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Credit to Author: Garrett M. Graff| Date: Thu, 17 May 2018 11:00:00 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n Today marks the <\/span>one-year anniversary of Robert Mueller\u2019s appointment as special counsel<\/a> in the investigation of the Trump campaign\u2019s contact and relationships with Russia. For all the talk of the president\u2019s lawyers and the vice president about how it\u2019s time to \u201cwrap it up<\/a>,\u201d the truth is that for a federal investigation, Mueller\u2019s probe has moved with impressive rapidity<\/a>\u2014and, contrary to the president\u2019s repeated assertions of a \u201cwitch hunt,\u201d the validity of the investigation has gotten more solid<\/a> with every passing month.<\/p>\n Today, the first person sentenced to prison in Mueller\u2019s probe, a Dutch lawyer who lied about his knowledge of campaign chair Paul Manafort\u2019s past business dealing is Inmate #35255-016, serving his prison sentence at Allenwood Federal Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n Mueller\u2019s inquiry has also resulted in guilty pleas from Trump\u2019s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn<\/a>, campaign aide Rick Gates<\/a>, and campaign aide George Papadopoulos<\/a>, as well as two others swept<\/a> up in the case. Manafort himself is preparing for trial<\/a> on dozens of charges; if found guilty on all of them, he could face more than 300 years of prison time. Contradicting the \u201cwitch hunt\u201d language, a judge just this week upheld<\/a> the charges against Manafort, saying that the former campaign chair\u2019s work with Trump makes him a natural target for Mueller\u2019s investigators. Mueller\u2019s team of investigators<\/a> also charged<\/a> 13 Russians and three Russian companies with interfering in the election.<\/p>\n That\u2019s just the formal charges. The probe\u2014and its ever-expanding implications\u2014has had a much wider impact on the president\u2019s circle: It has led to the withdrawal of the president\u2019s nominee to be ambassador to Singapore<\/a>, as well as the withdrawal<\/a> of a former senior campaign aide nominated to one of the top jobs in the Department of Agriculture, and the downgrading<\/a> of presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner\u2019s security clearance.<\/p>\n And there\u2019s more: the questioning under oath<\/a> of presidential namesake Donald Trump Jr.\u2014about a previously undisclosed campaign meeting with Russian officials who proclaimed they had damaging information on Trump\u2019s opponent\u2014as well as the still unfolding revelations about the president\u2019s affair with and $130,000 hush money payment to a porn star that was also entirely hidden, which may turn out to be a crime itself<\/a>. Then there\u2019s the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, himself conflicted out of overseeing the investigation because of his own involvement in meetings with Russian officials during the campaign.<\/p>\n And let\u2019s not forget Michael Cohen, the president\u2019s one-time fixer and personal lawyer, whose offices were raided by the FBI and prosecutors from the Southern District of New York as part of an investigation that appears to involve everything from taxi medallions to potential campaign finance violations. Cohen\u2019s business empire<\/a>, such as it was, included suspicious payments<\/a> from top companies, as well as Russian a company closely connected to oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.<\/p>\n Vekselberg, meanwhile, is just one of the who\u2019s who of Russian oligarchs Americans are being educated about as they become caught up in the Mueller probe: There\u2019s Yevgeny Prigozhin, aka \u201cPutin\u2019s Cook,\u201d<\/a> indicted as part of the Internet Research Agency\u2019s disinformation and discord attack on Facebook and Twitter. There\u2019s Oleg Deripaska, former business partner of Manafort. There\u2019s Aras Agalarov, the real estate oligarch, and his son, Emin, who helped set up the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting<\/a>.<\/p>\n Altogether, it\u2019s hard to imagine, in fact, that any recent American president would have survived politically the year of revelations that have surrounded the Mueller investigation and related probes, including that by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which just Wednesday released findings from the panel\u2019s Democrats that the National Rifle Association was used by the Kremlin \u201cas a means of accessing and assisting Mr. Trump and his campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, a <\/span>year into Mueller\u2019s probe and nearly two years after the launch of the original FBI investigation (which we now know was codenamed CROSSFIRE HURRICANE<\/a>) there are more open questions\u2014and concerning assertions\u2014than there were when the case began.<\/p>\n The broad outlines of the investigation are by now clear: Mueller\u2019s probe involves at least five distinct lines of inquiry<\/a>\u2014money laundering and past business deals, information influence operations, active cyber penetrations, suspicious Russian campaign contacts, and obstruction of justice. However, in recent weeks, it\u2019s become clear the investigation has grown, with little public understanding, into something that\u2019s clearly much larger than a \u201csimple\u201d investigation into Russian\u2019s campaign meddling.<\/p>\n The year of Mueller\u2019s probe has established four conclusions inconvertibly:<\/p>\n 1. Russia did it<\/strong><\/p>\n Outside of the fever-swampy corners of @realdonaldtrump\u2019s Twitter account and Congressman Devin Nunes\u2019 conspiracies, the rest of the US government has concluded, clearly, that Russia was behind a multifaceted, complex influence operation and active cyber attack on the 2016 presidential campaign. Before Mueller\u2019s probe even began, the nation\u2019s intelligence community had concluded that fact, largely based on classified information. Then Mueller\u2019s indictment of the Internet Research Agency established publicly beyond any question that people close to the Kremlin meddled extensively, expansively, and expensively<\/a> in the election. Meanwhile, the Senate Intelligence Committee also on Wednesday announced that there was bipartisan agreement that not only had Russia attacked the 2016 presidential election but that it had done so to aid Donald Trump and harm Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n 2. There\u2019s a troubling timeline<\/strong><\/p>\n The revelations since Mueller\u2019s appointment has established plenty of questions about the unfolding aspects of the Russian attack and the campaign\u2019s potential knowledge of it, including that George Papadopoulos reportedly was telling Australian diplomats in London that there was damaging information on Clinton weeks before word about the DNC thefts leaked. Add in other developments, from the aborted attempts to restart a Trump Tower Moscow Project to candidate Trump\u2019s musings about wanting Russia to release Clinton\u2019s emails to Michael Cohen\u2019s payments to Stormy Daniels to the still-unexplained attempt to change the GOP platform to be more pro-Russia to the odd telephone calls and meetings during the transition, and it\u2019s clear there\u2019s a lot more explaining to do.<\/p>\n 3. People are lying\u2014and committing crimes<\/strong><\/p>\n Or maybe just everyone is forgetting about the truth a whole lot, consistently, when it comes to Russia. It\u2019s notable that so many of the president\u2019s top aides, from Attorney General Jeff Sessions to Jared Kushner to Donald Trump Jr. to Michael Flynn to George Papadopolous have gotten in trouble because of \u201cforgetfulness,\u201d omissions, or outright lies concerning meetings with Russians and Russian officials during the campaign and the transition.<\/p>\n 4. This is bigger than anyone thinks<\/strong><\/p>\n Mueller\u2019s probe today might just be the largest corruption investigation in recent American history, involving not just the attacks by the Russian intelligence services, the FSB and the GRU, on the election and Trump\u2019s relationships with Vladimir Putin\u2019s oligarchs but also examining the seemingly related and interconnected influence of a variety of foreign countries on Washington, including Qatar<\/a>, the United Arab Emirates<\/a>, and potentially even China<\/a>. We\u2019ve seen some of the capital\u2019s top lobbyists and lobbying firms<\/a> already felled by the investigation. And there\u2019s plenty of strange activity still unexplained, including a meeting by Erik Prince, the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, in the Seychelles that may have been an attempt to set up a backchannel with Russia<\/a>.<\/p>\n So, with those <\/span>four collections of facts and implications established in the first year of the Mueller probe, where does the investigation head next? We appear to be entering a new stage of the inquiry, one that focuses primarily on how the puzzle pieces connect.<\/p>\n We have thus far watched the Mueller investigation through the public equivalent of a soda straw, seeing only bits and pieces of what is clearly a sprawling effort\u2014a subpoena here, a search there, a witness testifying here. Bit players come and go, disappearing and reappearing without a clear indication of their ultimate importance. (Few Americans could explain who Joseph Misfud<\/a> or George Nader<\/a> is)<\/p>\n As Lawfare\u2019s Quinta Jurecic says<\/a>, \u201cYou get just a tiny glimpse, and there\u2019s a lot you can\u2019t see.\u201d<\/p>\n When the public hears about a new development, we quickly learn that Mueller has known about it months earlier. As just the most recent example, the blockbuster revelations of recent days that Novartis and AT&T paid Trump fixer Michael Cohen<\/a> six- and seven-figure payouts for \u201cinsights\u201d\u2014revelations that led to the ouster of top executives<\/a> at both companies\u2014were actually known to Mueller all the way back in November<\/a>. Mueller\u2019s first arrest and guilty plea, of George Papadopoulos, came without a single public rumor or peep until months later. By the time we find out someone like Viktor Vekselberg is even involved in the case, we find out that Mueller\u2019s team already intercepted<\/a> him at a New York City airport months earlier.<\/p>\n If Mueller is running four to six months ahead of public perception, it\u2019s safe to assume we have absolutely no idea where his investigation is today.<\/p>\n What does seem clear, though, is that Mueller knows where this is heading. Mueller is inside the room where we\u2019ve been only peering through the keyhole.<\/p>\n It\u2019s safe to say that he has what he views as incredibly important evidence\u2014including the cooperation of Flynn, Gates, and Papadopoulos\u2014that hasn\u2019t become public, yet some of which he\u2019s had potentially for eight months.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not public yet because Mueller doesn\u2019t want to make it public\u2014which in and of itself is significant, in so far as it tells us that that evidence is key to as-yet-unknown parts of the probe.<\/p>\n So far, we\u2019ve viewed each indictment distinctly; the Internet Research Agency indictment notably stops short of any implication of official Russian involvement, yet we know that the government believes it knows enough to indict Russian officials<\/a> involved in the hacking. Manafort\u2019s alleged money laundering stops short of discussing his campaign role, even though the scheme continued into his time at the campaign. The suspicious campaign contacts, by Papadopoulos and Flynn, stop short of any implication of active cooperation.<\/p>\n What seems likely is that the next stage of Mueller\u2019s investigation will begin to connect pieces that we\u2019ve only seen individually thus far, seeking to provide an answer to the big, looming question: How closely coordinated were the efforts by Russia to attack the election\u2014and who helped them on the American side?<\/p>\n While every day of the Trump administration seems a 1,000 news cycles long, each week packed with a year\u2019s worth of scandals and outrages, it\u2019s worth remembering just how short a time a year is in political investigation actually is. Watergate took twice that to play out. Ken Starr, Whitewater, and Monica Lewinsky took four times as long.<\/p>\n PHOTO ESSAY: The spectacular wonders of Europe\u2019s libraries<\/a><\/p>\n We need to talk about the ending of Avengers: Infinity War<\/a><\/p>\n A dying scientist and his rogue vaccine trial<\/a><\/p>\n Tesla\u2019s Elon Musk threatens to become a liability<\/a><\/p>\n Facebook just tapped the next Mark Zuckerberg<\/a><\/p>\n Garrett M. Graff (@vermontgmg<\/a>) is a contributing editor for WIRED and the author of<\/em> The Threat Matrix: Inside Robert Mueller's FBI<\/a> He can be reached at garrett.graff@gmail.com.<\/em><\/p>\n