Post-Mueller, federal prosecutors are already off and running with at least one of Donald Trump’s scandals
When Special Counsel Robert Mueller announced on Friday that his work was complete and that he wasn’t recommending any more indictments, Palmer Report pointed out what we thought was obvious: if Mueller was stepping off the stage, he was handing off (or already did hand off) his ongoing investigations to permanent federal prosecutors in order to ensure that justice would be served. It turns out we’re already getting confirmation of some of this.
For instance, Law & Crime has pieced together the details of two different New York Times stories, and figured out that federal prosecutors based in Los Angeles are currently investigating the Donald Trump inauguration scandal. Best anyone can tell, the inauguration probe – which allegedly involves numerous illegal foreign donations, and an alleged attempt by Trump at steering the money back into his own business – began when federal prosecutors in New York raided Michael Cohen’s office and found a tape recorded conversation about inauguration funds.
The recently released search warrant from the Cohen raid revealed that Robert Mueller initiated the Cohen investigation, only to find that Cohen didn’t conspire with Russia, but that Cohen did commit other Trump-related crimes. Mueller then handed off the Cohen case to the Feds in New York, and their raid has since led to the Feds in Los Angeles investigating the Trump inauguration.
This thread alone makes clear that Robert Mueller’s investigation has set off other federal investigations into alleged Trump-related crimes. So the idea that Mueller’s investigation is “complete” or “wrapped up” is nonsense. It’s just that Mueller is no longer in charge of any of the ongoing investigations. Notably, the existence of these investigations only tends to become public knowledge once they reach the point where something such as a raid causes it to become public knowledge. So we don’t know just how many Mueller-spawned criminal investigations into Trump scandals are ongoing – but the number isn’t zero.
