The media and public have been waiting with bated breath for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to submit his report to Attorney General William Barr, signaling the conclusion of the Russia investigation. This report may not be the end of Mueller’s probe-related prosecutions, however, as Law&Crime Network host Bob Bianchi explained on CNN Thursday afternoon.
Bianchi, who was formerly the head prosecutor in Morris County, New Jersey, told host Brooke Baldwin that there are still quite a few indictments that have been filed under seal. While we don’t know who they’re against or what they are for, Bianchi stated that this could have been a strategic play from Mueller.
“Don’t forget, there are about two dozen sealed indictments,” Bianchi said, predicting that these are likely the “most high-level targets.” He said that these indictments may have been saved “to bypass any funny business that may have gone on” in case Trump had fired Mueller in the middle of the investigation. Mueller was never fired, but these cases are still out there. Bianchi said that the prosecutorial strategy here would be that “in the event Mueller was removed, you can’t get rid of those indictments at that point because now they’re court documents.”
Based on that, Bianchi said, “I think you’re going to see a rollout of indictments that are going to happen after this report.”
The subject of additional indictments came up when Garrett Graff, author of The Threat Matrix: Inside Robert Mueller’s FBI and the War on Global Terror, disputed the notion that the last thing on Mueller’s to-do list was submitting his report to Barr. Graff pointed out that Mueller has gone into tremendous detail in his court filings, where he is able to control what information he puts out there and when.
“If Bob Mueller, I’m sitting there thinking ‘The only thing I control is the final round of indictments. That’s when I have the opportunity to make public whatever I feel needs to be made public, at whatever moment I feel it needs to be made public,'” Graff said.
[Image via SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images]
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