Special counsel Robert Mueller has now won or assisted in guilty pleas or convictions against a number of figures in the president’s inner circle during the 2016 campaign — but has yet to prove a more fundamental case of Russia-Trump collusion.
The successful prosecutions have become a powerful retort for the president’s opponents, who say the conviction of Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman on eight counts Tuesday and guilty pleas from his former national security adviser, personal attorney and two campaign advisers all undercut claims that Mr. Mueller’s investigation is a witch hunt.
In one of those cases, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen on Tuesday pleaded guilty to a campaign finance violation in paying off a porn actress to prevent her from going public during the campaign about a sexual encounter. Mr. Cohen implicated Mr. Trump in illegal activity, saying he made the payments at the direction of the candidate.
That case, while prosecuted by the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, grew out of information developed by Mr. Mueller.
The special counsel has also won indictments against three companies and 25 individuals, including 12 intelligence officers, on charges of hacking or otherwise interfering with the 2016 election.
But Mr. Mueller has yet to tie together the two ends: Russian meddling and Trump campaign chaos.
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“Success is doing justice, not just going out to get someone,” said Solomon L. Wisenberg, who served on independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s investigation into President Clinton. “Mueller has gotten some guilty pleas, but none of those guilty pleas get him any closer to collusion and conspiracy with Russian actors and people in the Trump campaign.”
The bank and tax fraud charges lodged against former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his former business associate, Rick Gates, predate involvement with Trump by half a decade in some cases.
Gates pleaded guilty in February and was the government’s star witness against Manafort, who was found guilty Tuesday on eight charges of fraud. The jury was hung on 10 other charges.
Michael Flynn, who was on the campaign and then became Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser in the White House, pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents. So did George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the campaign.
Two others embroiled in the Mueller investigation had no connection to Mr. Trump.
Richard Pinedo of California pleaded guilty in February to using stolen identities to set up bank accounts for Russians intent on meddling in the election. The government said Pinedo was unaware that he was selling the accounts to Russians.
Alex van der Zwaan, a Dutch lawyer, pleaded to guilty in April to lying to federal investigators about his interactions with Gates, the Manafort associate. The charges against Mr. van der Zwaan do not relate to Mr. Trump nor Russian meddling.
“The very fact that the convictions that Mueller obtained are outside the scope of his assignment, it seems to indirectly confirm the supposition that there was simply no evidence of the Trump campaign’s collusion with Russia, although I don’t think the final chapter is written on that,” said Kendall Coffey, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida.
The Mueller investigation has cost $17 million, according to the latest tally in May. It has filed more than 100 criminal counts against 32 people and three companies.
Mr. Trump has accused Mr. Mueller and his team of having conflicts of interest. He criticized Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for establishing the investigation and accused Attorney General Jeff Sessions of dereliction of duty for recusing himself, leaving the decisions to Mr. Rosenstein.
Democrats say the successful prosecutions have bolstered their confidence in Mr. Mueller’s team. They say the special counsel deserves more time to make the link between Mr. Trump and Russia collusion.
Adam B. Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said Mr. Manafort’s conviction proves that the Russia investigation is “far from a witch hunt.”
“It also shows [Mr. Trump’s] campaign and Administration were rife with people with a history of unscrupulous business dealings and concerning ties to overseas interests,” Mr. Schiff said on Twitter after the Manafort verdict was reached.
The investigation has greatly enhanced the public’s knowledge about Russian efforts to interfere in the election.
The indictments of Russian intelligence operatives detail the exact methods used to hack into accounts belonging to Democratic operatives and to push the stolen data onto platforms such as WikiLeaks during the campaign.
Yet another set of indictments of 13 Russian computer operators and three Russian companies detailed a complex scheme to troll the election, creating phony U.S. identities and social media pages to spread chaos among voters.
“They were big-time, important indictments whether or not they can be arrested or extradited,” said Mr. Coffey, praising the work of the Mueller team.
“They were able to overcome issues spanning a number of contents and crystalize a very important truth: It is, indeed, apparent that Russia coordinated a well-planned, intensely developed scheme to cause disruption in our election,” he said. “For the good of our country, those indictments are significant even though they establish a lack of complicity by the Trump campaign.”
The chance that the Russians will stand trial is slim, though, particularly since the U.S. lacks an extradition agreement with Russia.
That raised more concerns about the effectiveness of Mr. Mueller’s work so far.
“If you take away those 25 Russian defendants, all you have is a handful of American defendants who pled guilty to totally unrelated crimes,” Mr. Wisenberg said. “Even if Cohen flips, it appears he has nothing to do with Russia-related activity and more to do with paying off porn stars.”
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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