IT'S A RICO CASE:

Armed with subpoenas compelling electronic records and sworn testimony, Mueller's team showed up unannounced at the home of the business associate, who was a party to multiple transactions connected to Trump's effort to expand his brand abroad, according to persons familiar with the proceedings.

Investigators were particularly interested in interactions involving Michael D. Cohen, Trump's longtime personal attorney and a former Trump Organization employee. Among other things, Cohen was involved in business deals secured or sought by the Trump Organization in Georgia, Kazakhstan and Russia.

The move to question business associates of the president adds a significant new element to the Mueller investigation, which began by probing whether the Trump campaign and Russia colluded in an effort to get Trump elected but has branched far beyond that.

Mueller (Quietly) Keeps Turning Up the Heat (Cristian Farias, 4/06/18, New York)

The filing is long but well worth the read, if only to get a better sense of Mueller's case-in-chief. Its biggest surprise, though, was an attachment from none other than Rod Rosenstein, Mueller's direct supervisor. It turns out that last August, three months into Mueller's appointment, the deputy attorney general -- who for purposes of the Russia probe serves as the acting attorney general because Jeff Sessions is recused -- sent a memorandum to the special counsel outlining the scope of his authority. A big chunk of it is classified, so we may never know, or won't know for some time, what the memo says. But the part that is public states unequivocally that Mueller has a green light to investigate whether Manafort "committed a crime or crimes by colluding with Russian officials" in the run-up to 2016, and whether he engaged in wrongdoing stemming from his lobbying work with Russian-backed political actors in Ukraine.

In criminal law, that disclosure provides a rough outline of what's known as the theory of the case -- the set of facts and legal authority to support a prosecution. But what's remarkable about it is that, as presented by Dreeben and Mueller's office, this doesn't at all come across as some wild theory being pursued by an overzealous, overreaching prosecutor. If these filings tell us anything, it is that Mueller is running a tight ship and that he's keeping in close contact with Rosenstein to make sure that everything is being done by the book and according to law and departmental procedures. "For additional matters that otherwise may have arisen or may arise directly from the investigation, you should consult my office for a determination of whether such matters should be within the scope of your authority," Rosenstein tells Mueller in the August memo.

That was a long seven months ago. Public reporting since, that federal prosecutors have subpoenaed records from the Trump Organization and are now going after Russian oligarchs, to name just two developments, indicates that there may be other such written exchanges -- or "non-public dialogue," as Dreeben characterizes it -- between Rosenstein and his appointee that haven't seen the light of day. Think of them as two longtime federal prosecutors talking shop about what is or isn't appropriate to investigate. If there's someone in the federal law enforcement apparatus who knows a little bit about propriety, it's these two.

Flowing from this same set of authorities -- which include direct oversight from Rod Rosenstein, the person Mueller consults with for all "significant events" in the Russia probe -- is the special counsel's growing interest in sitting down with Trump face-to-face. As the Washington Post reported late Tuesday, lawyers for the president have been informed that their client is a "subject" in the growing inquiry, and Mueller may even release a report on whether the president tried to thwart his or the FBI's investigative efforts. That Trump is considered a subject is simply prosecutor-speak for the fact that Trump is a person of interest in an ongoing law enforcement matter -- he's more than just a witness to potential crimes and less than a full-blown target of a criminal investigation.

Subjects, who fall somewhere in the middle between witnesses and targets, are attractive to prosecutors because they know a lot about the incidents being investigated. And with many open questions about what Trump knew or his state of mind during key incidents under the microscope -- Was he aware Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and his son met with Russians during the campaign? Did he know Michael Flynn had lied to the FBI when he fired James Comey? -- it stands to reason that Mueller may want to get direct answers to those simple, yes-or-no questions. An affirmative or a negative to whether, say, Roger Stone gave Trump a heads-up about a soon-to-drop WikiLeaks trove damaging to the Hillary Clinton campaign could be invaluable to federal investigators. (This tentacle of the Mueller inquiry remains a closely guarded secret.)

But even such basic questions could prove disastrous for the president, who isn't exactly a model of truthfulness or modesty when placed under oath. He may be damned whether he claims he did or didn't know about these things: Any prosecutor worth his salt, and Mueller is one, would be ready to put a document in front of him or someone else's testimony to contradict him or refresh his faulty recollection.

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