Mintz on Mueller Investigation Timeline

as possible. Whittaker's answers about the Muller investigation raised more questions than answers, and led some Democrats to express concern. Joining me as Repert Mints, a partner at McCarter in English, Bob, if you listen to Whittaker's entire answer was very halting and disconnected. So what does I think the investigation is

close to being completed mean? In a lot of the fact that Roger Stone has just been indicted in FBI agencies a lot of material from his home, Well, those do seem to be conflicting messages, and it was really unclear whether the Acting Attorney General was speaking off the cuff or whether this had been some kind of prepared statement. Typically,

prosecutors will not discuss the status of an investigation. They shy away from discussing the progress of where they aren't an investigation because they don't really want to tip off people who may be the subject of the investigation as to when this may be over. So it's quite unusual and does seem to be in conflict with the recent

indictment of Roger Stone. Whitaker also upsets some Democrats when he said decisions made by Muller's office are going to be reviewed by the Department of Justice, and there was some clarification by a Justice Department official after that. Where does the report on Mueller's stand as you understand it right now, Well, it's interesting because there are some technical

regulations which govern how that report will be handled. Under Department of Justice regulations, Mr Mueller is required to give the Attorney General a confidential report which explains his prosecutorial decisions and the results of his investigation, and then the Attorney General in this case, the acting Attorney General Matt Whittaker, must send report to Congress explaining why the work has concluded. And the real question is how much of Mueller's report

will Whittaker be sharing with Congress? Will it be the full report except to the extent that it has to redact information that may be confidential, or will he try to simply provide some type of summary to Congress? That is really what has some people on Capitol Hill concerned. Is there anything that Mueller can do to make sure that the report, except the redacted portions, is seen by the public. Can you do something with the grand jury

for example? Well, he can certainly release information as he has been doing throughout the investigation, through what are called speaking indictments. So, for example, in the Stone indictment, there was information that went beyond so will be the charges and included text messages and included emails, and so Mueller can release information through indictments. But really the heart of his investigation is going to be found in that report.

And I think there will be tremendous pressure on the Department of Justice to pass along the bulk of Mueller's findings to Congress and ultimately to the public. And you mentioned Roger Stone. This morning, Roger Stone, longtime friend and confidante of President Trump, pleaded not guilty to charges of witness tampering, lying to Congress, and obstructing its investigation into Russian interference with the election. And he said nothing this

time outside the courthouse. What do you make of his sort of it seems conflicting statements about whether he'll testify and whether he whether he'll tell the truth, and whether he won't testify. Well, he has been, as you as you know to June, all over the lot on this. Uh. He's someone who has historically enjoyed the limeline. He's been speaking a lot to the press about this, which is something that you don't see defendants in his situation typically doing.

What he essentually said is I'm happy to cooperate, but I'm not going to implicate the president. Prosecutors would say, well, you know, if you're going to cooperate, you just have to tell the truth. You can't put any kind of limitations on that. And so at this point it doesn't seem like he's interested in cooperating, but that may change looking at potential jail time, particularly someone of his age, has a way of sometimes changing people's minds, And we'll

just have to see how this plays out. Would Mueller even want his cooperation or testimony because of his past, because of the fact that he is happy to call himself and a person who exaggerates the truth and and brings press upon himself. Does he want that kind of a witness, Well, he does have a tremendous amount of baggage.

He has made so many public statements about what he knows and what steps he may have taken in connection with the campaign and reaching out to wiki leagues, and then he retracted those statements, and then he has obviously given statements in the form of emails and text messages which contradicts public statements. So he is somebody who who, if he does decide to cooperate, would have to have corroboration of what information he's providing, and he may be

able to lead Mueller's investigation to other witnesses. So there is some potential value there, But I agree that it would be difficult to use his testimony on his own because he has taken so many contradictory positions in the past. There is a lot of information, as you mentioned in

this talking indictment about emails and text messages. Do you see a defense for Stone when you read that indictment, Well, it does seem to be a pretty strong indictment because the most powerful evidence against Roger Stone are Roger Stone's own texts and emails, and it's very hard to sort of walk away from those. Typically the defendant will say they were taken out of context, and there's certain things that the jury needs to know in order to fully

appreciate what he was trying to say there. But those text messages seem to be pretty damning and they certainly do not paint Roger Stone in a particularly flattering light. We have about a minute here. We know that Manaforts sentencing was put off and Flinn sentencing was put off. We know why that happened. But what about Rick Gates? Is Mueller probably still getting information from him? I think

we can safely assume him that he is. I mean, Rick Gates is somebody who played guilty a long time ago, and if he had no further benefit to Robert Mueller, he would have been sentenced by this point. Yet that hasn't happened, so I think it safe to assume that he's continuing to provide useful information to Robert Mueller. And it's typical the prosecutors will not sentence a cooperating witness until they have extracted all the useful information that they

can from them. So we must be continuing to help the Muller investigation. All right, thanks so much, Bob. That's Rerobert Min's a partner. McCarter in English.