After 5½ months of speculation, anticipation and, in some cases, dread, Americans on Monday learned of the first charges in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign. Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s onetime campaign chairman and a longtime Republican strategist, along with Rick Gates, Manafort’s business associate and deputy on the Trump campaign, were indicted on 12 counts, including money laundering, operating as unregistered foreign agents, failing to disclose overseas bank accounts and making false statements to federal authorities. (The two men pleaded not guilty on Monday afternoon.) Separately, Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his interactions with a professor with ties to the Russian government.

What does all this mean for Mueller’s ongoing investigation—and for President Trump himself, who has called the probe a “witch hunt”? What’s more significant: Manafort’s and Gates’ charges or Papadopoulos’ plea? And who might be Mueller’s next target? We asked legal experts—former federal prosecutors, law professors, practicing attorneys—to consider what Monday’s developments portend, and while all said the president is so far in the clear, many suggested Mueller’s probe could close in further on his inner circle.

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‘I wouldn’t bet on these being the last charges’
David Sklansky, professor at Stanford Law School

This is obviously a major development. We’ve known that Manafort ran Trump’s campaign during a critical period, after working for years in Ukraine for the pro-Russia strongman Viktor Yanukovych. The indictment charges that Manafort and Gates concealed their ties to Ukraine and to pro-Russia Ukrainian politicians, illegally operated as foreign agents inside the United States without making the disclosures required by law, laundered more than $18 million, evaded taxes, personally enriched themselves through the scheme and then lied about it to the Justice Department.

The charges will make it a good deal harder for Trump and his supporters to dismiss the allegations of Russian involvement with his campaign. It looks like some of those supporters are already beginning to pivot to the argument that the collusion began and ended with Manafort. The Fox News website this morning was reporting that Mueller got “his man.” But that went up before Papadopoulos’ guilty plea was unsealed. And this is an ongoing investigation; I wouldn’t bet on these being the last charges. For one thing, the charges put considerable pressure on Manafort and Gates to cooperate with Mueller and his team. Papadopoulos may already be cooperating. And with or without any of that cooperation, the developments this morning suggest that the prosecutors and agents working on this case know what they are doing: They can follow money trails designed not to be followed, they can unravel complicated webs of deceit and collusion crossing international borders, and they can do this relatively rapidly.

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‘Whatever Papadopoulos lied about is more likely to be directly connected to the campaign’
Robert Weisberg, professor at Stanford Law School

I am somewhat more interested in Papadopoulos’ guilty plea than in the charges against Manafort and Gates. Whatever Papadopoulos lied about is more likely to be directly connected to the campaign than what is now being charged against the others. And whatever possible contingencies are built into Papadopoulos’ plea, in terms of expectations to testify, those could evolve in interesting ways.

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