In early January, it was reported the the Mueller grand jury had been given a six month extension so it could continue to hear evidence and issue indictments.
In recent months, there have been several signs Mueller’s grand jury would press on.
Several associates of Trump adviser Roger Stone have received grand jury subpoenas. One associate is known to still be fighting a grand jury subpoena. Stone has not been charged with a crime, though has publicly stated he believes he will be indicted.Separately, a foreign-owned company is fighting another grand jury subpoena apparently related to Mueller’s investigation, with a challenge currently before the Supreme Court. And the criminal case against Concord Management is related to an “unidentified matter occurring before the grand jury,” Justice Department prosecutors wrote to a judge on Thursday.
Under federal rules, the court is able to extend a grand jury’s term for up to six months if it is “in the public interest.”
Now that Stone has been charged, the need for this grand jury appears to have been fulfilled. Not so fast, as our erstwhile MSNBC host Rachel Maddow points out:
“(U)nder Justice Department rules, once a Grand Jury has indicted somebody, that Grand Jury is not allowed to keep collecting more evidence randomly about that person who they brought an indictment against. The Grand Jury serves a specific purpose.”
“All Grand Juries do is indict people,” she explained. “If the Grand Jury is still working on this, still taking more testimony on this after Roger Stone has already been indicted, if this is still a live case before that Grand Jury, that means they are still working on another potential indictment related to Roger Stone and Wikileaks and what Russia stole from the Democrats.
“And it could mean that it’s just that Roger Stone will get indicted again — there could be some superseding indictment coming for Roger Stone on top of the seven felony counts he’s looking at,” she noted. “It could be that.”
“I feel like I would be remiss not to note that the one other person associated with the Trump campaign, besides Roger Stone, who admits to having months of communication with Wikileaks during the campaign … the only other person other than Roger Stone we know of that had months of communications with Wikileaks is … the president’s eldest son and namesake, Donald Trump, Jr.,” she reminded.
Rachel follows the dots of the frequency with which Donald Trump Jr.’s name seems to come up in discussions of Wikileaks contacts and potential lies to Congress, both of which appear to be topics of prosecutorial interest by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
On her Monday evening show, Rachel’s guest Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee expressed his concerns about the truthfulness of the testimony of Trump associates, especially, Donald Jr.
I was in the room when a great many of these witnesses appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee behind closed doors. I think many of them should be called back to testify in public, and I hope that will true of other congressional committees as well. Because behind closed doors, there arose in my mind very clear questions — serious issues — concerning their truthfulness. And that issue pertained particularly to Donald Trump Jr. in a number of his contentions before our committee. So I think this common thread of lying to Congress and particularly to congressional committees may ensnare a number of other potential targets in the special counsel’s investigation, and become a matter of criminal action. [..]
…behind closed doors, there arose in my mind, very clearly, questions, serious issues, concerning their truthfulness. And that issue pertained particularly to Donald Trump Jr. in a number of his contentions before our committee…
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