Robert Mueller Could Release A Second Report
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report to Congress on the Russia investigation is likely to arrive sometime soon, according to various media reports in recent weeks. Said report is expected to lay out which crimes, if any, were committed in relation to allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
According to a new report this week, Mueller could put out a second report later on.
The Daily Beast‘s Nelson W. Cunningham wrote this week that a potential second report could deal with the counterintelligence aspects of Mueller’s long investigation.
“The most public and familiar one is as a criminal investigator under the special counsel regulations,” Cunningham wrote in the piece. “But Mueller has also carried a second charge, as a counterintelligence expert, with a much broader charge to determine and report the scope of any interference and any links to the Trump campaign — what Trump himself might refer to as ‘collusion.'”
Cunningham also noted that any counterintelligence report produced by Mueller could not be “bottled up,” and by law would have to be shared with Congress. Even if it’s not shared with the full Congress, such a report could be shared with the “Gang of Eight,” which consists of the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, as well as the leaders of each chamber.
I love that my WaPo friends not only know the Mueller report will be out by March 26, but that it will be of a length to fit neatly into a 720-page tome https://t.co/bbkUXmSuQS
— Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein) March 11, 2019
Robert Mueller, a former FBI director, was named special counsel in the spring of 2017. This appointment was made following Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey, and the recusal from the Russia investigation of then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Mueller has obtained numerous indictments of Trump associates, and guilty pleas from former campaign manager Paul Manafort, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.
There are several loose ends remaining in Mueller’s investigation, including the “mystery appellant” case — per Reuters — and whether or not Donald Trump Jr. is indicted. Mueller’s report could conceivably lead to the impeachment of the president, although House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in an interview this week, per The Inquisitr, that she does not support the impeachment of the president. Pelosi stated that such an effort is not worth the divisiveness it would cause.
Even after the release of any Mueller Report, Trump will face additional investigations — including Congressional inquiries, the Southern District of New York’s probes into alleged hush money payments, as well as state-level investigations into his business dealings. Investigations have also been launched pertaining to the financials surrounding his 2017 inauguration committee.
