Mueller told Trump lawyers remains under investigation, not currently a criminal target

News of Trump’s current disposition in Mueller’s probe has apparently received mixed reactions among the president’s associates, who are divided about how much Trump should cooperate with Mueller’s investigators. If that isn’t collusion, the word is void of meaning.

Supporters see the labeling of Trump as a subject as a positive for the President. In 2016, after Manafort became chairman of Trump’s election campaign and took Gates as his deputy, van der Zwaan and Gates both had communications with a person they knew as a former official of Russia’s GRU intelligence agency, prosecutors said.

The insight into where the President stands in the Mueller investigation comes as the special counsel appears to be moving ahead on multiple fronts, some of which appear to directly approach the Oval Office and the President’s family.

Even in this recentered version of the Mueller investigation, Vladimir Putin doesn’t disappear entirely: after all, the money at issue would have come from a client state of Russia’s and from oligarchs closely linked to the Kremlin.

What the probe has done is peripherally insinuate President Trump’s guilt. None of the charges are related to Trump’s 2016 campaign.

As Bloomberg reported Tuesday, “Mueller has charged 19 people, including 13 Russians, since his appointment”. Several of the guilty pleas Mueller has already netted in his investigation are for false statements made in interviews with FBI agents working for his office. “They tell us that the charges brought against Paul Manafort weren’t just brought by special counsel Robert Mueller’s office alone, the charges against Manafort were signed off on by main justice”.

Manafort has pleaded not guilty. Right, and this president certainly has tended to do that.

In other words, van der Zwaan’s sentencing appears to be more of an odd tangent in the Russian Federation investigation than a major puzzle piece. Does anyone really think the president would strengthen his position via an interview with Mueller?

In a court filing late Monday, prosecutors revealed that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had in August explicitly authorized the special counsel to investigate allegations that Manafort colluded with the Russian government.

Trump has repeatedly railed against Mueller’s investigation, claiming there was no collusion and that the probe is a “witch hunt”.

The president has privately expressed relief at the description of his legal status, which has increased his determination to agree to a special counsel interview, the people said.

“It’s important to stress the fluidity between categories”, Miriam Baer, a law professor at Brooklyn Law school and a former federal prosecutor, told me in an email. “To me it shows also the special counsel should never been appointed in the first place”.

And some aides have anonymously acknowledged that Trump just isn’t good with details or the truth. As the Washington Post put it, Mueller, not Trump, is. She referred further questions to Trump’s attorneys.

The person, who was not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations and spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the president is considered a subject of Mueller’s probe – not a target.

Prosecutors say in their court filing that given their mandate to investigate links between Trump associates and Russian Federation, it was logical and appropriate to investigate Manafort for ties to Russia-backed politicians and oligarchs.

Following those texts, Brennan briefed Reid on Capitol Hill. He fired FBI James Comey in May after Comey told Congress that the bureau was investigating possible coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians. “That is how this and every government investigation works – big and small”.

Reportedly, he was opposed the idea of Trump talking to Mueller’s team.

Reid added that “recent staff changes within the Trump campaign have made clear that the Trump campaign has employed a number of individuals with significant and disturbing ties to Russian Federation and the Kremlin”, urging Comey to make the investigation “public”.

Looking at the matter from the outside, a case of obstruction seems problematic. But the defence’s attempts to paint him as a tragic figure didn’t ring true, she said.

Jack Sharman, a white-collar defense lawyer and former special counsel to the House financial committee during the Whitewater investigation involving former President Bill Clinton called the designation a “no-man’s land”.