When he was appointed a Justice Department special counsel in May 2017, Robert Mueller was assigned the task of determining whether presidential candidate Donald Trump and/or members of the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to elect Trump president. New court filings Friday by Mueller and federal prosecutors in New York City leave this central question unanswered.
In 19 months, the Mueller probe has expanded again and again, taking an ever-widening look over many years at a broad range of activities by people associated with the Trump campaign or who had business dealings with Trump long before he moved into the White House.
Some crimes that people have been charged with or even admitted to have nothing to do with Trump, but rather pertain to wrongdoing or alleged wrongdoing by people with some association with him.
Unquestionably, this is a fishing expedition that has caught some fish. Mueller and his team of prosecutors have secured indictments, convictions and guilty pleas from people with some affiliation with Trump – but as yet, there is no “smoking gun” saying there was Trump-Russia collusion to defeat Hillary Clinton and install Trump in the Oval Office.
Will this evidence turn up in the future? The only honest answer those of us without inside information can give is that we don’t know.
Much of Mueller’s activities are cloaked in secrecy. Many of the documents he has filed in court have large amounts of information blacked out – “redacted” in legal terminology – so we have no idea what they say. – READ MORE