Robert Mueller uses carrot and stick to move in on Donald Trump
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has taken a proverbial blowtorch to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who refused to cooperate with the Trump-Russia investigation, and has now been hit with a series of felony charges that could land him a combined three hundred year prison sentence. Mueller also dropped the hammer on attorney Alex Van Der Zwaan, who had barely any connection to the Trump-Russia scandal, but who lied to federal investigators about his minor role, and ended up having to plead guilty. But now we’re seeing Mueller break out the carrot.
Van Der Zwaan is not known to have cut any formal cooperation agreement with Mueller, but he did end up voluntarily turning over a recording he’d made of a phone call between himself and Rick Gates. Mueller ended up rewarding him by not charging him with obstruction of justice, and only hitting him with a lesser charge. As a result, Van Der Zwaan is expected to receive little or no prison time when he’s sentenced tomorrow.
Mueller is using the Van Der Zwaan case to demonstrate to other Trump-Russia witnesses what happens if they to sabotage the investigation (criminal charges), and what happens if they end up cooperating (the chance to avoid prison time). This doesn’t apply to people like Gates, who committed a number of serious crimes over the years, and will serve at least a few years in prison, even after cutting a plea deal to fully cooperate. But it does apply to the people around Trump who aren’t career criminals, and merely got caught up in helping him to obstruct the investigation.
Based on reporting over the past year, perhaps a dozen of Donald Trump’s current and former advisers appear to have conspired to obstruct justice by helping him to throw off the Trump-Russia investigation. Those advisers can take a look at Alex Van Der Zwaan, who will probably never wear prison stripes, and Paul Manafort, who will probably be sentenced to far more years than he has left on this planet, as their two options going forward. In other words, you can expect several of Trump’s advisers to flip on him, if they haven’t secretly done so already, thus helping Mueller to move in on him.
