Robert Mueller

Trump Startled by Cozy Barr-Mueller Relationship

January 17, 2019 at 8:08 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“President Trump was startled Tuesday as he watched television coverage of his nominee for attorney general describing a warm relationship with the special counsel Robert Mueller in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee,” CNN reports.

“While Barr said during his hearing that Trump ‘was interested’ in hearing about the friendship, the details that emerged this week caught the President off guard, the three sources said. He bristled at Barr’s description of the close relationship, complaining to aides he didn’t realize how much their work overlapped or that they were so close.”

Barr Suggests Mueller Report Might Not Be Made Public

January 15, 2019 at 3:14 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

In a back-and-forth with Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Attorney General nominee William Barr “threw cold water on the notion that special Robert Mueller’s report might be made public,” the Washington Post reports.

Said Barr: “As the rules stand now, the rules I think say the special counsel will prepare a summary report on any prosecutive or declination decisions, and that shall be confidential and be treated as any other declination or prosecutive material within the department.”

“Declination memos are written by Justice Department officials when they decline to file charges against individuals, essentially ending an investigation. Those memos are held very closely inside the government and not released to the public. By comparing any Mueller report to a declination memo or a prosecution memo, Barr’s answer suggested the long-awaited report from the special counsel may not see the light of day.”

Trump Again Rejects Mueller Request for Interview

January 14, 2019 at 8:05 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

President Trump’s team “rebuffed special counsel Robert Mueller’s request in recent weeks for an in-person session with Trump to ask follow-up questions,” CNN reports.

“The request was made after Trump’s team submitted written answers to a limited number of questions from Mueller’s team focusing on before Trump was in office.”

Graham Says Mueller Will Be Allowed to Finish Probe

January 9, 2019 at 12:12 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

President Trump’s attorney general nominee, William Barr, told Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) that he will allow special counsel Robert Mueller to finish the investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential election, Reuters reports.

Said Graham: “I can assure you he has a very high opinion of Mr. Mueller and he is committed to letting Mr. Mueller finish his job.”

Mueller’s To-Do List for 2019

January 8, 2019 at 5:55 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Garrett Graff: “Last Friday, just like Punxsutawney Phil, DC District Court judge Beryl Howell emerged from her chambers, saw her shadow, and announced six more months of Bob Mueller. Judge Howell’s extension of Mueller’s grand jury, which was set to expire over the weekend, was widely expected—the special counsel’s office has made clear in recent weeks that it has plenty of unfinished business—but the extension underscores just how much work is still left in Mueller’s probe.”

“In fact, surveying the 2019 landscape anew after a flurry of near-daily investigation revelations in the month following Thanksgiving makes clear that Mueller’s investigation has a packed agenda still ahead (not to mention a final report to write).”

Judge Extends Term for Mueller Grand Jury

January 4, 2019 at 9:28 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“A federal judge in Washington has extended the term of a grand jury hearing evidence uncovered by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, in his investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential race and the Trump campaign,” the New York Times reports.

“The jurors, impaneled in July 2017, will continue to meet for up to six months.”

Mueller May Submit Report In February

December 20, 2018 at 7:01 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Special counsel Robert Mueller “is nearing the end of his historic investigation into Russian election interference and is expected to submit a confidential report to the attorney general as early as mid-February,” NBC News reports.

Said a lawyer who has been in contact with the Mueller team: “They clearly are tying up loose ends.”

“The sources either did not know or would not say whether Mueller has answered the fundamental question he was hired to investigate: Whether Trump or anyone around him conspired with the Russian intelligence operations to help his campaign.”

Mueller Ready to Pounce on Trump Concessions to Moscow

December 18, 2018 at 9:04 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“For more than a year, special counsel Robert Mueller’s office has questioned witnesses broadly about their interactions with well-connected Russians. But three sources familiar with Mueller’s probe told the Daily Beast that his team is now zeroing in on Trumpworld figures who may have attempted to shape the administration’s foreign policy by offering to ease U.S. sanctions on Russia.”

“The Special Counsel’s Office is preparing court filings that are expected to detail Trump associates’ conversations about sanctions relief—and spell out how those offers and counter-proposals were characterized to top figures on the campaign and in the administration.”

“The new details would not only bookend a multi-year investigation by federal prosecutors into whether and how Trump associates seriously considered requests by Moscow to ease the financial measures. The new court filings could also answer a central question of the so-called Russia investigation: What specific policy changes, if any, did the Kremlin hope to get in return from its political machinations?”

Manafort Advised White House on How to Attack Mueller

December 14, 2018 at 12:00 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Paul Manafort “provided advice to the president and senior White House officials during the earliest days of the Trump administration on how to undermine and discredit the FBI’s investigation into whether the president, his campaign aides, and family members conspired with the Russian Federation and its intelligence services to covertly defeat Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign,” Vox reports.

“Manafort himself was under criminal investigation by the FBI during this same time, a fact then known to the White House.”

Giuliani Tells Mueller to ‘Wrap the Damn Thing Up’

December 12, 2018 at 8:52 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Rudy Giuliani unloaded on special counsel Robert Mueller, the FBI and Trump’s one-time fixer Michael Cohen in a Yahoo News interview.

Said Giuliani: “Our strategy is … to do everything we can to try to convince Mueller to wrap the damn thing up, and if he’s got anything, show us. If he doesn’t have anything, you know, write your report, tell us what you have, and we’ll deal with it. He can’t prosecute him. All he can do is write a report about him, so write the goddamned thing and get it over with now.”

Nothing Mueller Tells Us Is Worse Than What We Know

December 7, 2018 at 8:22 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

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Trump Says Approval Would Be 75% If Not for Mueller

December 6, 2018 at 10:40 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

President Trump claimed that his approval rating would be 75% if it wasn’t for special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

Said Trump: “Without the phony Russia Witch Hunt, and with all that we have accomplished in the last almost two years (Tax & Regulation Cuts, Judge’s, Military, Vets, etc.) my approval rating would be at 75% rather than the 50% just reported by Rasmussen.”

FiveThirtyEight has Trump’s average approval at just 41%.

14 Questions Robert Mueller Knows the Answers To

December 5, 2018 at 9:34 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Garrett Graff: “Decoding Mueller’s 17-month investigation has been a publicly frustrating exercise, as individual puzzle pieces, like Flynn’s sentencing memo, often don’t hint at the final assembled picture—nor even tell us if we’re looking at a single interlocking puzzle, in which all the pieces are related, or multiple, separate, unrelated ones. Mueller’s careful, methodical strategy often only reveals itself in hindsight, as the significance of previous steps becomes clear with subsequent ones.”

Is Matt Whitaker overseeing the Russia probe—and is his appointment as attorney general even legal?
Is Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross involved in any of this?
How closely related is the investigation of the 2016 election to the Trump Organization’s financial scandals?
How did Trump himself, and the Trump family, react to Cohen’s updates on various schemes?
What has Felix Sater told Mueller?
What has George Nader told Mueller?
What happens to Cozy Bear?
Who is the (unindicted) Atlanta traveler?
Why was Trump’s team so concerned about the transition documents?
How much more of the Steele Dossier is true?
Is it a coincidence that the Internet Research Agency scheduled a “Down with Hillary” rally in New York, weeks in advance, for the day after WikiLeaks dumped the DNC emails?
Why isn’t Mueller prosecuting Maria Butina and Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova?
Why is Mueller charging Michael Cohen?
Was the Guardian correct in reporting that Paul Manafort met with Julian Assange?

Mueller Preparing End Game for Russia Investigation

December 3, 2018 at 6:57 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors have told defense lawyers in recent weeks that they are ‘tying up loose ends’ in their investigation, providing the clearest clues yet that the long-running probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election may be coming to its climax, potentially in the next few weeks,” Yahoo News reports.

“The new information about the state of Mueller’s investigation comes during a pivotal week when the special counsel’s prosecutors are planning to file memos about three of their most high profile defendants — former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen.”

“A Flynn sentencing memo is due Tuesday, and memos about Manafort and Cohen are slated for Friday. All three documents are expected to yield significant new details on what cooperation the three of them provided to the Russia investigation.”

Mueller Leaves a Trail of Breadcrumbs

December 3, 2018 at 7:04 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Garrett Graff: “One of the least-noticed elements of the special counsel’s approach is that all along, he has been making his case bit by bit, in public, since his very first court filing. With his major court filings so far, Mueller has already written more than 290 pages of the ‘Mueller Report.’ And there are still lots of loose ends in those documents — breadcrumbs Mueller is apparently leaving for later.”

“By making such detailed filings, Mueller is actually increasing his burden of proof — suggesting a supreme confidence that he has the goods.”

“And by making so much public as he goes along, Mueller is also insuring against his probe being shut down or otherwise curtailed by the White House.”

Senate Intel Has Made Referrals to Mueller

December 2, 2018 at 2:26 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CBS News that his committee has made “a number of referrals” to special counsel Robert Mueller’s office for prosecution, and vowed to do the same for anyone who lies to congressional investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Said Warner: “If you lie to Congress, we’re going to go after you. We’re going to make sure that gets referred.”

Mueller Follows Trump Abroad Again

November 30, 2018 at 7:08 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“White House aides had hoped that the G-20 summit would be an opportunity for President Trump to showcase his deal-making skills. Now, they’re worried that special counsel Robert Mueller’s latest bombshell could overshadow his latest tour on the world stage. And some think that’s just the way Mueller wanted it,” Politico reports.

Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, called it “hardly coincidental” that Mueller made a dramatic legal move “just as the President is leaving for a meeting with world leaders,” adding that the chief Russia investigator “did the very same thing as the President was leaving for a world summit in Helsinki.”

Mueller Probe Hasn’t Cost Taxpayers Anything

November 29, 2018 at 11:55 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

New York Magazine: “As of September, the fiscal cost of the Mueller investigation was roughly $0.00. By that point, the probe had spent roughly $26 million. But, by striking a plea agreement with Paul Manafort for his myriad white-collar crimes — an agreement that required Trump’s former campaign manager to forfeit five multi-million-dollar properties, a life-insurance policy, and the contents of multiple bank accounts — Mueller’s investigation had acquired somewhere between $26 million and $42 million worth of revenue for the federal treasury.”