When we
learned at the end of October that two former Trump campaign officials, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, had been indicted and a third, George Papadopoulos, had cut a plea deal, it was widely interpreted as a signal from Special Counsel Robert Mueller to other potential witnesses.
“Oh man, they couldn’t have sent a message any clearer if they’d rented a revolving neon sign in Times Square,’’ Patrick Cotter, a white-collar defense lawyer,
told the Washington
Post at the time. “And the message isn’t just about Manafort. It’s a message to the next five guys they talk to. And the message is: ‘We are coming, and we are not playing, and we are not bluffing.’’’
It appears they heard Mueller, loud and clear. About a month later, former national security adviser Michael Flynn
pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI as part of a deal to cooperate with the special counsel. Now the New York
Times reports that yet another former Trump staffer is ready to sing: Mark Corallo, who served as a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team before resigning in July.
Mueller’s team is said to be looking into the White House response to reports of Donald Trump Jr.’s June 2016 meeting with a group of Russians who offered dirt on Hillary Clinton. During a flight on Air Force One last July, Trump and White House communications director Hope Hicks reportedly led the drafting of a misleading statement suggesting that the meeting was about Russian adoptions.
Corallo recently received an interview request from Mueller, and is
expected to speak with the special counsel in the next two weeks. The
Times reports that he’s planning to share some information that Mueller can add to his long list of
potential obstruction of justice:
