After the dramatic arrest and indictment of longtime Donald Trump friend and adviser Roger Stone on Friday morning, as CNN reported, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency said in a televised interview that he now expects special counsel Robert Mueller to unleash a flurry of new indictments in the Russia collusion investigation — and those indictments will hit “a significant number of names that will be quite familiar to the average American.”
Former CIA Chief John Brennan told MSNBC on Friday that the new indictment shows that the Mueller investigation is uncovering an “extensive effort” to tamper with the 2016 presidential election, an effort that involves both Americans and Russians, according to the Hill .
Mueller hit Stone with a 24-page indictment charging Stone with making false statements to investigators, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering.
But though coordination with Russia is not included in the actual charges against Stone, the indictment also includes details of what Mueller’s investigators say was Stone’s coordination with WikiLeaks over the release of thousands of emails stolen by Russia hackers from the Democratic party and Hillary Clinton campaign. The online publication of the stolen emails threw the 2016 presidential campaign into chaos and led to the resignation of Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, as the Washington Post reported
“And so I think the shoes that are yet to drop are going to be the ones that are going to be the most profound.” – Fmr. CIA Director John Brennan pic.twitter.com/dVpXfoffc7
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) January 25, 2019
“The indictment of Roger Stone, who was arrested Friday by the FBI and charged with lying to Congress, provides the first detailed evidence that Stone was a go-between for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign with WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange,” wrote Bloomberg News columnist Noah Feldman.
According to Brennan, the Stone indictment will lead to many upcoming indictments, likely in the next 60 days.
“To me, all these indictments are going to be basically the compendium of the Robert Mueller investigation… I expect there to be a significant number, and a significant number of names that are going to be quite familiar to the average American,” Brennan said in the interview on the MSNBC Morning Joe program, as quoted on Twitter by MSNBC producer Kyle Griffin.
“A 7-count indictment is a very serious one… the special counsel’s office is uncovering the evidence it needs. So just like Mr. Stone’s indictment, I’m not going to be surprised by the other indictments that are going to be coming down the pike very soon,” Brennan also said, according to Griffin on Twitter .
Stone appeared in court Friday morning and was released on a $250,000 bond. Stone and Trump have been associates since the early 1980s, as Inquisitr reported, when Stone and now-jailed Trump campaign boss Paul Manafort opened a political consulting firm and made Trump their first client.