Robert Mueller’s Russia probe is “close to being completed,” the US attorney general has said in a rare update on the progress of the investigation. Matthew Whitaker said he had been “fully briefed” on the situation but did not elaborate or give a timetable for the end of the probe, which has loomed large over the first two years of Donald Trump’s presidency. The special counsel’s inquiries into whether Russia interfered in the 2016 US presidential election and colluded with the Republican’s campaign have so far led to charges against 34 people, several of them close to Mr Trump.
