Week 76: Is Mueller about to deploy the barrels?


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Robert S. Mueller III did it. He really did it. He fully honored the Ministry of Justice guidelines which urged prosecutors and others to avoid actions that could affect the outcome of an election.

For six weeks that he's been working at silent car levels, the most glaring news of his investigation into the collaboration between the Trump campaign and the Russians concerns his relatively quiet level. Without opening a tab for Google, tell me the last time something serious broke out. Manafort's guilty plea gives the impression that it happened last year. I bet you can not even remember who was charged last. It is not that the special prosecutor has gone into hibernation, as noted by CNN. His office has done his research on padded feet and has organized at least nine sessions with the convicted criminal Paul Manafort in recent weeks. converse with President Donald Trump's legal team; and scrutinizing the links between Trump's devotee Roger Stone and WikiLeaks, who threw away Democratic emails stolen late in the campaign. Did Stone, the unpleasant and self-styled Stone cheater (more on him later) and WikiLeaks coordinate an October surprise in publishing pirated pirate emails?

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The press has filled the quiet period with speculation about what will follow. Once the research is complete, how high will Mueller be? Will he complete and submit his report on Russian interference to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein? Will Rosenstein still have work by the end of the report or will he have been swept away by the President with Attorney General Jeff Sessions? Will Trump have also sent Mueller away? Or will Mueller establish new indictments in this case? Will he reduce his investigation? Will he go to court to force the president to testify? To the president already been assigned? Will he complete his investigation with a tour into corruption realms never explored, enlightened by the ideas of Manafort and Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who has so much returned his former boss that he? he encourages people to vote Democrat? Finally, if Mueller finds no evidence of collusion, could he rather allege a hindrance to the justice of the president? No criminal charges have ever been brought against a sitting president, and many jurists say he can not be prosecuted. But such an accusation could rally the democrats to destitution.

This week, at the request of lawyers and activists, the National Archives unveiled the "Watergate Roadmap," a report that independent prosecutor Leon Jaworski sent to Congress detailing the evidence gathered against President Richard Nixon. The fact-only roadmap did not recommend prosecuting or asserting that Nixon had committed an impenetrable crime. The petition in his favor affirmed that the roadmap could be "an essential precedent for assessing the appropriate framework for Special Advocate Mueller to report to Congress any findings of potentially unlawful conduct by President Trump. ".

Given all the variables at work, we will need more than an old roadmap to establish a precise prognosis of the direction that Mueller will take. The likelihood that the Democratic Party will take the House of Representatives and open new investigations is complicated, which makes things even more complicated. As my colleague from Politico, Darren Samuelsohn, wrote this week, Democrats from the Intelligence Committee of the House of Representatives have compiled a list of 70 people, organizations, and businesses that would have been ignored by the committee led by the Republicans during his investigation, as well as a 98-page document on outstanding lines of research.

"One of the issues that concerns me most is this: have the Russians laundered money through the Trump Organization," said Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), One of the favorites of the intelligence committee in a democratic congress. "For me, it would be much more powerful kompromat than any video."

If Schiff was driving this committee, Trump could begin to become nostalgic for the treatment he had received from the allegedly angry, allegedly Democratic investigators of Mueller, compared to the truly angry Democratic committee that was working on him. As the Republican survey on Benghazi proves, congressional investigations are often conducted for political ends by other means, especially in times of divided government. The procedural subtleties and directives of the Department of Justice that lead an investigation like Mueller's are virtually non-existent on Capitol Hill. The purpose of most Hill investigations is not to determine guilt or innocence, but to score touchdowns. Unlike forensic investigations, where professionalism dissuades prosecutors from disclosing to the press, congressional investigations spring up like a garden hose sprinkler to reporters eager to amplify the findings and accusations to the election public.

Lord knows that the Democrats are tired of lighting a fire of investigation. In addition to Russia's alleged efforts to help the Trump campaign, evidence suggests assistance from Middle Eastern figures. As Chris Geidner writes in BuzzFeed, Trump's main pillars, including Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, and Erik Prince, have all created bizarre political contacts in the Middle East. "A longtime friend and billionaire investor, Tom Barrack, has also met with the special attorney 's office, though it' s not clear if these conversations have led to new avenues of investigation. investigation for the office, "continues Geidner.

Mueller's indictment of Roger Stone, which Stone himself has been predicting since at least August, would be the only safe bet. He claimed that he was probably the unidentified associate of Donald Trump described in a previous indictment by Mueller as communicating with the Russian hacker "Guccifer 2.0". Stone, who had predicted on Twitter August 21, 2016 that "it will soon be Podesta is in the barrel," denied any wrongdoing.

This week, Stone denied for a long time denied having discussed WikiLeaks with the Trump campaigners. New York Times reported an email exchange between Stone and Steve Bannon in which Stone "is presented to the Trump campaign leaders … as a channel of privileged information from WikiLeaks, the repository chosen by the Russia for pirated documents from democratic computers ".

In the pages of the Daily Caller, Stone had failed to say he was angry, refusing any prior knowledge of WikiLeaks' plans. "What I'm guilty of is using publicly available information and sound advice to bluff, postulate, exaggerate and punk Democrats on Twitter. This is called "politics". It's not illegal, "Stone wrote..

Good luck, Roger, but it looks like it will soon be your time in the barrel.

******

Why does not Amtrak have a noisy car? Send questions to the railways at [email protected]. My e-mail alerts and this topic have gone through a period of silence. my Twitter feed looks forward to a long investigation of the Democrats. My RSS feed says that all it does is a benign cynicism.

Jack Shafer is politicoSenior media editor.

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