Attorney General Bill Barr is now in possession of the Mueller report — and could send parts of it to Congress this weekend

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation has come to an end on Friday as the Justice Department announced that Attorney General Bill Barr has received a final report on the probe.

The investigation has continued for nearly two years.

While MSNBC reporter Julia Ainsley initially said that the announcement means that the Mueller's position as special counsel is officially over, other reports suggested that he may stay on at the department for a little while longer with a small portion of his team to wrap up. Outstanding obligations for the special counsel, such as the trial of Roger Stone, can be handled by other parts of the Justice Department in Mueller's absence.

Barr may send a version of the report to Congress as early as this weekend, Ainsley said. The special counsel regulations require that the final report discuss the prosecution and declination decisions will be confidential, but Barr has the authority to decide what information becomes public or goes to Congress.

Reporters have long been speculating that the report was coming to a close, and those reports have repeatedly been contradicted. But the consensus has grown substantially by Friday, and at the end of the day, the suspicions were finally confirmed.

It was not immediately clear whether there would be any new indictments deriving from the investigation, but the department soon confirmed that Mueller's investigation itself doesn't have any more indictments to bring. Other parts of the Justice Department may stay bring prosecution from crimes uncovered by Mueller's team, but likely none that are directly related to his central mission.