Everybody Says Mueller Is Almost Done. What If He Isn't?

[DonViejo]

By Jonathan Chait@jonathanchait

In late 2015, the British spy agency GCHQ, and then other Western intelligence agencies, learned of suspicious interactions between Russian agents and Donald Trump’s inner circle. By the summer of 2016, James Comey testified Friday, the FBI had opened a counterintelligence probe into four people in the Trump campaign. In May 2017, Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate Russian election interference.

These dates give us some sense of the scale and timing of the unfolding mystery. It took about a year and a half from the first indications of nefarious ties between Trump and Russia to the beginning of Mueller’s investigation. And it has taken about another year and a half from that point to last week, when Mueller filed sentencing recommendations for Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Michael Cohen.

Reporters and commentators have begun saying Mueller’s probe is reaching its final stages. But given that Mueller’s operation is utterly airtight, this conclusion is almost certainly a matter of speculation, which has gained wide acceptance through repetition. Nobody actually knows if the probe is almost over. The gap between what Mueller has produced in public and what may be yet to come remains vast.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders somehow managed to keep a straight face when she told reporters that the Manafort filing “says absolutely nothing about the president.” The claim is technically correct because the filing contains line after line of redacted charges. For all the outward signs of movement, legal analysts have been left scrutinizing what small scraps of information Manafort has allowed into the public record for signs of where he is heading.

One of those scraps is a revelation from the sentencing memo of Michael Cohen, who was approached by a Russian agent in 2015 about a business deal. This nugget seemed to move back the timeline of Trump’s entanglement with Moscow. But public reporting has already provided a much richer narrative. Russian intelligence has been sniffing around Trump since at least 1987. Over the last decade, Trump has grown increasingly reliant on Russian investment, which is a leverage tool used by Moscow. It was in July 2015, before any of this reached the radars of Western intelligence or law enforcement, the Russian spy Maria Butina asked Donald Trump in a public forum if he would agree to lift sanctions on her country. Trump explained that yes, he would, because Vladimir Putin had little respect for Obama, and Trump would restore this respect and lift the sanctions:

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http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/mueller-investigation-trump-not-finished.html

[manor321]

1. "Everyone" does NOT say he's almost done

The smart and informed people look at ongoing activities and see an investigation stretching on for at least months.

No one really knows of course but reporters who say he is almost done are very stupid. I'm looking at you, Isikoff.

[triron]

4. Not even close.

[uponit7771]

6. +1

[NCjack]

2. Trump is still in the White House, passing our plans and data to the Russians.

Ryan and McConnell are his fellow coconspirators in undermining USA.

[anarch]

3. I don't see how anyone could be "done" investigating fuckface's nefarious acts any time soon

Perhaps that was part of the genius, on Putin's part, of installing this stupid racist thug in the WH...with the scale, seriousness, multitudinous nature and lengthy timeframe of his probable crimes (if you want to include all of the money laundering for the Russian mob and whatnot), a thorough investigation could take decades...if the investigation wraps up sometime around 2046, where does that leave us at the current moment?

Whatever, significant and irreversible damage is already done. The war is over, and America lost.

[uponit7771]

5. After last week he's not even close, I'm thinking another 1.5 years

[empedocles]

7. Just going through Committee transcripts released by Dems in January, given how useful

they could be for catching liars, - that alone would take a fair amount of time.