Special Counsel Robert Mueller is going after Donald Trump for Russian money laundering
Yesterday the New York Times asked Donald Trump how he would react if Special Counsel Robert Mueller began investigating his finances. Trump responded by threatening to fire Mueller if he did. What Trump didn’t know is that Mueller is already knee deep into probing Trump’s financial history, which the Times revealed immediately after publishing the interview. But now it turns out Mueller is investigating Trump specifically for his role in Russian money laundering.
It was the Wall Street Journal this afternoon that made the reveal, while not quite hitting the sweet spot of what’s really going on. The WSJ reported that Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel office is now taking over an existing federal investigation into alleged Russian money laundering by Paul Manafort (link). But here’s what this really means.
Mueller’s investigation into criminal activities on the part of Trump’s associates only goes so far as those activities relate to Trump. So his decision to take over the Manafort money laundering investigation means that, in his view, Trump was involved in some way shape or form with Manafort’s alleged money laundering. In other words, Mueller is investigating Donald Trump for Russian money laundering.
Based on his own words yesterday, we know that Donald Trump is more worried about what Robert Mueller will turn up in his financial history than what Mueller will turn up in his political interactions with the Kremlin. And now this tells us why: Trump appears to have been involved in Paul Manafort’s Russian money laundering antics, and he knows Mueller is going to find it, if he hasn’t already.
