Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has added a veteran cyber prosecutor to his team, filling what has long been a gap in expertise and potentially signaling a recent focus on computer crimes.
Ryan K. Dickey was assigned to Mueller’s team in early November from the Justice Department’s computer crime and intellectual-property section, said a spokesman for the special counsel’s office. He joined 16 other lawyers who are highly respected by their peers but who have come under fire from Republicans wary of some of their political contributions to Democrats.
Dickey’s addition is particularly notable because he is the first publicly known member of the team specializing solely in cyber issues. The others’ expertise is mainly in a variety of white-collar crimes, including fraud, money laundering and public corruption, though Mueller also has appellate specialists and one of the government’s foremost experts in criminal law.
You just know this information is sending a cold chill up Trump's back.
Keep in mind that Dickey is not an investigator, but rather a prosecutor.
This likely means that Mueller has already accessed some of Trump's computer records, and campaign emails, and has pieced some troubling things together.
And you know from his recent tweets that Trump is really feeling the pressure.
Yeah, I don't think the word "collusion" is the best descriptor for what they are looking for.The single greatest Witch Hunt in American history continues. There was no collusion, everybody including the Dems knows there was no collusion, & yet on and on it goes. Russia & the world is laughing at the stupidity they are witnessing. Republicans should finally take control!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018
I think the more accurate terms are "conspiracy" and "obstruction."
As evidence of Trump's increasing concern his GOP buddies have ramped up attempts to undermine the Special Counsel investigation in a number of ways, as HuffPo reports:
Last Wednesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who once had a famously bumpy relationship with Trump, backed the president’s close friend and ally, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), in a dispute with the FBI and Department of Justice. The DOJ hadn’t wanted to hand over certain investigatory documents to Nunes, who supposedly stepped down from the Russia investigation last April after he was caught being fed intelligence reports on White House grounds by officials who wanted to shield the president.
The same day, Fox News and other right-wing media hyped an anonymously sourced New York Post story that suggested Mueller’s grand jury contains too many black people. “Right-wing media’s offense-as-defense approach to protecting Trump has been a consistent drumbeat, but at a few intervals it can flare up,” noted Laura Keiter, the communications director at Media Matters for America, a progressive group that tracks conservative disinformation in the media. “We’re seeing it intensify right now — in part because of the feedback loop between right-wing media and congressional Republicans that are acting on right-wing media narratives; and, in part due to the increased pressure on Trump.”
Also on Wednesday, Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman whom Mueller has charged with conspiracy to defraud the U.S., money laundering and a variety of other federal crimes, launched a stunty (and likely doomed) lawsuit against the special counsel, alleging that his investigation is overbroad and improperly authorized.
On Friday, two Senate Republicans — Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Chuck Grassley (Iowa) — sent a letter to the Justice Department and FBI asking for an investigation into Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled the notorious dossier on then-candidate Trump. Graham once called Trump a “kook” who was “unfit for office” and “the most flawed nominee in the history of the Republican Party.” He may have had a change of heart.
Republicans in the House are diving into text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page to investigate whether the pair interacted with reporters. Strzok served on Mueller’s team and was removed over the summer after the special counsel learned that Strzok and Page exchanged text messages that were critical of a number of politicians on both sides of the aisle, including Trump. There’s nothing explicitly wrong with officials privately discussing their views on politicians, and text messages the two exchanged may have been part of an effort to cover up a romantic affair they were having. (Regardless, Mueller removed Strzok from his team long before issuing his first indictment in the matter.)
Although he’d laid off attacking presidential rival Hillary Clinton for a short period after the election, Trump has ramped up attacks on the woman he had branded “Crooked Hillary” as his own legal issues have built up. He’s repeatedly called for the Justice Department to investigate her — even since becoming president. And recently the FBI seems to have listened. Despite an expiring statute of limitations, the FBI field office in Little Rock, Arkansas, has reopened an investigation into pay-for-play allegations surrounding the Clinton Foundation. The investigation into the charity had previously been shut down by career prosecutors due to a lack of evidence. But one witness — evidently sympathetic to a Clinton Foundation inquiry — told The Hill it was “extremely professional and unquestionably thorough.” And the Daily Beast reported last week that the FBI, ”acutely aware” of Trump’s demands, is also taking another look at Clinton’s handling of email during her tenure as secretary of state.
I think we all knew this was going to get ugly, and now ugly it has become.
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