Poor Robert Mueller. He’s having a very bad week. First, he had to admit to Paul Manafort’s attorney that he had absolutely no evidence he colluded with the Russians, then a federal judge accused him of running a sham investigation for the sole purpose of impeaching the president.
And now he needs to delay action against a company he accused of colluding against Hillary filed for discovery, which caught him by surprise since he probably has no evidence and he never thought any company would challenge him. It seems he has even less than anyone thought.
It may not matter because his investigation could be over in the next two weeks anyway. That’s the deadline for Mueller to turn over the unredacted order creating the special counsel. If the order does not give him the far-reaching powers he claims, the judge could let Manafort go, absolve Michael Cohen and essentially shut down the investigation. And if the order is as far-reaching as Mueller claims, then it is in violation of the Special Counsel Act and the order would be declared null and void and Mueller would have to hit the unemployment line.
He could refuse to give up the unredacted order, but the judge, TS Ellis is already angry and you would see a number of people jailed for contempt of court until the document is produced and that includes Mueller. The rat has been cornered and it will be interesting to see what happens next. My guess? I don’t know but I wouldn’t put it past them to try to write a fake document, but even that wouldn’t help for the reasons given previously. Mueller would have only one real possibility to keep his investigation alive.
He could ask SCOTUS for a stay. That is extremely rare and only granted if the majority of justices believe he would win. Most likely, they would simply refuse the case and allow Ellis’s ruling to stand.
Robert Mueller’s team is seeking a delay in the first court hearing in a criminal case against one of the companies charged in Mueller’s Russian bot investigation.
The company is requesting documents from the Mueller witch hunt team and now they’re balking.
They never expected one of the alleged Russian bot companies to call their bluff.
Mueller figured that none of the companies would answer the summons but he lost that bet and now he is boxed in a corner.
Politico reported:Prosecutors from special counsel Robert Mueller’s office are seeking to delay the first court hearing in a criminal case charging three Russian companies and 13 Russian citizens with using social media and other means to foment strife among Americans in advance of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The 13 people charged in the high-profile indictment in February are considered unlikely to ever appear in a U.S. court. The three businesses accused of facilitating the alleged Russian troll farm operation — the Internet Research Agency, Concord Management and Consulting, and Concord Catering — were also expected to simply ignore the American criminal proceedings.
Last month, however, a pair of Washington-area lawyers suddenly surfaced in the case, notifying the court that they represent Concord Management. POLITICO reported at the time that the move appeared to be a bid to force Mueller’s team to turn over relevant evidence to the Russian firm and perhaps even to bait prosecutors into an embarrassing dismissal in order to avoid disclosing sensitive information.
On Friday, Mueller’s prosecutors disclosed that Concord’s attorneys, Eric Dubelier and Kate Seikaly, had made a slew of discovery requests demanding nonpublic details about the case and the investigation. Prosecutors also asked a judge to postpone the formal arraignment of Concord Management set for next week.
The prosecution team sought the delay on the grounds that it’s unclear whether Concord Management formally accepted the court summons related to the case. Mueller’s prosecutors also revealed that they tried to deliver the summonses for Concord and IRA through the Russian government, without success.