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Credit to Author: Garrett M. Graff| Date: Tue, 08 Jan 2019 12:00:00 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n Last Friday, just <\/span>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\u2019s extension<\/a> of Mueller\u2019s grand jury, which was set to expire over the weekend, was widely expected\u2014the special counsel\u2019s office has made clear in recent weeks that it has plenty of unfinished business\u2014but the extension underscores just how much work is still left in Mueller\u2019s probe.<\/p>\n In fact, surveying the 2019 landscape anew after a flurry of near-daily investigation revelations in the month following Thanksgiving makes clear that Mueller\u2019s investigation has a packed agenda still ahead (not to mention a final report to write). Here are some of the loose threads and unanswered questions that seem most likely to be topping Mueller\u2019s to-do list as January begins:<\/p>\n One of the most intriguing pieces of unfinished business from Mueller\u2019s Thanksgiving flurry was the aborted plea agreement<\/a> with conspiracy theorist and would-be Wikileaks intermediary Jerome Corsi. Mueller clearly believes<\/a> that Corsi lied to investigators about his knowledge or role in Wikileaks\u2019 publishing of emails and documents stolen from Democratic officials by Russian hackers. Yet despite all the activity around Corsi, some intriguing movement<\/a> about Wikileaks founder Julian Assange\u2019s years-long asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and news about charges Assange may face in the US, the Corsi thread went cold in December.<\/p>\n Just before the holidays, the Daily Beast reported<\/a> that Mueller is moving toward making public one of his most-investigated-yet-least-seen inquiries: The impact of Middle Eastern influence in the 2016 campaign, focused around would-be power broker George Nader and Blackwater mercenary group founder Erik Prince (brother of Education secretary Betsy DeVos). Prince, who is apparently cooperating with Mueller, told CNBC Monday that he\u2019d rather receive a \u201cproctology exam<\/a>\u201d than be questioned by the special counsel\u2019s team.<\/p>\n One of the surprises buried in Mueller\u2019s December court filings documenting Paul Manafort\u2019s ongoing obfuscations<\/a> was that Manafort twice testified before Mueller\u2019s grand jury. That\u2019s potentially deeply significant precisely because we know<\/em> that Mueller thinks Manafort was lying repeatedly. The fact that they put him before a grand jury means that on whatever subject he was testifying, there\u2019s ample and important documentary evidence to back up (and box in) any grand jury testimony. We have yet to see what fruits that case may bear.<\/p>\n The onetime national security adviser\u2019s aborted sentencing in December was one of the month\u2019s oddest turns, as a furious judge encouraged Flynn to keep cooperating rather than face what appeared likely to be jail time. Judge Emmet Sullivan blasted<\/a> Flynn: \u201cArguably, you sold your country out.\u201d Sullivan got to read more than was publicly released both about Flynn\u2019s cooperation and his crimes\u2014and was clearly troubled by what he learned regarding Flynn\u2019s behavior. Is there more troubling information to come about Flynn that\u2019s relevant to one of the other investigations where he\u2019s cooperating?<\/p>\n There are complicated geopolitical machinations underway in the case of NRA hanger-on and Russian agent Maria Butina, who pleaded guilty<\/a> in December to charges known as \u201cespionage lite<\/a>\u201d and promised to cooperate with investigators as they trace her 2016 election contacts. Now, Russia has detained<\/a> an American, an unlikely espionage agent, in what appears to be an effort to jumpstart a prisoner exchange\u2014an exchange perhaps meant to cut short that very cooperation. Court papers have already pointed the finger at Russian banker-slash-handler Alexander Torshin<\/a>. Is he next in the government\u2019s crosshairs? The Butina case has always been one of the oddest threads of the Russia investigation. It could be entirely unrelated, or it could be deeply central.<\/p>\n Mueller\u2019s court filings have laid out that the special counsel believes that Kilimnik, Paul Manafort\u2019s business partner and codefendant, had ties to Russian intelligence in 2016. Yet we haven\u2019t seen evidence of why Mueller believes that\u2014and, more important, what relevance that has to the Trump campaign.<\/p>\n This week\u2019s Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives is likely to begin a flood of documents<\/a> from Capitol Hill to Mueller\u2019s team. When Michael Cohen was charged by Mueller with lying to Congress, it opened a new investigative angle\u2014and new House Intelligence chair Adam Schiff made clear that he thinks there are other aides who lied before his committee\u2014paging Donald Trump Jr.<\/a>\u2014and that he plans to turn over evidence and those transcripts to Mueller as he takes over the committee from Republican Devin Nunes.<\/p>\n Over the course of 2018, we saw significant movement across all four major areas of Mueller\u2019s probe into Russia\u2019s role in the 2016 election\u2014indictments around past Russian business deals and money laundering; indictments of the Internet Research Agency for its information-influence operations on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites (a case that continues to play in colorful ways<\/a>); indictments of Russian military intelligence officers for the theft and publication of Democratic emails and an attack on state-level voting systems; and then indictments of Trump campaign officials for lying about their contacts with Russian officials.<\/p>\n There\u2019s only one area of Mueller\u2019s probe where we never saw movement publicly in 2018: The big kahuna question of obstruction\u2014did President Trump pervert justice by firing FBI director James Comey or through any other actions, like his breezy, nothing-to-see statement<\/a> from Air Force One about the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower? Yet there were intriguing breadcrumbs in December about what Mueller is interested in obstruction-wise: Again in the Manafort court filings, Mueller points out that Manafort lied about having contact with the Trump administration in 2018. Who was he in contact with\u2014and why? There\u2019s virtually no legitimate, innocent reason for Manafort\u2014who was already under indictment at the time\u2014to be in contact with the White House through the spring of 2018.<\/p>\n Beyond the lengthy <\/span>list of loose threads of Mueller\u2019s probe, it\u2019s worth remembering too that the special counsel is hardly the only intrepid investigator that President Trump and his associated businesses face in 2019\u2014even before the House of Representatives restarts the long hibernating oversight process on Capitol Hill. Buried amid the New Year's revelry was news that the New Jersey attorney general and the FBI are looking into immigration violations<\/a> at President Trump\u2019s New Jersey golf course. Along with the 17 investigations<\/a> outlined last month, that would mean that Trump faces at least 18 distinct investigations, ranging from Mueller\u2019s to the New York attorney general\u2019s.<\/p>\n As we look at Mueller\u2019s to-do list, though, there\u2019s at least one person beyond the President himself\u2014who continues to decry the \u201cwitch hunt<\/a>\u201d\u2014who should be very annoyed at Robert Mueller\u2019s decisions thus far: Roger Griswold<\/strong>. The Connecticut congressman introduced the Logan Act, the law prohibiting citizens from conducting foreign policy, in 1798. Now that Flynn\u2019s case has wrapped up, it appears that Griswold\u2019s primary legal legacy might never be used.<\/p>\n The Logan Act has never been enforced in America\u2019s history, yet it\u2019d be hard to find a case more clear than the circumstances surrounding Flynn\u2019s guilty plea: his telephone calls in December 2016 to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, telling the Russians, apparently, not to worry about the Obama administration\u2019s sanctions because Trump would unwind them.<\/p>\n If Flynn\u2014a private citizen at the time\u2014calling the Russian ambassador to tell Russia to look past a foreign policy action by the White House doesn\u2019t constitute a case worthy of a Logan Act prosecution, it\u2019s hard to see what else might down the road. Legal (and political) precedent, after all, is made through prosecutorial discretion\u2014what\u2019s chosen to be prosecuted and what\u2019s not\u2014and any future Logan Act prosecution will likely be undermined by defense lawyers pointing to the set of facts around Flynn\u2019s calls and saying \u201cHow come prosecutors chose to charge our client and not Mike Flynn?\u201d<\/p>\n The decisions in such cases have downstream impacts as well. James Comey and the FBI have talked<\/a> about how their decision to rule that Hillary Clinton didn\u2019t commit a crime amid her email scandal was influenced by the previous prosecution<\/a> of CIA director David Petreaus for leaking classified information to a biographer. By drawing circles around Flynn\u2019s action\u2014saying his lies about it were a crime but not prosecuting the underlying telephone conversations with a foreign adversary\u2014Robert Mueller, intentionally or not, could set in motion a new foreign policy norm.<\/p>\n Mueller is following his tradition and instinct as a conservative prosecutor, charging the most clear crimes while leaving more exotic ones to the side, but his inaction here will influence a generation of public corruption prosecutors. When all is said and done, it\u2019ll be worth asking Mueller and his team: Why didn\u2019t they prosecute a Logan Act violation?<\/p>\n Garrett M. Graff (@vermontgmg<\/a>) is a contributing editor for WIRED and the co-author of<\/em> Dawn of the Code War: America\u2019s Battle Against Russia, China, and the Rising Global Cyber Threat<\/a>. He can be reached at garrett.graff@gmail.com.<\/em><\/p>\n