If the president of the United States isn't a criminal, it isn't for lack of trying. If not for the actions of a few White House aides who refused President Donald Trump's orders, Congress right now could well have been immersed in impeachment proceedings.

The report by special counsel Robert Mueller makes two things clear: The Trump campaign desperately wanted to cooperate and, yes, collude with Russians to disrupt Hillary Clinton's campaign, but couldn't find a way to do it. And Trump personally had every intention of obstructing justice, but he was repeatedly thwarted by those around him.

Trump and his backers have embarked on a concerted effort to convince America that the 448-page report is a full exoneration, when they know it's anything but. Whether some of Trump's actions might have risen to the level of actual obstruction is a lingering question that must be answered.

The report's good news, for Trump and the nation, is that there's no evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Trump's campaign and the Kremlin. Americans of every political persuasion should be relieved by that.

But even reading between the redacted lines, it's more clear than ever that Attorney General William Barr's conclusion that the report found "no obstruction" was a deceptive attempt to spin the issue before the public could see the document itself. Far from clearing Trump of obstruction, it meticulously charts his numerous attempts to end, thwart or control the probe, repeatedly directing others to meddle in it.

Those efforts "were mostly unsuccessful," says the report, "but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests."

Trump fired FBI Director James Comey and admitted it was to stop the investigation. He helped cover up his campaign's Trump Tower meeting with a Kremlin contact, spinning a deliberate public lie about its purpose. He tried repeatedly to have Mueller fired, once ordering White House counsel Don McGahn to do it, and then ordering him to publicly lie about that order. McGahn, to his credit, refused both orders.

Not all White House staff were so principled. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders had defended Comey's removal, telling reporters repeatedly that Trump did it because FBI staff had lost faith in the director. But when questioned by Mueller's team, according to the report, Sanders admitted that claim "was not founded on anything" — a polite way of saying she lied to the nation about why her boss fired the man investigating his campaign.

Does anyone truly think any of this is what "total exoneration" looks like?

Americans should ignore the frantic chorus of "Nothing to see here!" from Trump's loyalists, and read the report for themselves. And congressional Democrats have clear grounds to press ahead with efforts to get at the full, unredacted document.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH