It is the calm before the storm. Special Counsel Robert Mueller kept his investigation quiet during the final weeks of the midterm campaign. But Mueller hasn’t gone anywhere, and many believe he’s just weeks, if not days, away from delivering his long anticipated report.
Advisers to President Trump are preparing themselves for Mueller to deliver the results of his investigation to the Justice Department as early as tomorrow, although it’s more likely he’ll wait till later this month.
Sources tell Vanity Fair that besides the president, the ones with the most exposure are Roger Stone and Donald Trump Jr.
Stone, a longtime confidant of Trump, believes Mueller will indict Trump Jr. as part of the Russia federal investigation.
“The special counsel is going to charge Donald Trump Jr. with lying to the FBI,” Stone said.
The indictment would stem from a controversial June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Trump Jr., former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, and Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.
The meeting was organized on the premise that Veselnitskaya would share politically damaging information about then-Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, according to emails Trump Jr. released on social media.
But in an explanatory statement issued in July 2017 when the meeting came to light, Trump Jr. said it was primarily about Russian adoptions.
“I’m very worried about Don Jr.,” said a former West Wing official who testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The possible exposure would be that Mueller would demonstrate that Don Jr. perjured himself to investigators when he said he didn’t tell his father beforehand about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting to gather “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.
Stone may face legal exposure amid Mueller’s federal probe as well.
A number of Stone’s associates have already been subpoenaed and spoken to by federal prosecutors.
Stone could be in trouble if he knew the WikiLeaks dump of emails belonging to Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta during the 2016 campaign, was obtained by Russian intelligence.
Stone has both bragged about his association with WikiLeaks as well as distanced himself from the nonprofit organization and its founder, Julian Assange.
One potential sign of how seriously Trumpworld is treating the Mueller threat has been the near total silence of Rudy Giuliani.
A constant presence on cable news over the summer, Giuliani hasn’t been on television in weeks.
“What the hell happened to Rudy?” a former White House official said when asked about Giuliani’s whereabouts.
Mueller’s team has indicted or gotten guilty pleas from 32 people and three companies.
That group is composed of four former Trump advisers, 26 Russian nationals, three Russian companies, one California man, and one London-based lawyer.
Six of these people (including now all four former Trump aides) have pleaded guilty.
If you also count investigations that Mueller originated but then referred elsewhere in the Justice Department, you can add plea deals from two more people to the list.
It’s a sprawling set of allegations, encompassing both election interference charges against overseas Russians, and various other crimes by American Trump advisers.