Is it SAFE????

Trump's inner circle might escape Mueller charges — but still won’t be safe

Federal prosecutors and Democratic committees are just getting started.

By DARREN SAMUELSOHN

Even if special counsel Robert Mueller finishes his work without filing new charges, President Donald Trump and his associates won’t be in the clear.

In recent weeks, several prominent figures close to Trump have insisted that they’ll survive Mueller’s probe unscathed. Trump himself maintains that Justice Department officials have told his lawyers he is not a target of the special counsel’s investigation. And his family members have sent similar signs. Trump’s oldest daughter, Ivanka, recently told ABC News that she has “zero concern” about the investigation. Her brother, Donald Trump Jr., told Fox News on Monday that he wasn’t worried because “we know there’s nothing there.”

But Mueller is far from the only threat to the president, his family and aides.

Federal prosecutors in New York are examining Trump’s 2016 campaign, inauguration and businesses. Congress has given the Justice Department dozens of hearing transcripts that could contain lies told under oath. State and local prosecutors have reportedly prepped new charges that can’t be erased with a presidential pardon. And a slate of sealed indictments sit in the Washington, D.C., federal courthouse, raising the prospect that some in Trump’s circle may have already been indicted and just don’t know it.

“If anyone in Trump world is breathing easy right now, I’d say they are very foolish,” said Shanlon Wu, a defense lawyer who previously represented Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman, Rick Gates. “Even if Mueller’s report were to appear and didn’t implicate the president, all these other criminal investigations will continue. That’s not going to be the magic bullet that solves everything. I’d be very concerned if I was a lawyer or a potential target in that world right now.”

Lawyers for Trump and several other senior officials told POLITICO that they are as much in the dark about Mueller’s next moves as everyone else trying to decipher whether the special counsel really is close to wrapping up his probe, as several media outlets reported last week.

They’re also grappling with the reality that even if Attorney General William Barr releases a summary of Mueller’s report, the document will likely be scrubbed of the names and details of anyone who wasn’t formally charged — offering people who have been living under a legal shadow no exculpatory evidence.

“That’s the maddening thing about investigations,” said James Trusty, a former senior DOJ official who is close to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. “They’re not religiously compliant about banging the gong and announcing, ‘Hey, you’re done, you’re no longer being looked at.’”

Federal prosecutors in most investigations can leave suspects “dangling in the wind for years,” Trusty added. “You’re literally looking up statutes of limitations and saying, ‘Well, it’s been four years, maybe I’m done.’”

Several sources close to Trump’s White House say the real threat is not Mueller’s examination of potential collusion between Trump associates and Russia in the 2016 campaign.

Instead, they fret that people around the president could get indicted for misleading lawmakers — one of the key charges that Mueller recently lodged against longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr told CBS earlier this month that his panel during the course of its two-year Russia investigation had “not been shy” in referring people to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. The House Intelligence Committee recently voted to send more than 50 of its transcripts to Mueller.

“These guys took the whole Congress thing way too lightly. They didn’t understand [members and aides] actually listen, take notes and record this shit,” said a senior Republican official in regular touch with the White House. “I think they all took it way too nonchalantly and didn’t think it matters — and boy does it.”

“If you lie in a sworn deposition to Congress or anybody else then you should be worried. That’s how people go to jail,” added Barry Bennett, a former Trump 2016 campaign adviser.

Mueller has publicly indicted 34 people and three companies, while securing guilty pleas from former senior Trump aides Gates, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen.

While Mueller could charge others before closing up shop, it’s also possible that he has already placed more indictments like ticking time bombs into the federal court system. Seventeen cases filed there so far this year remain under seal, as well as another 57 from last year.

All those cases could be unrelated to the Russia probe, but their filing in the same district in which Manafort, Gates, Flynn and Stone were charged makes them worth watching, said Brett Kappel, a Democratic campaign finance lawyer who has been tracking the sealed cases.

For all the rhetorical fire Trump has focused on Mueller and his “witch hunt,” meanwhile, the president himself remains at high risk from multiple other investigations.

In New York, federal prosecutors have been seeking interviews with Trump Organization executives and recently subpoenaed donor and financial records from the Trump inauguration committee. They have also secured several cooperating witnesses close to the president, including Cohen, longtime Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg and David Pecker, CEO of the National Enquirer’s parent company.

“They’re investigating with a lot of resources examining every aspect of this man’s life,” said Jon Sale, a former prosecutor from the Southern District of New York and close friend of Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. “Any one of us who had so many people investigating everything you’ve ever done, you know, is in jeopardy.”

Congressional Democrats also appear to be just getting started. On Wednesday, the House Oversight Committee is scheduled to grill Cohen in public about everything from Trump’s compliance with campaign finance and tax laws to his company’s business practices. “What you’ll see is a man who wants to share the inner workings of the Trump crime family,” Omarosa Manigault, a former Trump White House aide ousted last year, told MSNBC on Saturday. “He knows everything about this family.”

Democrats also want to see the guts of Mueller’s work. Last Friday, the chairmen from six key committees wrote Barr seeking any details related to “foreign actions and other individuals who may have been the subject of a criminal or counterintelligence investigation.” They also requested any documentation about whether Trump “engaged in criminal or other serious misconduct” but wasn’t indicted based on DOJ policy that says a sitting president can’t be charged while in office.

Trump associates hoping for a presidential pardon met with bad news last week when The New York Times reported that Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. is preparing to file state criminal charges against Manafort. The 69-year old former Trump campaign chairman next month is expected to get what amounts to a life sentence from two federal judges tied to his conviction last year for financial fraud and a separate guilty plea. While Trump said last November he hadn’t ruled out a pardon for Manafort, that act would only rescue the former Trump aide from federal charges, not state ones.

Some people close to Trump scoff at the idea that any investigations threaten the president.

In a recent interview, Giuliani told POLITICO that the SDNY probe “will have the same result that the Mueller investigation of collusion had.”

“In fact, I’m even more confident of that because we have even more documents, more records, more things show the president didn’t do anything that you can remotely criticize him for,” he said.

Trump Jr. on Monday said he wasn’t worried about the ongoing probes, which he ascribed to a partisan vendetta against his father’s 2016 election win.

“I’m not saying they’re not going to try. Listen, their dream in life, this is as political as it gets, their dream in life is to try to find something to get Trump,” he said on the morning show “Fox & Friends.” “I mean, [it’s] that old Stalinist tactic: ‘Show me the men. I’ll show you the crime.’ We just got to find it and we can massage things enough.”

“So, there’s no doubt that they’ll try. But again, I know how we function as a company, I know how we function as individuals, and that’s why despite all of this for two years we don’t appear all that worried because we know there’s nothing there,” he said. (Last November, POLITICO reported Trump’s oldest son had told friends that he expects to be indicted.)

Trump’s Justice Department may ultimately not be helping the president and his allies if it follows through on Barr’s pledge, stated during his confirmation hearing, to avoid any kind of public naming and shaming of people who aren’t charged.

“If you're not going to indict someone, then you don't stand up there and unload negative information about the person. That's not the way the Department of Justice does business,” Barr said last month during his Senate confirmation hearing.

Michael Caputo, a former Trump 2016 campaign adviser who’s been questioned by both Mueller and congressional investigators, said anyone connected to the president should understand that Mueller’s report could be just the end of the beginning of their legal ordeal.

“I think everyone will be happy when the Mueller investigation concludes but the Democrats in the House and Senate aren’t going to give us a pause anytime soon,” he said. “We’ve all strapped in and I wouldn’t advise anyone to unbuckle."