Trump's legal team is scrambling to anticipate Mueller's indictment announcement

President Trump
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office will serve the first indictment in connection to the Russian election meddling investigation on Monday, NBC News reported Saturday, citing an unnamed official familiar with the situation. This comes one day after CNN broke the story that a grand jury approved unknown initial charges against an unidentified person.

For President Trump's legal team, the news meant a busy working weekend attempting to anticipate what Monday's announcement might be. The administration reportedly believes the most likely candidates for indictment are former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort or ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, but a Saturday Politico story said multiple lawyers in contact with representation for Manafort and Flynn indicated neither had been notified of a coming indictment, as is typical in white-collar cases.

Another possibility is charges for a family member of someone involved in the Russia probe. Mueller's team has permission from the Justice Department to examine "any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation," so charges against family could be used to pressure cooperation from the primary investigation targets.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

For his part, Trump suggested on Twitter Sunday that "All of this 'Russia' talk" is an attempt to distract from his tax reform agenda.

To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.