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[MetalSlimeHunt]

What is?

[nenjin]

Wut? (Can this be the end of the current cycle of shitposting?)

[Maximum Spin]

No!

[Loud Whispers]

What doth life?

[smjjames]

The first charges in the Mueller investigation have been filed. However, since they're sealed, we won't know what it's all about until Monday at least.

Speculation abounds.

[EnigmaticHat]

Plans were prepared Friday for anyone charged to be taken into custody as soon as Monday, the sources said.

Woah.  Makes me wonder if any of Manafort's associates are going to try to flee the country.

[smjjames]

Plans were prepared Friday for anyone charged to be taken into custody as soon as Monday, the sources said.

Woah.  Makes me wonder if any of Manafort's associates are going to try to flee the country.

We (other than Mueller and his team and those involved in proccessing the charges) don't know if it's Manafort. Could be Flynn or Don jr or Jared Kushner or someone else entirely.

[RedKing]

Time for that classic holiday song, "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Collusion"...

Followed by "All I Want For Christmas Is A New President"

[Dunamisdeos]

Who is 'they'?

What the hell is an Aluminum Falcon?!?!

Anyway, I'm watching this investigation with rapt attention. Finally time for some results.

[birdy51]

I'm a bit too scared to get optimistic. While I would love to see the hammer brought down on someone, it's more than likely that not much will happen.

Though, I would very happy to be wrong on that!

[Dunamisdeos]

I'm a bit too scared to get optimistic. While I would love to see the hammer brought down on someone, it's more than likely that not much will happen.

Though, I would very happy to be wrong on that!

They've got to put someone away. I feel like we are at a point where someone is going to be made an example of, even if it's not someone from the top of the pile, as it were.

[Trekkin]

Anyway, I'm watching this investigation with rapt attention. Finally time for some results.

No, it is not "time for some results." That is not how criminal investigations of this magnitude work, and if you are expecting dramatic video clips of Trump and his inner circle being led away from the White House in handcuffs on Monday morning, you will certainly be disappointed -- but that doesn't mean the investigation has failed.

The present charges will almost certainly have been filed against people who can be proved to have directly dealt with Russia in a provably criminal manner, so that they can provide information on Trump's inner circle in return for use immunity or something similar. We might see Flynn or Manafort charged, but more likely it will be people whose names we haven't heard yet, people for whom Trump is unreachably high in the hierarchy but can inform on people one step up. The cycle must repeat a few more times before the investigation can truly be said to be delivering results.

[Dunamisdeos]

The charging of people who can be said to have committed criminal acts sounds like results to me. I don't think anyone reasonable is expecting them to lead Trump away in a paddywagon just yet, if ever. He would hardly be the first one to get involved illegally with foreign interests during a campaign. President Clinton had a whole Chinese investigation thing involving campaign funds, and nothing ever came of that.

Frankly I expect the whole thing to be deflected onto a scapegoat, as I said above.

Also, what exactly are they investigating? Is it related to campaign funds, is it whether or not Trump asked Putin to hack some polls, what are we exactly expecting to turn up here? I've heard so much about it from so many biased sources that it seems nebulous to me.

[Frumple]

The specific thing is (or at least started as) russian interference with the election, iirc, and particularly any involvement between the trump campaign team and them. If there were inappropriate campaign funds involved, that would count. If there was something more damning than trump encouraging a hostile foreign power to hack into american systems, it would count. If it's obstruction issues, again, it would count. And so on. The investigation started with a specific-ish point but what it ends up turning up depends on what mueller finds.

Mueller's mandate also includes anything else that might get uncovered during the process of looking into it on top of anything on the specific subject that happens to. So it's not just one thing, per se, and even the one thing can involve a lot of stuff. Special investigators of mueller's stripe have a pretty broad purview in what they can poke at, one of the strongest and most broad investigative positions that exists in this country.

[Dunamisdeos]

Very interesting.

I'm as far from taking sides as I can willfully be but I hope if they legit dig something specific and provable up on Trump that he doesn't worm out of it. Has to be some accountability.