Aug 31, 2018 - Politics & Policy
Robert Mueller's secret files
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Illustration: Rebecca Zisser/Axios
With speculation hot among the president's legal team that today could be a day for action by Bob Mueller (last working day before Labor Day), remember all the evidence the special counsel has — or could have — that we haven't seen.
Why it matters, from Bob Bauer, former White House counsel to President Obama, and now an NYU Law professor: "Investigators have the skills and resources to turn up evidence, including witness testimony, that goes beyond what anyone on the outside can imagine in the daily speculation about the Mueller probe."
"How many had heard of George Papadopoulos — until the day we heard of George Papadopoulos?"
"Who would have predicted an indictment, like the one brought against Russian intelligence officials, that reads like the synopsis of a le Carré novel?"
The evidence we've yet to see:
- President Trump's tax returns.
- Trump bank records, which are more valuable than tax returns.
- Internal Trump Organization records.
- More recordings from Michael Cohen.
- Cellphone records (metadata showing calls placed/received and duration) related to the Trump Tower meeting.
- White House and campaign emails and text messages. (Trump's legal team said in January that the White House had produced more than 20,000 pages of materials, and the campaign had provided more than 1.4 million pages.)
- Contemporaneous notes of White House staffers from meetings with Trump.
- A full reconstruction by former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who made a plea deal, of his conversations about Russia and subsequent lies.
- Scores of hours of testimony of Trump insiders (including at least 20 White House personnel) about his private dealings, much of which is unknown to POTUS and the public.
- National Enquirer files revealed by today's N.Y. Times: Trump and Cohen "devised a plan to buy up all the dirt on Mr. Trump that the National Enquirer and its parent company had collected on him, dating back to the 1980s."
- As MSNBC analyst Matt Miller summarized: "Basically, everything!"
