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Credit to Author: Garrett M. Graff| Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2018 16:13:03 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n History may show <\/span>that Monday ranks among the most consequential days yet of Robert Mueller\u2019s 18-month special counsel investigation<\/a> into Russian interference<\/a> in the 2016 presidential election.<\/p>\n As George Papadopoulos, one of the most enigmatic characters<\/a> to emerge in Mueller\u2019s investigation, reported<\/a> to a Wisconsin prison Monday, a confluence of small developments may indicate that by the time he emerges from Federal Correctional Institute Oxford two weeks from now, we might know far more about the breadth of Russia's efforts\u2014and the Trump campaign's ties to them\u2014than we do now.<\/p>\n In fact, as the holiday season begins to unfold, it\u2019s clear that Mueller knows who\u2019s been naughty and who\u2019s been nice.<\/p>\n Paul Manafort, for one, is topping the naughty list.<\/p>\n A report Tuesday in The Guardian<\/em> <\/a> claims that Manafort met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a few months before the group leaked the hacked emails of Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. It's a potentially explosive revelation, one that Manafort has denied.<\/p>\n But even before that bombshell, Manafort might have unwittingly given Mueller just the opportunity he requires to make public even more details about the former Trump campaign chair, Russia, and the Trump campaign\u2019s activities in 2016. In a court filing Monday<\/a>, Mueller's team alleged that Manafort had lied to investigators, asking the judge to move immediately to sentencing. They also said they would provide a \u201cdetailed sentencing submission,\u201d outlining \u201cthe nature of the defendant\u2019s crimes and lies.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, Mueller plans to quickly issue a \u201creport\u201d on Manafort\u2019s activities, one that\u2014if it\u2019s anything like every other court document Mueller has filed<\/a>\u2014will be more informed, more knowledgeable, and more detailed than anyone anticipates.<\/p>\n He\u2019s been writing the long-anticipated \u201cMueller Report\u201d bit by bit, in public, since his very first court filing.<\/p>\n That Paul Manafort may have been caught lying again is hardly surprising: The core of the underlying charges against him\u2014like bank fraud and tax fraud\u2014stem from years of lies to the IRS, the government, and financial institutions. What is surprising about Manafort\u2019s apparent misbehavior, though, is the extent to which he seemingly never internalized just how much Mueller knows. The special counsel has apparently caught Manafort twice already in embarrassing lies: When he tried to deny ghostwriting an op-ed supporting himself, prosecutors showed the court the Microsoft Word track changes<\/a> edits he\u2019d made; when he tried to align his story with a witness, Mueller\u2019s team hit him with witness tampering charges<\/a> and showed the court his encrypted text messaging conversations.<\/p>\n Nor is it surprising that Mueller would potentially seize the opportunity of Manafort\u2019s plea agreement violation to introduce all manner of evidence about his misdeeds.<\/p>\n In fact, such a move would be entirely consistent with one of the most surprising and least noticed aspects of Mueller\u2019s approach all along: He\u2019s been writing the long-anticipated \u201cMueller Report\u201d bit by bit<\/a>, in public, since his very first court filing.<\/p>\n Those waiting for Mueller to issue some massive, 9\/11 Commission\u2013style report at the end of the investigation often overlook the sheer volume of detailed information Mueller has pushed into public view already. Nearly every court document he has filed has been what lawyers call a \u201cspeaking indictment<\/a>,\u201d going into deeper detail and at greater length than is strictly needed to make the case for the criminal behavior charged.<\/p>\n Similarly, his \u201ccriminal informations,\u201d the indictment-like documents filed as part of guilty pleas, have often included extraneous evidence of additional, formally uncharged criminality. In former national security adviser Michael Flynn\u2019s plea agreement<\/a>, Mueller detailed<\/a> how Flynn served as an unregistered foreign agent for the government of Turkey. Manafort\u2019s criminal information\u2014a document that often is only a few pages, the bare minimum that prosecutors and a defendant will agree upon\u2014this fall stretched to nearly 40 pages, including voluminous details about the so-called Hapsburg group, European politicians enlisted in Manafort\u2019s alleged scheme, information that hadn\u2019t appeared in any of the indictments or charges against Manafort until that point.<\/p>\n With his major court filings<\/a>, Mueller has already written more than 290 pages of the \u201cMueller Report.\u201d As Lawfare\u2019s Benjamin Wittes has said, if a 9\/11 Commission\u2013style body had gathered in the wake of the 2016 election to study Russian interference, its findings would read much like Mueller\u2019s novelistic charges against<\/a> the Internet Research Agency and the military intelligence agency commonly referred to as the GRU<\/a>.<\/p>\n Together with the charges against Michael Cohen<\/a> by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York\u2014which stemmed from findings by the Mueller investigation\u2014the Justice Department has outlined over the course of this year two separate alleged criminal conspiracies that aided the election of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.<\/p>\n But even that\u2019s not the full story.<\/p>\n Mueller\u2019s courtroom strategy\u2014guided surely by Michael Dreeben<\/a>, one of the nation\u2019s top appellate lawyers\u2014has been all but flawless. His prosecutors have batted away numerous challenges, and he has notched a steady stream of guilty pleas. Earlier this fall, when Manafort became the first and only of those cases to go to trial, Mueller\u2019s team convinced a jury of his guilt in each area of crimes they charged and, according to reporting afterward, came within a single vote<\/a> of conviction on all 18 charges.<\/p>\n And now, Manafort\u2019s apparent dissembling has given Mueller\u2019s team an excuse to publish everything they know about Manafort\u2019s \u201ccrimes and lies,\u201d whether they\u2019ve been publicly discussed yet or not. That could potentially include new information about that mysterious 2016 Trump Tower meeting\u2014prompted by a Russian offer to help the campaign\u2014or details about the apparent Assange connection.<\/p>\n A Manafort sentencing submission, meanwhile, would sidestep the current awkward question of delivering a \u201cMueller Report\u201d to the acting attorney general, Matt Whitaker<\/a>, that could be suppressed politically or redacted before release.<\/p>\n Beyond the surprise twist in the Manafort case, a number of signs in recent weeks indicate that Mueller might be moving toward further indictments\u2014and perhaps even some big ones, an end-of-year denouement.<\/p>\n Mueller\u2019s team has reportedly been laser-focused since the spring on Trump aide Roger Stone, who has said for months that he expects to be indicted. Stone has long been suspected of contact with WikiLeaks, potentially relating to the hacked Podesta emails. Likewise, the screws have recently tightened on Stone ally and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, whose plea deal with Mueller, The Atlantic<\/em> reports<\/a>, appears to have fallen through.<\/p>\n It\u2019s clear that Robert Mueller knows who\u2019s been naughty and who\u2019s been nice.<\/p>\n All of which further coincides with an odd flurry of activity around Assange himself, who has lived at the Ecuadorian embassy in London<\/a> since 2012 in self-imposed exile to avoid potential criminal charges. The ambassador who has helped protect and negotiate on Assange\u2019s behalf since 2015 was removed<\/a> from office last week by Ecuador\u2019s president, adding to an exodus of staff who have supported Assange over the years. After the departure, WikiLeaks said Thursday on Twitter, \u201cAll diplomats known to Assange have now been terminated to transferred away from the embassy.\u201d Similarly, WikiLeaks has tweeted that Assange\u2019s lawyers have now been barred from visiting him.<\/p>\n The increasing isolation of Assange comes after news leaked earlier this month that the US has prepared criminal charges against him\u2014leaks that apparently were confirmed<\/a> by a too-hasty cut-and-paste job in unrelated court documents.<\/p>\n In another critical thread of the investigation, President Trump over Thanksgiving finally turned in long-awaited written answers<\/a> to Mueller\u2019s investigators. Knowing what we now know\u2014that Mueller took no public action during the entire period while he waited for Trump\u2019s responses\u2014it stands to reason that Mueller wanted to avoid taking any action that might spook the president.<\/p>\n For instance, Manafort\u2019s lack of cooperation happened in mid-November. The special counsel's office delayed<\/a> the filing until Monday, after it had Trump\u2019s written answers safely in hand.<\/p>\n And still there\u2019s more. According to Vanity Fair<\/em><\/a>, the president\u2019s son, Donald Jr., told people earlier this month that he expects to be indicted soon\u2014action, again, that might have been purposefully delayed until after his father turned in the answers to the \u201claw school exam<\/a>\u201d\u2013like questions.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, alleged Russian spy Maria Butina is in plea negotiations<\/a> too; the charges relating to Butina and her ties to conservative gun rights groups like the NRA are technically separate<\/a> from Mueller\u2019s special counsel investigation, but that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean she\u2019s unrelated to his case.<\/p>\n Similarly, earlier this month, a number of Mueller\u2019s prosecutors were hard at work<\/a> on Veterans Day\u2014when Michael Cohen mysteriously appeared in Washington too.<\/p>\n All of which is before you even get into more speculative questions, like ABC News\u2019 recent reporting of the abnormally large number\u2014three dozen, in fact\u2014of sealed indictments<\/a> filed over the course of the year in DC. Fully 14 of those sealed indictments have been added to court records just since August, a period where\u2014as far we publicly know\u2014Mueller\u2019s investigation remained quiet.<\/p>\n Put all those pieces together and it\u2019s clear the special counsel is building toward something. He knows how this story ends. The only question that remains: Who else in the Trump orbit should expect coal in their stocking, courtesy of Robert Mueller?<\/p>\n