In an opinion piece published in today’s Los Angeles Times former deputy assistant attorney general Harry Litman said that special counsel Robert Mueller is about to drop a major bombshell on the Trump White House.
This morning Litman tweeted:
“OK sports fans, commentators predict Robert Mueller’s next steps at their peril, but there is good reason to expect one or more blockbuster developments in the next few weeks.”
OK sports fans, commentators predict Robert Mueller's next steps at their peril, but there is good reason to expect one or more blockbuster developments in the next few weeks.https://t.co/yEZ4ekHYbj
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— Harry Litman (@harrylitman) November 20, 2018
Litman is now a constitutional law scholar at UC San Diego and UCLA, and is a regular contributor on MSNBC.
In his op-ed Litman pointed out that during the first half of 2018 Mueller has been securing evidence to indict Russian nationals who interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
And now, according to Litman, Mueller has turned his attention to U.S. citizens, and he has been gathering evidence concerning which Americans worked to help the Russians.
“There are concrete indications that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is now about the business of laying down the last big pieces of the puzzle of Russian intervention in the 2016 election,” Litman wrote. “The actual charges are likely to be one of three criminal conspiracies: violating federal election laws, violating computer laws, or soliciting or receiving something of value from a foreign government. Charges, in other words, that not even the most ardent Trump die-hard could trivialize.”
Litman then said that Mueller might possibly name Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator in future indictments if the evidence supports that conclusion.
In reaching his conclusions, Litman cited a recent court filing made by Mueller’s team concerning the case of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. In his plea deal from last summer Manafort agreed to fully and completely cooperate with federal investigators.
“Mueller requested a 10-day delay in submitting a status report on the ground that the later report would ‘be of greater assistance’ to the court’s work determining what sentence Manafort deserves,” Litman explained. “Mueller’s request strongly suggests that we’ll soon see important additional information bearing on the value of Manafort’s cooperation, up to and including a potential role as a key witness in a soon-to-be-unveiled criminal case.”
To Litman this means that Manafort will probably soon implicate some of the people in the Trump campaign who were “higher up in the food chain.”
Everyone knows that there are only a few people “higher up in the food chain” than Paul Manafort. Other than the president himself, this could only mean Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner or even Eric Trump.
The whole world seems to be anxiously awaiting Bob Mueller’s next move. Harry Litman’s new speculation will do nothing but throw more gasoline on the fire. Many people are growing very impatient: we want indictments of the “bigger fish” in the Mueller probe, and we want them soon.
I am a lifelong Democrat with a passion for social justice and progressive issues. I have degrees in writing, economics and law from the University of Iowa.
