Twenty-two new criminal charges emerge against seven new defendants in Donald Trump’s Russia scandal
In the nine days since Special Counsel Robert Mueller began making high profile arrests in Donald Trump’s Russia scandal, all eyes have been on him for his next move. Various Trump-Russia suspects have begun panicking and tripping over each other in the wake of the initial arrests. Meanwhile, federal court records reveal that a lot more arrests are just around the corner – a whole lot more.
Mueller has primarily been running his Trump-Russia cases through the U.S. District Court in Washington DC. Earlier this week we noted that since the arrests of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates took place, an additional seventeen sealed charges had been added to the publicly available DC schedule, against what appeared to be five individuals. Now that even more charges have been added, for a total of twenty-two criminal charges against what appear to be seven different defendants (link). This means these arrests are all imminent at Mueller’s discretion, if they haven’t already taken place secretly. So who’s getting popped?
Charges are only sealed for good reason, so it’s nearly a given that all of these charges are related to the Trump-Russia scandal. Due to their sealed nature, we don’t know for certain who’s being targeted. However, we can narrow it down quite a bit. Based on case numbers, none of these new charges are against Manafort or Gates, meaning we’re looking at seven new defendants. Mueller is already pursuing Michael Flynn in the Eastern District Court of Virginia, so unless he’s simultaneously pursuing Flynn in two different federal districts, none of these seven people are Flynn.
With the indictments in place and the charges filed, Robert Mueller can carry out these arrests any time he likes. He may be giving them one last chance to cut a deal before he hauls them in, or he may be lining up all his indictments so he can simultaneously arrest all of them. One way or the other, seven more arrests are forthcoming.
