Mueller's Probe Lives On Even Now That He's Closing His Shop
Mueller's Probe Lives On Even Now That He's Closing His Shop
(Bloomberg) -- Robert Mueller’s investigation spawned a number of significant inquiries related to President Donald Trump that have outlasted the special counsel’s probe.
Mueller informed Attorney General William Barr on Friday that his probe into Russian election meddling is over after 22 months. Mueller began handing off several investigations to U.S. attorney’s offices in Washington, New York and elsewhere.
Those include:
Roger Stone
Mueller charged longtime Trump ally Roger Stone on Jan. 25 with crimes including lying to lawmakers about his interactions with WikiLeaks before it released Democratic National Committee emails stolen by state-sponsored Russian hackers to embarrass Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Stone has pleaded not guilty to Mueller’s charges and vowed not to cooperate. His trial is scheduled to begin in November and will be led by federal prosecutors in Washington. The case could still yield information about possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Mystery Witness
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from an unidentified foreign state-owned company that’s fighting a grand jury subpoena from Mueller’s team. The high court earlier upheld an appeals court order fining the company $50,000 a day for failing to comply with the subpoena.
While the company and country remain unknown, prosecutors have described it as having a U.S. presence and doing significant business in the U.S.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington will be taking over the case, the special counsel’s office said Monday. The significance isn’t clear now that Mueller has submitted his final report.
Campaign Finance
Mueller helped spur an FBI raid last year on former Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen. Federal prosecutors in New York, who secured a guilty plea from Cohen on charges concerning campaign finance violations and lying to Congress, are currently investigating the Trump campaign and perhaps the Trump Organization for possible campaign finance violations.
Cohen, who is scheduled to go to prison in May to serve a three-year term, said that Trump directed him to arrange hush payments to women claiming sexual relationships with Trump, and he agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
Those payments could be considered illegal campaign contributions if they’re found to have been intended to aid Trump’s candidacy. Cohen has suggested that executives at the Trump Organization and officials with Trump’s campaign had knowledge of the payments. That could give prosecutors reason to look deeper into the finances and operations of both entities.
Ongoing Cooperators
Federal prosecutors are still working with several former Trump aides under cooperation deals they reached with Mueller. Michael Flynn, who was Trump’s first national security adviser, admitted to lobbying illegally on behalf of Turkey when he pleaded guilty to a single count of lying to federal agents about his contacts with Sergey Kislyak, who was the Russian ambassador to the U.S. His cooperation prompted a Washington federal judge in Washington to delay his sentencing.
Richard Gates, who was Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s right-hand man in Ukraine for a decade and went on to work on the campaign and inauguration, has been cooperating with Mueller’s probe. He pleaded guilty in February 2018 to conspiring to deceive the U.S. government about his work with Manafort and their financial accounts. He testified last year against his former boss. On March 15, Mueller asked for a 60-day extension on Gates’s sentencing, citing his ongoing cooperation.
Stone Aide
Late last month, a three-judge panel in Washington unanimously rejected a salvo of legal arguments from Andrew Miller, a Roger Stone ally who spurned Mueller’s grand jury subpoena seeking his testimony last year in favor of a court fight over the special counsel’s legitimacy.
The ruling leaves intact a trial court order holding Miller in contempt for his failure to appear before the grand jury.
Mystery Lender
An unidentified benefactor lent more than $1 million to Manafort’s family through a Nevada company just as his legal battles were beginning. Mueller asked a court to force the company to reveal the initial source of the money.
--With assistance from Shannon Pettypiece and Greg Stohr.
To contact the reporters on this story: Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net;Chris Strohm in Washington at cstrohm1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, Larry Liebert
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