Robert Mueller gets attorney to plead guilty in Trump-Russia scandal
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has revealed that he’s brought criminal charges against the nineteenth person involved in the Trump-Russia scandal, and the fourteenth in just the past five days. This time it’s an arguably even more surprising move than Friday’s indictments against the Russians. Mueller has brought criminal charges against, and obtained a guilty plea from, Trump-Russia attorney Alex Van der Zwaan. So now we’ve reached the point where Mueller is even going after attorneys.
Alex Van der Zwaan admits that he lied to investigators about the contact that he’d had with Trump adviser Rick Gates, who is also set to plead guilty this week. Gates has already given his plea deal interview to Mueller, and this appears to be the first known fruit of it. Van der Zwaan also deleted emails after being asked to turn them over to Mueller.
Van der Zwaan has a number of connections to the Trump-Russia conspiracy, and we don’t yet know if those connections are why Mueller flipped him. But even the details of this give away a lot about how Mueller is going to proceed when it comes to dealing with Donald Trump’s advisers and associates. He nailed this guy on criminal charges simply for refusing to turn over the information that had been requested. That same general description fits dozens of Trump’s own people, both from the campaign and from the White House.
In other words, Robert Mueller may end up indicting or charging hundreds of people in the Trump-Russia scandal before it’s over. He’s already at nineteen, with five of them now having agreed to plead guilty, and yet these charges have barely scratched the surface when it comes to the criminal activity that’s been alleged in this scandal. This is a sign that everyone is going down who committed even a whiff of a crime. It’s also a sign that Mueller’s arrest phase is accelerating.
