Advancement on the Russian Front

There’s some other stuff in this but my 2 main impressions were the recent developments with Erik Prince and Cohen.

Mueller makes crucial headway in Russia investigation
by Melanie Schmitz, Think Progress
Jun 25, 2018

First Prince-

Special Counsel Robert Mueller this week was given “total access” to the phone and personal computer of Trump ally Erik Prince, who met with a Russian official in the Seychelles shortly after the 2016 election, ABC News reported Monday.

A spokesperson for Prince, the founder of the private security firm Blackwater who donated $250,000 to President Trump during the 2016 election through his campaign and two super PACs supporting him, confirmed the report in a statement, saying that Prince had “cooperated completely with the Special Counsel’s investigation.”

“As Mr. Prince told the Daily Beast he has spoken voluntarily with Congress and also cooperated completely with the Special Counsel’s investigation, including by providing them total access to his phones and computer,” the spokesperson stated. “Mr. Prince has a lot of opinions about the various investigations, but there is no question that they are important and serious, and so Mr. Prince will keep his opinions to himself for now and to let the investigators do their work.”

Prince, who was allegedly attempting to establish a “backchannel” between the Trump White House and the Kremlin, according to U.S. and Arab officials, is under investigation by the special counsel’s office over that meeting, which took place on January 11, 2017, one week prior to Trump’s inauguration. He has been under investigation since March this year, and the Washington Post first reported the meeting in April 2017.

The Blackwater founder has denied that the meeting, reportedly with Kirill Dmitriev, was planned ahead of time. Prince maintains that the meeting was a chance encounter over beers, and that they made no effort to establish a backchannel, as the Post reported. Dmitriev was appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin to run the country’s $10 billion sovereign wealth fund in December 2013.

Other stuff. Cohen-

Trump’s longtime attorney, Michael Cohen, appeared ready to begin cooperating with federal prosecutors in New York as well. This development would, according to ABC News, “hit the White House, family members, staffers and counsels hard.”

Cohen has long been viewed as Trump’s “fixer” and was named in the now-infamous Steele Dossier, which detailed allegations of misconduct and possible collusion with Russian officials by Trump and several campaign associates. According to the dossier and subsequent reports by McClatchy’s D.C. bureau, Cohen allegedly traveled to Prague ahead of the election to meet with Russian officials and bury any evidence of collusion, allegations which Cohen has vehemently and repeatedly denied.

In April, the FBI, acting on behalf of the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, raided Cohen’s home, office, and hotel room, on a referral from Mueller’s office. Agents were reportedly looking for records and documents related to the two hush-money payments, eventually seizing 3 million files, only a few hundred of which were covered by attorney-client privilege.

On June 13, ABC News reported that Cohen had dropped his legal team and was preparing to cooperate with federal investigators in exchange for leniency.

I’ve read some speculate Mueller already knows everything and is looking to do an indict/see yah mic drop on everybody who hasn’t cut a deal (including the family, but probably not Trump) and leave the trial work to others in the multiple cases that will ensue.

He has Article 3 ability to publicize stuff using his public legal filings to make them his report to Congress so they have to accept it and decide to Impeach a Traitor or not? No running from this. Career DoJ works the cases like busy beavers to preserve their aura of invinciblity and to stab each other in the back for a mention in the Post or The Times, which is what they do all the time anyway.