Special counsel Robert Mueller is not recommending any further indictments in his investigation, reports say.
Multiple news outlets reported on Friday that an unnamed senior Justice Department official said that the special counsel’s office had concluded its investigation without recommending any more indictments in the case.
CNN reporter Laura Jarrett said that there were no sealed indictments issued by the special counsel waiting to be released.
The prospect of no further indictments could present a massive boon to President Trump and many of those surrounding him.
Trump family members including Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner had their own brushes with the special counsel during the investigation and been the subject of speculation that scrutiny could lead to charges. Trump Jr. was even reported to have told close associates at one point that he expected to be indicted.
But Friday’s reports suggest that any further charges will not come from the special counsel, if they come at all.
Conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi even gave a draft plea agreement that he claimed to have been offered by special counsel prosecutors to journalists in November. He said at the time that he had broken off discussions with prosecutors, but was never indicted.
An entire separate thread of the story – revolving around Australian-Israeli businessman Joel Zamel and his intelligence companies Wikistrat and Psy-group and their proposals around microtargeting voters on social media – appears to have also come to an end with respect to any involvement from the special counsel.
That narrative partly revolved around a January 2017 Seychelles summit between Zamel, Erik Prince, Russian and UAE officials, and Middle East-U.S. fixer George Nader, who was intercepted by FBI agents with the Mueller probe at Washington-Dulles airport in February 2018.
It remains unclear which cases and segments of the investigation Mueller may have referred out to other offices. The Manhattan federal criminal case that brought down Trump lawyer Michael Cohen started off as a referral from the special counsel, while an ongoing probe into former Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig over allegations of failing to register as a foreign agent also began with Mueller.
As to the president himself, the lack of any further indictments from the special counsel could reflect existing DOJ policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted.
