Sam Nunberg testifies for Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia grand jury and he’s naming names
Sam Nunberg has had one of the strangest weeks that anyone has had to date in the already historically strange Trump-Russia scandal. But after spending the week publicly melting down about how he was refusing to testify for Robert Mueller’s grand jury, in the end Nunberg decided he’d rather testify than get arrested. Now we’re learning about just how thoroughly he’s spilled his guts – and he’s not done yet.
Nunberg spent more than five hours testifying before the grand jury yesterday, and now he’s naming names. He’s informed ABC News that he was answering questions about Hope Hicks, Steve Bannon, Corey Lewandowski, Carter Page, Michael Cohen, and Keith Schiller (link). This helps confirm that Mueller is targeting these individuals as either criminal suspects or as some sort of uncooperative witnesses. You might notice that a few key names are conspicuously missing, as there were ten names on the original Nunberg subpoena. But this is, as it turns out, was just the warm-up act.
Nunberg says that he’s now scheduled to go back and testify before the grand jury five more times. This implies that the six names above are merely the peripheral players, and that the remaining names on the subpoena are the real focus of the grand jury. Those four names: Donald Trump, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, and Rick Gates. We can cross off Gates, as he cut a plea deal between the time this subpoena was sent and the time Nunberg testified.
This means that Robert Mueller is bringing Sam Nunberg back for five additional rounds of grand jury testimony that will focus entirely on Donald Trump, Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort. We’ve already seen Mueller’s massive criminal case against Manafort involving dozens of felony charges. This suggests that Mueller is building criminal cases against Trump and Stone that are just as massive.
