Some Thoughts On the Possible Ending to Mueller's trump-Russia Investigations w/Update

With Roger Stone now indicted on charges related to the Russian attempts to sabotage/hack/subvert our 2016 elections, what is exactly happening now and what's next?

From what we've been tracking, this is what's been established so far (via Margaret Hartmann and Nick Tabor at New York):

• George Papadopoulos was charged with lying to investigators about his interactions with Russian agents, and has already served jail time. He is reportedly assisting Mueller's investigations.
• Paul Manafort and Rick Gates allegedly laundered millions for Russians, and met with Russian agents about helping trump's Presidential campaign. Gates plead out and is helping: Manafort was convicted by a jury on several charges, plead out, then turned out to be lying about all that, which revoked his deal and has sent him back to court to re-face his convictions.
• Michael Flynn, whom trump picked to serve as his National Security Advisor, had to resign and faced charges on lying to investigators about his Russian ties. He plead out and is helping the investigation.
• Mueller proved to a grand jury that Russian operatives and businesses engaged in deliberate computer break-ins, social media propaganda, and other coordinated efforts to subvert the 2016 elections. This is a key point to remember as the rest of the investigation focuses on how and when trump's own campaign worked with these people, which would be serious federal violations (52 US Code s30121).
• Michael Cohen, trump's personal lawyer for years, was caught paying off women to hide their adulterous affairs with trump during the election, which interfered with campaign finance regulations. While this doesn't directly relate to trump's Russian activities - which is one reason Mueller handed this off to another office with the Dept. of Justice - Cohen did meet with Russians on other matters that would have established illegal financial arrangements before, during, and after the election.
• The most recent development was Roger Stone getting charged with lying to investigators about his contacts with WikiLeaks - which was getting hacked Russian info and dropping them at key points of the campaign cycle to "scandalize" Hillary - and also threatening/tampering with a witness. Stone left a sizable paper trail on this, suggesting an easy court win should it go to trial.

This is where we're at after two years of grand jury indictments and ongoing FBI/Intel digging. It doesn't look like much, but there's a lot of meat there... and there's supposed to be more stuff - additional indictments for key trump figures like Jared Kushner and donald trump junior - still under seal.

But what should we really expect over the next few months?

Part of what we're waiting on is the Democratic majority in the House handing over their Intelligence Committee's interviews conducted (rather haphazardly and biased to favor trump) the past congressional term. There are testimonies given - especially by Stone and trump junior - that may conflict with what Mueller's teams have, meaning certain people can get charged down the road with Lying to Congress (they don't even have to have been put under Oath in these matters). While the Republicans are trying to delay the release of documents to the Justice Department (and Mueller), they can't delay the inevitable on this.

With regards to Mueller's timing, he seems to release the indictments he has - again, the few stories that get leaked tend to agree he's got plenty of sealed indictments - when he's figured there is nothing more he can get about a suspect without taking him to trial and seeing if he'll flip. In a case like this, the paperwork and phone calls can only prove so much: Making the connections between players and getting them to confess is how the case gets proven to a jury.

What Mueller's working on is a serious matter: it involves charging a sitting President of having cheated to get that office, and relying on an adversarial foreign power (Russia) for getting it. There are old sayings at play here, referring to Ralph Waldo Emerson - "when you strike at a king you must kill him" - and Omar Little - "when you come at the king you best not miss." Mueller is going at the Head of State for the United States of America. He's got to have his i's dotted and his t's crossed for this.

Which is why this has been such a slow and painful process for a lot of Americans who have been convinced since the twisted outcome of November 2016 that serious crimes went down. Ever since trump openly called on Russia to hack Hillary and the Democrats in August, the fears of trump being Putin's puppet have been out there, and each new revelations seems to prove those fears true.

So it's been a long long looooong process - psst, is trump in jail yet?! - but we should recognize we're getting towards the end of that process.

For starters, Mueller has kind of gotten every known player lined up with their testimonies. While he's reportedly interested in getting more interviews out of trump, he's already gotten some questions answered by questionnaire that may be enough to go on. (The other buzz is that Mueller knows everything: the intel agencies have apparently picked up so much evidence that Mueller could probably go to trials without testimony anyway. Still, it helps to get testimony just to drive the nails in...)

There are still those sealed indictments, reportedly targeting some of the bigger names left on the board (Kushner, junior). If we look at this like a flowchart for a Mafia organization, Mueller has gotten the foot soldiers (Papadopoulos) and some of the Capos (Stone, Manafort) and even the Consigliere (Cohen). All that's left are a handful of remaining Capos (Bannon, Hicks?) and then the Underboss(es), the ones trump relies on the most to run everything for him. You don't get the Underbosses until you're ready to get the Boss himself.

That's his Inner Circle. In the Mafia, that's almost always family (the ties of blood are the strongest). That's Kushner and that's junior.

And when those indictments come out, that's the point of no return. Whatever it's been that has held trump back from shutting down the entire Justice Department and FBI to end Mueller's work will go away. trump will fight back to save his Inner Circle of family because that is all he has left to stay in power.

There's one other thing to consider at play: 2020.

While Mueller has to take his time, he is facing another clock and that's the next Presidential election cycle. We are already getting people announcing their campaigns for the Democratic ticket. Like it or not, we're getting into that horse race (again).

It's been noted that the government agencies don't like to interfere with political campaigns: They are well aware of the electoral consequences of public announcements of criminal investigations (which is one reason why FBI Director Comey's letter about Hillary's emails in October 2016 remains a major faux pas). While they had some evidence of trump's involvement with Russia by August 2016, the intelligence agencies didn't want to make any statements about it without political cover from both President Obama and Congressional Republican leaders. When McConnell refused to give permission, the intel agencies kept quiet... until it was too late.

We're coming up to a similar consideration. While it's obvious trump will have to answer about all this during his 2020 re-election efforts (unless the Beltway media wimps out as usual), the FBI and other agencies will be under enormous pressure during 2020 if those investigations were still ongoing. They are likely to get everything they have - well, everything they can release from national security concerns - out to the courts and let the Judiciary handle all the headaches before the Primaries begin at the start of next year.

Mueller should be expected to end everything this year - 2019 - before it directly affects 2020. It's merely a question now of which month.

I got good money on it happening in April. I figure it takes, what, six months at the earliest to start court trials? That should make it October 2019 when the big trials start, should go to jury by November 2019...

Tick-tock, on the clock. DJ Mueller gonna wrap this up.

(Update 1/28): FiveThirtyEight just published this the day after I published mine. It's a little more thorough than my take (and more focused on the political responses) but doesn't look at the impending deadline the investigations clearly face. And damn I keep feeling I'm always one step ahead of these guys talking about this stuff...