Mueller’s Investigation May Have Switched Focus To President Trump’s Alleged Obstruction Of Justice
For over a month there has been silence from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion between President Trump’s election campaign team and Russia. The Mueller investigation team has already indicted four members of the Trump campaign team, including former campaign head Paul Manafort and Trump’s former national security advisor Michael Flynn. As previously reported by the Inquisitr, Mueller indicted Flynn at the end of November, but since then the silence from Mueller’s office has been deafening.
Of course, the day after Mueller indicted Flynn news broke that a member of the investigation team was reassigned after it emerged that he had been sharing anti-Trump messages with an FBI lawyer. As you would expect, President Trump and his supporters made much of the issue. Trump claimed that the revelations showed that the FBI and the Mueller investigation team were engaged in a “politically motivated witch hunt.” Facing those allegations, it is perhaps unsurprising that Mueller’s team has been quiet over the holiday period.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that the Mueller investigation has gone away. According to NBC News, the Mueller investigation is in talks to arrange an interview with President Trump himself. This apparently has Trump’s legal team scrambling to ascertain whether Mueller wants a face-to-face interview with Trump, or if they will be satisfied with written answers to questions. Trump’s lawyers are also reported to be looking into a potential compromise position that would allow Trump to avoid an interview altogether.
Of course, as reported by Business Insider, if the Mueller investigation wants to interview President Trump that gives a lie to Trump’s claims that he is not personally under investigation.
Has Mueller Switched Focus Away From Allegations Of Trump’s Collusion With Russia?
According to the L.A. Times, the relative silence from the Mueller investigation team in recent weeks may be the result of a change in the investigation’s focus. It has been widely reported that Mueller has already amassed sufficient evidence to indict both Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. They claim that defense lawyers familiar with the case claim that Mueller is now focusing on the allegations that President Trump obstructed justice when he fired former FBI director James Comey.
Comey claims that President Trump pushed him to drop the Russia investigation and to back off General Mike Flynn. It is widely alleged that Jared Kushner was instrumental in the decision to fire Comey when he refused. That decision, it is alleged, amounts to obstruction of justice by Donald Trump.
According to the Independent, team Trump was dealt another huge blow last week when Michael Wolff hurridly released his book Fire And Fury. Wolff’s book, which contains inflammatory claims by Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, was published early to avoid attempts by Trump’s lawyers to ban its publication. The book’s publication leads the Independent to claim that Bannon will prove to be a gift to the Mueller investigation.
It has been widely claimed that Mueller is targeting Trump’s inner circle, and the Daily Mail suggests that Mueller is now going after President Trump’s daughter Ivanka. Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., and Paul Manafort allegedly met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya to secure information that would damage Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. It is now claimed that Ivanka Trump may also have met with Veselnitskaya, though this may have amounted to nothing more than exchanging pleasantries.
The one thing that seems clear is that the Mueller investigation is far from over. It would seem that collusion with Russia, Trump’s business dealings, and the alleged illegal contact between members of President Trump’s family and the Russians are all matters that Mueller’s team is investigating. Mueller’s team may have been quiet for a few weeks, but we can expect further details to emerge in the near future.
