Here’s why Robert Mueller may be keeping sealed “Indictment (A)” against Donald Trump in his back pocket
The biggest news out of the criminal indictment against Trump advisers Paul Manafort and Rick Gates is that they’re both named in what’s been labeled as “Indictment (B)” – yet there’s not yet any “Indictment (A)” to speak of. That means Indictment (A) is still sealed, and by definition, it has to be higher profile than Manafort. There’s very good reason to believe that the sealed indictment is against Donald Trump. There’s also very good reason why Mueller would be keeping it in his back pocket.
First, here’s why the sealed indictment is most likely against Trump. Because it’s in tandem with the Manafort-Gates indictment, it has to be related to the specific charges that were brought against Manafort and Gates. Those charges center around money laundering, financial fraud, and money gained as unregistered foreign agents. The list of high profile people who could be named in Indictment (A) is very small: Trump, Mike Pence, Jeff Sessions, perhaps Jared Kushner. Trump is the only one of them with financial connections to Manafort. Thus, the only logical explanation is that the sealed indictment is against Trump (here’s link). The bigger question is why Mueller would seek a Trump indictment and then sit on it for now.
If this indictment is against Trump, it’s for financial crimes related to Manafort. That’s rather narrow, and it would only represent a small fraction of the things that Mueller wants to end up charging Trump with. Mueller can’t magically oust Trump from office simply by indicting him. Instead, he has to build up a war chest of evidence, witnesses, and indictments against Trump that he can unleash in order to make the overwhelming case that Trump is criminally culpable – because the ouster of a sitting president is still largely a political process.
Thus Robert Mueller’s reason for sitting on a sealed indictment against Donald Trump is fairly straightforward: he isn’t done building the full case against Trump yet, and in the mean time he’s pocketing indictments against Trump along the way.
