President Donald Trump’s new budget projects that special counsel Robert Mueller’s office will still be in business in fiscal year 2019 — even though White House officials have repeatedly said they expect the probe to wrap up soon.
The budget projects that Mueller’s team will keep spending at its current rate of about $10 million per year in the next fiscal year, which starts in October.
Mueller’s prosecutors have a criminal case pending against Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and deputy Rick Gates. No trial date has been set, but the judge suggested last month that a trial could start in August or September. If it does, the trial and any appeal would almost certainly extend into the next fiscal year.
The White House has said it expects Mueller to finish soon; spokesman Raj Shah told Fox News last month that officials “believe it will end soon.” But White House attorney Ty Cobb said Monday that Trump’s team is not looking for Mueller’s office to shut down its operations entirely, merely to resolve the parts of its investigation that focus on Trump.
“We’re not looking for these guys to close up shop, but we are interested in trying to get the president’s piece of this resolved quickly,” Cobb told POLITICO.
A spending report released by Mueller’s office in December reported direct spending of $3.2 million from the time of his appointment in May until the end of fiscal year 2017 last September. Personnel assigned to Mueller’s team also cost the Justice Department about $3.5 million during that period, but officials said those expenses would have been incurred whether or not the probe was handed to a special counsel.
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Trump budget anticipates Mueller investigation will stretch into fiscal year 2019https://t.co/ZatcDANtiq pic.twitter.com/DGdP1LMmih
— POLITICO (@politico) February 12, 2018
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