Sweating Out the First Weekend Before Russia Charges
The entire national media seems to be playing a game of Old Maid trying to figure out who is going to draw the last Queen in Bob Mueller's probe of darlings in his Russian nursery.
It appears someone will be brought before the Court Monday on an new Indictment. I'm not clear on whether it's one person or more, whether there will be a perp walk and public shaming arrest or a simple surrender to the Pretrial Services office, followed by an appearance in court for a first advisement and bond release, arraignment (or both.)
It seems to me the leaks are from defense counsel who have been given a heads-up to have their client show up at the courthouse, marshal's office or pretrial services office. (The days of public perp walks and shaming arrests, preferred by Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie when they were U.S. Attorneys, are long gone, and would give Trump and his followers something to whine about forever, distracting from whatever message Mueller is trying to send with this news. [More...]
My first suspicion (and that's all it is) is that this inaugural charge will be something along the lines of making a false Statement to a federal official or Obstruction of Justice or even Perjury before the grand jury -- and the person charged may not even be a key player. Mueller may be doing this to show he's serious and no one is going to stonewall him or get away with telling a tale instead of the truth. He also may be doing this to show someone who has been holding out against cooperating that he means business -- last chance to 'fess up and rat out the others before going through an expensive and public trial that will most likely result in a jail sentence.
So many of the people the FBI and then Team Mueller sought to speak with went voluntarily. One of the problems with submitting to voluntary interviews and not invoking the 5th Amendment when hauled before a grand jury is that there's very little you can do later if your truth doesn't match the Government's truth, other than take it to trial with the odds stacked against you. (Anyone remember Susan McDougal?)
Our jails are filled with people who thought if they could only tell their side of the story, the prosecutors would see it their way. It rarely happens. The Fifth Amendment is there for a reason: Use it or lose it.
My second suspicion is this relates more to Michael Flynn and/or his son than Manafort. (Of course, it could be both or a combination, or neither.) The timing of former CIA chief Woolsey's lawyer statement yesterday that Woolsey and his wife had co-operated with the probe, and Woolsey's connection to Flynn and their dueling plans to charge Turkey big bucks for a media campaign to get the guy Erdogan thinks is responsible for the coup in Turkey sent back there makes me suspicious. It sounds like the Woolseys sang for their supper and incriminated Flynn with a competing version of events. But I wonder, did the Woolseys get a complete pass, or half a pass (an offer to plead to a lesser charge with no prison time), for their cooperation? Did they change their original "truth" to match the Government's "truth," to get a deal for themselves by throwing others under the bus?
From the New York Times (modified for size):
I have plenty of things to do this weekend so I'm going to resist sleuthing who Mueller's target(s) may be. But I'll bet there are several current and former Trump associates who are expecting this scenario Monday:
My intuition tells me that with only 5 months into this probe, Monday's charges will be the first, not the last, by Team Mueller, and they will not go to the heart of the issue (was there collusion with Russia by Team Trump, as opposed to just forgotten events, a lie or attempted coverup) as opposed to simple easily provable charges like lying, that allow Mueller to wield his cooperation hammer: Either play ball with us or we may supersede with additional charges, including against your family members, later.
I think it will be many months, if not longer, before Mueller & team complete the money laundering and election interference parts of their investigation. For now I think he's just making clear there's a new Sheriff in town, and people better play along with him.
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