So this is going to get real interesting, it looks like the Special Cousel investigation under Meuller is viewing this whole thing as a criminal investigation.
Quote:
Special counsel Robert Mueller has recruited the Justice Department’s top criminal law expert to help with his investigation of ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russian officials.
Deputy solicitor general Michael Dreeben, who has argued more than 100 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and oversees the Justice Department’s criminal appellate docket, will be assisting Mueller on a part-time basis, according to sources familiar with the arrangement.
While helping Mueller, Dreeben will continue in his role in the solicitor general’s office, with other lawyers in the office pitching in to help him with upcoming criminal cases.
The move signals that Mueller is seeking advice on the complexities that have arisen already in the investigations, including what constitutes obstruction of justice.
"Michael Dreeben is to criminal law what Robert Mueller is to investigations,” former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal said Thursday night. “Literally the very best. Yet another sign of how serious Mueller is about this matter." Now a partner at Hogan Lovells, Katyal has been a key figure in challenging President Donald Trump’s travel ban.
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http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id...20170509144545
This does not even count his prior appointments of heavy hitters
Quote:
Special counsel Robert Mueller is assembling a prosecution team with decades of experience going after everything from Watergate to the Mafia to Enron as he digs in for a lengthy probe into possible collusion between Russia and President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
His first appointments — tapping longtime law-firm partner James Quarles and Andrew Weissmann, the head of the Justice Department’s criminal fraud unit — were the opening moves in a politically red-hot criminal case that has upended the opening months of the Trump White House.
Mueller is expected to take an expansive view of his role. He inherited a spate of existing federal probes covering figures including the president’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser, Jared Kushner, and former campaign hands Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and Carter Page.
Mueller brings a wealth of national security experience from his time leading the FBI in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Veteran prosecutors say he has assembled a potent team whose members have backgrounds handling cases involving politicians, mobsters and others — and who know how to work potential witnesses if it helps them land bigger fish.
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http://www.politico.com/story/2017/0...e-trump-239163
Aaron Zebley, Jeannie Rhee, and James Quarles.
Quarles is also notable for having been a part of the Watergate prosecution team. We also have the head of the DoJ's Criminal Fraud Division, who prosecuted Enron, Andrew Weissmann --and this article tells us about Deputy solicitor general Michael Dreeben.
So we're up to 5 confirmed prosecutors so far, plus Mueller himself.
Even now when Trump has lawyered up and temporarily had his tweeting rights taken away, he is still only being represented by Kasowitz, a real estate litigator vs. the insane team of prosecutors that Meuller is assembling. I wonder how badly they will steamroll Trump's real estate legal team given no one else will represent him atm. Rumor is also they are trying to nail GOP Senators and Congressmen on RICO charges.
Commentators are saying Trump is likely under investigation at this point mostly because firing Comey.
Quote:
Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer believes that President Trump is now under investigation by the Justice Department amid probes into ties between the Trump campaign and Russian election interference.
Recounting Thursday's high-profile Senate testimony from former FBI Director James Comey, Krauthammer said Trump was likely frustrated that Comey would not publicly confirm that he wasn't under investigation despite private assurances.
Krauthammer added that actions Trump made in frustration may have backfired.
"Comey handing over his notes to former [FBI] Director [Robert] Mueller, who is running the [special] investigation, means that Trump is now under investigation," Krauthammer said Friday during the Faith and Freedom Coalition's Road to Majority conference in Washington.
"That's the irony — all he was trying to do was to get the story out that he wasn't, but in pursuit of that, he created a string of events where it's likely, we don't know, he is under investigation."
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http://thehill.com/homenews/administ...-investigation