While it’s possible that Mueller is picking up people left and right, and it’s simply not getting into the news, given the indictments that we’ve seen, I think it’s more reasonable to assume that he’s picking up people who are relevant to his primary concern or at least relevant to a crime sufficiently noteworthy as to merit splitting the resources at his command to deal with it.
Mueller has (as I recall) 17 people. The FBI has tens of thousands. Mueller isn’t likely to be the one to go on a tear through foreign lobbyists that aren’t connected to Trump, Russia, or Flynn/Turkey.
I know a guy who served some time recently (about a year, IIRC) for his involvement with a big-time swindler. (His involvement was that he brokered a deal involving that guy. He claimed he didn’t know it was a swindle but he admitted to overselling how secure it was.)
According to him (as told to a mutual friend) the FBI people told him “we don’t set out to get guys like you. We’re after sharks, and you’re a guppy. But if we cast our net for a shark and a guppy gets swept up in that same net, we haul in the guppy too”.
[The comparison to the FISA issue was limited to the notion that there are some laws that are widely honored in the breach and no one does anything about them. But that can change in a hurry. The lobbyists scrambling to register are concerned that there will be renewed focus on this issue in the wake of the Trump scandal. But in the case of guys actually swept up in Mueller’s net, it doesn’t take anything more than that to result in an arrest.]
Manafort’s fate is about brazen and huge money-laundering; the not registering thing was just an initial attempt at pressuring him that didn’t work. But if it brings more under-the-radar foreign lobbyists out of the woodwork, so much the better.
Trump’s lawyers would like to cut a deal with Mueller. Terms unclear at this time, but might possibly involve limited parameters concerning the scope of a hypothetical Trump interview, and knowing just exactly when the investigation will stop investigating already. Boo hoo.
I’m confused at this “House Russia” probe quitting. What does this mean for Mueller’s investigation? Will he interview them? Do they turn over their “150-page report”? Couldn’t the republicans quash the investigation because of their little wishful-thinking report from their committee?
I don’t think it really means anything for this thread. The Republicans will issue a report on policy to implement against Facebook and such, probably keeping it within the realm of things that others have already recommended, so as to keep their heads low. The Democrats will issue a report about some questionable things they saw the Trump people do/say that they wanted to investigate further that will fuel the conspiracy flames but not actually provide much new (since everyone was already leaking everything already).
There might be some hope that the Shearer dossier, the second Steele dossier, or other scandalous documents will be released, but I expect that anything with actual merit against Trump will be held back since the Senate and FBI are still investigating them. Anything which is released would, presumably, be of questionable veracity and so should probably be ignored (regrettably). Though, I suppose, it might give us some sense of reality via negation, if my hypothesis of what will and won’t be released is correct.
Political posturing, and not very skilled at that, but on the day of a critical House by-election. For the GOP base, it lets the fact-based investigations be dismissed as the *real *political posturing. You saw Nunes try the same thing with the FISA “memorandum”, and it worked just as well.
No effect on Mueller’s criminal investigation, the “real” one if you like.
The new book by Michael Isikoff and David Corn ,Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump, came out today, but it is being overshadowed (understandably) by other news.
Hmm… this is not at all what Jeff Sessions said happened. Or the revised version of what Jeff Sessions said happened. Or even the revised revised version.
After all this time there no evidence of collusion. This Russian business was based on shoddy reporting using words like allegedly or according to sources. The was never any proof.
Don’t let the media formulate your opinions, no matter how much you want it to be true.
Maybe some fact like this would be nice.
Now should we investigate how Hillary Clinton spent 25 million from Iran and Saudi Arabia, and find out her quid quo pro with Russia paying her husband 1/2 million dollars for a speech too? I say pass, but if the left keeps beating these drums, why not.
Quite a bit of evidence of collusion is publicly known at this point. I’m curious what definition of evidence you are using that leads you to conclude that there is none.