Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigators followed "several meandering paths" in their two-year investigation, "propelled by discoveries of unusual interactions between Trump associates and Russians," The Washington Post reported Sunday night. Mueller uncovered a lot in his 448-page final report, but his team was left with "some unanswered mysteries, a lot of dead ends and, ultimately, a conclusion that the contacts they found did not establish a criminal conspiracy," the Post says.

Mueller's team had to grapple with a legal dispute with Attorney General William Barr over whether a president can even be accused of crimes, plus President Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. refused to be interviewed, and the witnesses they did have "were not ideal," the Post reports:

A few key players, prosecutors would contend, lied in interviews. Many were loyal to the president and echoed his rhetoric that Mueller's team was acting in bad faith. Some used encrypted applications with disappearing messages that could not be reviewed. Others were overseas, unreachable to American investigators. In some cases, their statements were only loosely tethered to the facts. [The Washington Post]

Ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort fits in the first three categories, and the "loosely tethered" description matches conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, the Post reports, citing an interview with Corsi's lawyer, David Gray. Corsi had offered "tantalizing leads" about Roger Stone and WikiLeaks, but his story was never quite straight and his leads always led to dead ends, the Post reports.

Trying to get actionable material out of Corsi, "it's their biggest nightmare," Gray told the Post. "The supposed best of the best were just frankly dumbfounded by the whole situation." Corsi was not charged, he added, because after six marathon interviews, "at the end of the day, they threw up their hands and said, 'We can't use any of this.'" Read more about the obstacles Mueller couldn't get over at The Washington Post. Peter Weber

President Trump apparently didn't watch much Looney Tunes as a kid. Otherwise, thanks to Yosemite Sam, he'd probably know how to pronounce the name of one the United States' more famous national parks.

While signing the bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act — a conservation bill aimed at repairing national park infrastructure, permanently funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and creating thousands of jobs — on Tuesday, the president waxed poetic about the "towering sequoias" in California's Yosemite National Park. Unfortunately, he flubbed the pronunciation (twice), which wound up overshadowing the majestic image he was trying to conjure. Tim O'Donnell

Kanye West's alleged presidential bid is abandoning the Garden State.

West, the rapper whose announcement that he'd be entering the 2020 presidential race last month was met with widespread skepticism, has scrapped his effort to appear on the ballot in New Jersey, the New Jersey Globe reports.

West had submitted the petition signatures required to get on the ballot, but the signatures were challenged by a lawyer, Scott Salmon, who called them "egregiously bad, almost to a degree insulting," Politico reports. Not only was some necessary information and paperwork reportedly not provided, but a complaint said that "a number of signatures appear nearly identical," The Associated Press writes.

"At this time, Kanye 2020 has no further option than to regrettably withdraw from New Jersey and cease further efforts to place Mr. West's name on the New Jersey ballot," the campaign said in an email as it withdrew the petition, per AP.

West did previously qualify for the Oklahoma ballot, but in addition to New Jersey, he's also facing challenges while trying to get on the ballot in Illinois, reports New York Magazine. By the time West announced his intent to run for president, the deadline to appear on the ballot had already passed in many states, and more deadlines are fast approaching, as The Washington Post's Dave Weigel helpfully illustrates.

In fact, as Weigel notes, West already isn't going to be on the ballot in states with more than 200 electoral votes. In other words, don't bet on an upset win by the Birthday Party. Brendan Morrow

President Trump may end up throwing out what was supposed to be the biggest foreign policy achievement of his first term.

Trump has spent pretty much all of his presidency trying to work out a trade deal with China, sparking an all-out tariff war along the way. But all of that may have been for naught as Trump's advisers work to convince him to "nuke" the whole thing before November, saying it's his best chance to boost his re-election chances, four people with knowledge of the situation tell The Daily Beast.

National and swing state polls keep putting former Vice President Joe Biden safely ahead of Trump to win this fall's election, and advisers have been looking for ways to change his fate. Conservative economist Stephen Moore tells The Daily Beast it could benefit Trump to capitalize on anti-China sentiment both within the White House and around the country right now. And while Moore stopped short of calling to completely abandon the trade deal, Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro and other aides have reportedly gotten Trump at least considering it.

The U.S. and China reached a "phase one" trade deal in February, which didn't actually mark much concrete progress after two years of negotiations and tit-for-tat tariffs. Trump has only ramped up his criticism of China since then, and has repeatedly said he wants to hold it responsible for the coronavirus pandemic. It's unclear how blowing up the deal would punish China for COVID-19 or help the American farmers and businesses who the trade war has hurt along the way. Kathryn Krawczyk

Sure, it's a small sample size, but it appears professional athletes have at least one reason to enjoy playing in front of crowdless stadiums and arenas, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Since fans can't attend games because of the coronavirus pandemic, NBA and European soccer players have been performing in mostly empty venues, which has increased their shooting percentages. After a smattering of games, NBA players are shooting both free throws and corner threes more efficiently than they were before the pandemic paused the season back in March. At that point, the league average from the free throw line was 77.1 percent, a figure that's up to 80.6 percent in the Orlando bubble, per the Journal. Corner threes, meanwhile, are finding the bottom of the net 42.8 percent of the time now compared to the previous 38.9 percent.

The Brooklyn Nets' Joe Harris, a known sharpshooter, indicated the lack of fans probably has a greater effect on free throw shooting, since players are no longer facing a backdrop of fans when at the line. He added he doesn't usually notice fans around him when he fires threes from the corner, suggesting the statistical difference there could be more random.

European soccer leagues have a little bit more data to work with, as they've been back in action for a couple of months. In the English Premier League, free kicks were converted just 6 percent of the time before the pandemic, compared to 10 percent after the restart. The difference is more striking when looking at the raw totals. In 288 pre-lockdown matches, 16 goals were scored on free kicks. There have been 10 in the 92 played since teams returned to the pitch. Read more at The Wall Street Journal. Tim O'Donnell

Bolivia couldn't find a balance between preventing coronavirus spread and keeping its children learning.

The South American country will simply cancel the rest of its school year, its president Jeanine Añez Chavez announced Sunday. While it originally planned to run digital classes through December, the fact that most children in the country don't have internet made that impossible, DW reports.

Bolivia shut down all of its schools in March, just a month after they opened for the year. It tried to operate virtual classes, but failed because high-speed internet doesn't extend beyond cities, leaving most of the country's rural population unconnected, minister of the presidency Yerko Núñez said. Public school teachers protested the virtualization efforts, saying it would only speed up the privatization of education. Private school teachers also feared they'd lose their incomes if their schools had to shut down, DW reports.

The decision comes as schools in the northern hemisphere struggle to figure out how they'll reopen in a month or less. Millions of Americans, particularly in rural areas, lack internet access, and even with it, it's hard to keep children engaged and learning remotely. Kathryn Krawczyk

China's state media isn't happy with President Trump's — and possibly Microsoft's — plans for TikTok.

In an editorial published this week about the potential sale of TikTok in the United States, the Beijing-run China Daily newspaper slams the Trump administration while warning that China "will by no means accept the 'theft' of a Chinese technology company," per Bloomberg.

U.S. lawmakers have long raised security concerns about TikTok, the video app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, and President Trump recently vowed to ban it in the United States. On Monday, he said he would not do so quite yet as Microsoft explores a potential purchase. Strangely, Trump also demanded that the U.S Treasury receives a "very substantial" cut of such a sale.

As those talks unfold, the editorial in the China Daily paper compares the United States' actions to an "officially sanctioned 'steal' of Chinese technology" while warning that China "has plenty of ways to respond if the administration carries out its planned smash and grab."

Meanwhile, another editorial from the state-run Global Times calls Washington "unreasonable" while asserting that "many of the U.S. practices, including banning TikTok, show the country's weakening competitiveness." CNN notes that these editorials are "are often looked upon as a barometer of sentiment among senior officials" in China.

After his threat to ban TikTok, Trump on Monday said an American company would have until Sept. 15 to purchase it before it would "close down," though with just 11 days to go until that deadline, the clock is ticking. Brendan Morrow