance, recruited security experts and business associates and claimed to those he was seeking funding from that he was in contact with Russia-linked hackers.

It's not clear the bluster amounted to anything as Mueller found no evidence that any of the Americans were actually in touch with any Russian hackers or had any connection to them.

FILE - In this Oct. 15, 2018, file photo, Attorney General Jeff Sessions pauses during a news conference at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia in Washington. (AP PhotoCarolyn Kaster, File)

SESSIONS INVESTIGATED

Mueller confirmed that his office investigated whether Attorney General Jeff Sessions committed perjury at his January 2017 confirmation hearing by saying that he "did not have communications with the Russians" during the campaign.

The statement was false because Sessions did in fact have two separate encounters with the then-Russian ambassador to the United States — once during the week of the Republican National Convention in July 2016 and again in his Senate office two months later.

Sessions would later explain that he understood the question to be narrowly focused on whether he had exchanged campaign information with Russians as opposed to having more routine interactions with them.

Mueller's report said prosecutors accepted that assertion as plausible and closed the case without prosecution.

"WE'LL BE TAKEN CARE OF"

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his business partner Rick Gates were among the first of the president's aides to be charged by Mueller, accused of a broad array of financial crimes.

For months, they stood united as co-defendants but that relationship was severed in February 2018 when Gates agreed to plead guilty and cooperate with the investigation.

The report reveals a curious encounter one month earlier when Manafort sought to dissuade Gates from cutting a deal. He told Gates that he had spoken with the president's own lawyers and that "we'll be taken care of," according to the report.

Gates went ahead and pleaded guilty, testifying against Manafort in his trial. Manafort followed suit months later and was recently sentenced to more than seven years in prison.

COUNTLESS FBI AGENTS

The day after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders made a claim that even at the time rang false.

Turns out, it was.

Sanders, pressed on the president's decision to fire Comey, said the White House had "heard from countless members of the FBI" complaining about Comey's leadership and contradicting the conventional narrative that the rank-and-file was devastated by his termination. The next day, she again stood by her claim that she personally had been in touch "between emails and text messages" with a large number of FBI personnel who said they were very happy with the president's decision.

The assertion during a White House press briefing was so baffling that an exasperated reporter at one point proclaimed, "I mean, really?"

But when questioned by Mueller's team, Sanders changed her tune, saying her reference to "countless members" of the FBI was a "slip of the tongue." She acknowledged that she had no basis for a separate statement that rank-and-file agents had lost confidence in Comey.

Sanders claimed in a series of television interviews on Friday that the "countless" comment was a "slip of the tongue" and not a scripted talking point but that she stood behind her general sentiment.

"I'm sorry I wasn't a robot," she said in one of the interviews.

JULIAN ASSANGE

In the summer of 2016, the WikiLeaks founder took an unusual interest in the Washington, D.C., murder of a former Democratic National Committee staffer.

News reports had already correctly attributed the hack of DNC servers to Russia, but Assange — whose anti-secrecy website had come in possession of stolen emails — wanted to "obscure the source of the materials" that it was releasing.

To do so, Mueller says, Assange seized on false conspiracy theories that linked the hacks to Seth Rich, the slain DNC staffer.

Even though, WikiLeaks had already been in touch with Guccifer 2.0, a fictitious Russian intelligence persona masquerading as a lone hacker, Assange promoted the idea that Rich may actually have been the source of stolen emails and connected to the DNC hack.

At one point, he announced a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Rich's killer.

In an August 25, 2016 interview, Assange said, "If there's someone who's potentially connected to our publication, and that person has been murdered in suspicious circumstances, it doesn't necessarily mean that the two are connected. But it is a very serious matter ... that type of allegation is very serious, as it's taken very seriously by us."

In an unrelated case, the Justice Department last week unsealed an indictment accusing Assange of conspiring with former intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to crack a U.S. government password.

SANCTIONS TALK

The report sheds new light on the aftermath of Flynn's discussion on sanctions with Sergey Kislyak, the then-Russian ambassador to the United States, during the presidential transition period.

After a Washington Post columnist disclosed in January 2017 that Flynn and Kislyak had indeed discussed sanctions, Flynn — under pressure from the president-elect — directed K.T. McFarland, who served as deputy national security adviser, to contact the newspaper and deny that sanctions had ever been talked about.

McFarland made the call even though she knew she was relaying false information, the report said.

The following month, after Flynn was ousted from the White House, Trump sought to have McFarland draft an internal letter stating that he had not directed Flynn to discuss sanctions with Kislyak. But McFarland refused because she didn't know whether that was true, the report says.

Flynn's sanctions discussions with Kislyak were central to the investigation and he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about it.

Associated Press writer Chad Day contributed to this report.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Ukrainian court on Friday ordered the detention of the country’s farm minister in the latest high-profile corruption investigation, while Kyiv security officials assessed how they can recover lost battlefield momentum in the war against Russia.

Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court ruled that Agriculture Minister Oleksandr Solskyi should be held in custody for 60 days, but he was released after paying bail of 75 million hryvnias ($1.77 million), a statement said.

Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau suspects Solskyi headed an organized crime group that between 2017 and 2021 unlawfully obtained land worth 291 million hryvnias ($6.85 million) and attempted to obtain other land worth 190 million hryvnias ($4.47 million).

Ukraine is trying to root out corruption that has long dogged the country. A dragnet over the past two years has seen Ukraine’s defense minister, top prosecutor, intelligence chief and other senior officials lose their jobs.

That has caused embarrassment and unease as Ukraine receives tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid to help fight Russia’s army, and the European Union and NATO have demanded widespread anti-graft measures before Kyiv can realize its ambition of joining the blocs.

In Ukraine's capital, doctors and ambulance crews evacuated patients from a children’s hospital on Friday after a video circulated online saying Russia planned to attack it.

Parents hefting bags of clothes, toys and food carried toddlers and led young children from the Kyiv City Children’s Hospital No. 1 on the outskirts of the city. Medics helped them into a fleet of waiting ambulances to be transported to other facilities.

In the video, a security official from Russian ally Belarus alleged that military personnel were based in the hospital. Kyiv city authorities said that the claim was “a lie and provocation.”

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that civic authorities were awaiting an assessment from security services before deciding when it was safe to reopen the hospital.

“We cannot risk the lives of our children,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due to hold online talks Friday with the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which has been the key international organization coordinating the delivery of weapons and other aid to Ukraine.

Zelenskyy said late Thursday that the meeting would discuss how to turn around Ukraine’s fortunes on the battlefield. The Kremlin’s forces have gained an edge over Kyiv’s army in recent months as Ukraine grappled with a shortage of ammunition and troops.

Russia, despite sustaining high losses, has been taking control of small settlements as part of its effort to drive deeper into eastern Ukraine after capturing the city of Avdiivka in February, the U.K. defense ministry said Friday.

It’s been slow going for the Kremlin’s troops in eastern Ukraine and is likely to stay that way, according to the Institute for the Study of War. However, the key hilltop town of Chasiv Yar is vulnerable to the Russian onslaught, which is using glide bombs — powerful Soviet-era weapons that were originally unguided but have been retrofitted with a navigational targeting system — that obliterate targets.

“Russian forces do pose a credible threat of seizing Chasiv Yar, although they may not be able to do so rapidly,” the Washington-based think tank said late Thursday.

It added that Russian commanders are likely seeking to advance as much as possible before the arrival in the coming weeks and months of new U.S. military aid, which was held up for six months by political differences in Congress.

While that U.S. help wasn’t forthcoming, Ukraine’s European partners didn’t pick up the slack, according to German’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which tracks Ukraine support.

“The European aid in recent months is nowhere near enough to fill the gap left by the lack of U.S. assistance, particularly in the area of ammunition and artillery shells,” it said in a report Thursday.

Ukraine is making a broad effort to take back the initiative in the war after more than two years of fighting. It plans to manufacture more of its own weapons in the future, and is clamping down on young people avoiding conscription, though it will take time to process and train any new recruits.

Jill Lawless contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Ukrainian young acting student Gleb Batonskiy plays piano in a public park in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)