The Mueller March

Posted on: September 18, 2017 at 10:19:50 CT

The person in the greatest legal jeopardy, given what we know from media reports, is former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, whose home was searched by the FBI. When the bureau executes a search warrant at your home, that means the prosecutor has already convinced a judge that there is good reason to believe a crime was committed and that evidence of that crime was at your house. That’s bad news for Manafort.

But that doesn’t mean Mueller’s search warrant application alleged that Manafort is or was conspiring with Moscow. There are crimes that are much more straightforward to prove, such as false statements in disclosures made by Manafort. It’s more likely that Mueller is focused on easy wins like this.

The same is true of Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser who is under scrutiny for failing to disclose income from Russia-related entities. Proving that Flynn lied on a form is much more straightforward than proving an agreement between him and foreigners. Recent news that Flynn’s son is also in Mueller’s sights suggests that the former FBI chief might be developing a case against the son in the hopes that Flynn will cooperate to obtain leniency for his son, which is called “vicarious cooperation.”

Neither of these two pieces of the Mueller investigation has any apparent connection to the rest of what his team is investigating, and if either results in charges, they would be contained in stand-alone indictments that are unconnected to the other matters they are looking at.

Obstruction of justice

The other aspect of Mueller’s investigation that appears to be fairly advanced is his obstruction investigation. We know Mueller is looking at obstruction related to the firing of James Comey for many reasons—most recently, the Justice Department refused to permit a Senate committee to interview two FBI officials who were witnesses on this issue, and when asked about the matter, referred questions to Mueller. This indicates that Mueller believes the FBI officials are potential witnesses. (If Mueller thinks he might use their testimony later, he would want to reduce the risk that potential defendants and their counsel can learn about it in advance. He also doesn’t want to generate inconsistent accounts from witnesses that can be used to undermine them at trial.)

Edited by Silas at 10:20:56 on 09/18/17