Another new sealed indictment surfaces out of Robert Mueller’s favorite court

Nine days ago, four sealed items surfaced on the docket in the Washington DC federal court, and it raised a number of eyebrows. This is the court where Robert Mueller does most of his indicting, and it came shortly after Mueller had indicted and arrested Donald Trump’s pal Roger Stone. Now another sealed item has surfaced on the docket, adding to the intrigue.

The four previous sealed items had filing numbers that were grouped together in a manner that suggested to Palmer Report that they were four felony charges against two different people. If those were Robert Mueller’s cases, he’s still sitting on them, possibly because he wanted to tack on more charges before unsealing the incitements and making the arrests. So it’s notable that a fifth sealed item has now surfaced.

The new sealed item is labeled 19-CR-41. That doesn’t tell us much one way or the other about whether it’s connected to the previous items, which were labeled 19-cr-24, 19-cr-25, 19-cr-28, and 19-cr-29. Charges in the same indictment are usually bunched together numerically, but with nine days having passed, the jump all the way from 29 to 41 could simply be a matter of too much time having passed to keep them sequential. So does this mean Mueller is about to arrest someone?

That’s anyone’s guess. There is no proof that these items are even Robert Mueller’s doing. But docket items aren’t generally sealed unless there’s a compelling reason to keep the target’s name out of the public purview, which would fit right in with the kind of sensitive work Mueller is doing. In any case, Mueller hasn’t busted anyone on a weekend. That said, he did arrest Paul Manafort and Rick Gates on a Monday, so it’s worth keeping an eye on what happens after the weekend.