Former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams said Wednesday that recent sentencings in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russia’s election meddling show that the investigation could be nearing its end.
“Because of the fact that we are beginning to see sentencings, those tend to be a sign that things are wrapping up because you only sentence people when they’re done with their cooperation,” Williams, who also worked in the Justice Department during the Obama administration, told Hill.TV’s Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton on “Rising.”
Mueller’s team has indicted or reached plea deals with 33 people, including onetime Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.
London-based lawyer Alex van der Zwaan was the first person in the investigation to be sentenced earlier this year, and former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos was sentenced in September.
Flynn on Tuesday took a U.S. district court judge up on an offer to postpone his sentencing for lying to FBI agents about his contacts with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak while serving as President Trump’s top national security adviser.
“This Flynn thing yesterday was interesting because someone who was about to be sentenced, who we thought was done with his cooperation now is getting sentenced later on out in time,” Williams said Wednesday.
“Now [Jerome] Corsi and [Roger] Stone, for instance, haven’t either pled or entered agreements or been tried or whatever, so maybe they’re still out there,” he added. “But for the most part, we’re probably closer to the end than we are to the beginning.”
— Julia Manchester
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