Stormy Daniels looms large for Donald Trump. Robert Mueller’s grand jury looms larger.

| 8:07 pm EDT March 26, 2018
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Now that Stormy Daniels has gone on national television and revealed just enough about her affair with Donald Trump to prompt him to set himself on fire, all eyes will be on him this week to see his inevitable self destructive reaction. And maybe Robert Mueller even prefers it that way – but the real story is Mueller’s Trump-Russia grand jury.

Statistically speaking, federal grand juries return indictments far greater than 99% of the time. An indictment gives the prosecutor a green light for criminally charging and arresting the indicted person. So when we learned this month that Mueller has a grand jury centered around ten of the biggest names in the Trump-Russia scandal, it’s not a question of whether arrests are coming, but rather merely who and when, because at least some of them will be indicted and arrested. Sam Nunberg testified before this grand jury sixteen days ago, but there is every reason to believe that it’s been underway for far longer.

So even as Donald Trump’s Stormy Daniels scandal wrecks what little is left of his marriage and his reputation, and creates new legal trouble for himself and Michael Cohen, it may not end up being the biggest story of the upcoming week. We have no way of knowing precisely when Mueller will ask this grand jury to hand down the next round of indictments. But this grand jury process is long enough in the tooth that we can expect those indictments to drop at any time.

So even as we wait to see whether Stormy Daniels has succeeded in baiting Donald Trump into a self destructive response to her interview, keep one eye focused on the bigger story looming in the background. Robert Mueller is going to indict and arrest members of Donald Trump’s inner circle. Grand juries only ever play out in one way. It’s just a matter of whether it happens this week or another week.