Russia Investigation Heating Up

[Parkbandit]

Several stories broke today:

1) A continuation of the previous news cycle about the report Mueller is supposedly planning on putting together. It looks like the timeline is expected to be sometime in June or July. That would make sense as Mueller isn't going to want to put anything out too close to the election. The fact that he is planning a report to answer "the public's questions" indicates that Mueller likely doesn't believe that he can indict a sitting President (either by constitutional law or by the DoJ's own stance). What's really interesting about this is that it's also typically DoJ policy not to release information in situations where no indictment is warranted. That would suggest either that Mueller believes that Trump is guilty of obstruction (and is writing a report in lieu of a criminal indictment he doesn't believe can be made), OR that Mueller has decided that simply declining indictment isn't enough- that this warrants a public Comey-style announcement. That would seem odd as it would open his investigation up to the same malpractice critiques Comey faced.

2) CNN is reporting that Mueller's team has been intercepting Russian Oligarchs who enter the US and questioning them (in one case actually taking electronic devices). Apparently he's looking to track Russian money that may have been funneled into the 2016 election through various means. The investigation into illegal campaign contributions via Russia has been reported on in the past, but this is the first time anyone has reported on targeting of Oligarchs.

We tend to run under the assumption that the reason why Republicans have been so reticent to investigation Russian election meddling is that they don't want to go down with Trump if they find something. But in the back of my mind, I've been wondering if maybe the concerns hit a bit closer to home. Russia was getting involved heavily in conservative circles (think NRA, Cambridge Analytica, etc). Republicans may also be afraid that investigating too closely will turn up evidence that Russian money or aid went to them. I'm not suggesting willful collusion, but if it turns out Russia DID use the NRA to funnel tens of millions of dollars into the election to help Republicans, just being associated with the NRA could suddenly become politically dangerous.

3) Yesterday the Judge in one of Manafort's cases (the one where he's targeting Mueller's investigation specifically) basically told him he had no case based on Mueller's filings. Manafort is definitely fighting until the bitter end, but the vast majority of what Mueller has been letting out publicly seems all bent on putting additional pressure on Manafort to flip. It will be interesting to see if he finally cracks.

4) Mueller seems to be continuing to narrow in on Stone's ties to wikileaks. My best guess is that he's pretty darn sure that if faced with any kind of prison time, Stone will sing like a canary. Stone is abjectly self-serving and seems like an obvious potential weak link. In fairness to Stone though, he actually seems to have a pretty good alibi in regards to having had dinner with Assange. Unfortunately, that email about dinner with Assange is honestly the least of his concerns.

Soooooo....... still no collusion.

Check.