It looks like (at least) five more arrests are coming soon in Donald Trump’s Russia scandal
Today we saw the arrests of two Donald Trump campaign advisers, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, and we learned that a third adviser George Papadopoulos was quietly arrested (and pleaded guilty) before that. Now the question becomes who else in Donald Trump’s orbit is about to get arrested, and how many arrests are forthcoming. Official court records provide a big clue toward answering that question – and the number of forthcoming arrests looks to be sizable.
Although the Papadopoulos and the Manafort-Gates case are two different cases, they’re both playing out in U.S. District Court in Washington DC. That same court has four sealed cases with case numbers between that of Papadopoulos and Manafort-Gates, as flagged by reporter Steve Reilly in a tweet (link). That doesn’t prove that the four cases are all Trump-Russia cases, but it means that they most likely are. We’ve observed today that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been lining his ducks up in advance so he could come firing out of the gate today. That means there are likely indictments already in place in the other four cases as well.
Those four Washington DC cases, assuming they are all indeed Trump-Russia cases, translate to at least four upcoming arrests. Manafort and Gates were on the same indictment, so it’s possible that each of the other four cases also has multiple targets. That means we could be looking at far more than four upcoming arrests, but it would mean at least four. So why does the headline of this article say five? That’s thanks to a different district.
It’s long been confirmed that Robert Mueller has been pursuing Michael Flynn in federal court in Virginia. If he’s also being arrested soon, which by all accounts seems likely, then we’re looking at five or more upcoming arrests: at least five from the Washington DC court and at least one from the Virginia court.
