If you saw either the New York Times report or our summary of it this morning, you know that the arrests that have been made so far in the Mueller special counsel probe have been significant — but nowhere near all there is to this.
In fact, the pattern seems to be one of Mueller making his way up the food chain, from low-level contacts and emissaries that met with Russians to those directly inside Donald Trump’s inner circle. And if the number of contacts each person had either directly with Russia or through an intermediary like WikiLeaks — and how materially they affected the campaign — are any indicator, Mueller’s grand finale will be a sight to behold.
Yesterday’s high-profile arrest of Trump surrogate Roger Stone has legal analysts and experts talking about what could be next in the case, and many seem to agree that Donald Trump Junior, the President’s eldest son, may have been correct when he began predicting two months ago that he would be arrested soon.
Junior’s top-level involvement in setting up the Trump Tower meeting in June of 2016, one of the most open and blatant examples the public is aware of regarding quid pro quo with the Russians, seems almost like an apéritif when taken in conjunction with the fact that the intended result of that meeting — the lifting of sanctions against Russia — was all part of an effort to complete the biggest real estate transaction that his father ever undertook, a Trump Tower in Moscow. In order to build that, not only would sanctions have to be lifted on bankers, but also on producers of raw materials — and Trump has tried to lift sanctions on all of them during his presidency.
Keith Boykin, a former White House aide and now a CNN legal analyst, said on Friday that the arrest of Roger Stone shows that Mueller is working his way “to the top” — and that Don Jr. and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner should be worried:
Roger Stone will not be the last Trump associate to be charged. Special Counsel Robert Mueller is methodically working this case to the top. If I were Donald Trump Jr. or Jared Kushner, I would be very afraid right now. https://t.co/yL2DFcDEVJ
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) January 25, 2019
And those who have worked with Mueller in the past all say the same — that this was his style both at the FBI and in many other large investigations.
We just hope Junior likes orange as much as his dad seems to.
Featured image via screen capture
