Could Mueller be broadening scope to go after individual Russians not just Americans?

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Interesting new speculation thread from former federal prosecutor Asst US District Attorney Renato Mariotti

I have rearranged and pasted the plain text in proper reading order below.


1/ Yesterday I wrote this thread about what the Facebook search warrant tells us. You should read it if you haven't.

Link to tweet

THREAD: Why news that Mueller obtained a search warrant for Facebook content may be the biggest news in the case since the Manafort raid.

2/ In that thread, I discussed why the Facebook search warrant suggests that Mueller is closing in on foreign individuals who

3/ tried to undermine our election. I also explained why that could raise potential liability for Trump associates who aided their effort.

4/ Charges against foreigners for "contributing" to our election or against Americans for helping them are very different than the sorts

5/ of things we previously knew Mueller was looking at. For example, potential false disclosures by Manafort or Kushner are narrow crimes

6/ that don't implicate Russian operatives at all. An obstruction case focused on the firing of Comey can also be fairly narrow.

7/ That fit my experience of what prosecutors focus on charging. Despite what a lot of twitter or TV pundits tell you,

8/ proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is hard. So earlier this week, when I sat down to write a comprehensive piece for @politico

9/ about what we knew about the scope of the Mueller probe, I discussed these very narrow areas. I concluded that the other pieces

10/ like the Trump Tower meeting were fairly undeveloped and it was hard to say if we would see anything other than narrow

11/ Last night I reworked that whole piece (it's coming out Monday, look for it) because the search warrant means that Mueller is

12/ going after the sort of explosive crime that people speculated about when the investigation began. It's not easy to prove a wide-

13/ international criminal operation but Mueller is not only trying to do that but he's far enough along that he was able to present

14/ evidence in an affidavit that laid out the crime and convinced the judge that there was good reason to believe it was committed.

15/ That means it is now very conceivable that a Russian could be indicted by Mueller. We don't yet know whether Mueller has

16/ an American aided them, but it's certainly conceivable that an American and Russian could be charged together with an effort to

17/ undermine our election. Two days ago, I would have called that idea highly speculative at best. Just recently I talked about the

18/ of what Mueller and the criminal justice system could do, in this thread:

Link to tweet

THREAD: The limits of the criminal justice system. What can we do to combat injustice if the criminal justice system won't do it for us?

19/ My warnings there still apply. But it is now reasonable to consider that Mueller will generate explosive charges related to Russian

20/ interference. If that happened, it could have broader implications that I'll explore elsewhere. But I'll leave you with this last

21/ thought. Would there be a higher political cost associated with pardoning someone who helped Russians undermine the election?

22/ If so, that would have implications for whether individuals would cooperate or whether pardons would even be forthcoming. /end



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