Meanwhile, an audacious plan to merge St. Louis and St. Louis County that dominated public discussion for the first quarter of the year now faces uncertainty as the group behind it distances itself from Stenger, who would have been anointed the first “metro mayor.”

After criticizing him for years over county contracts and deals that went to his donors, many reported by the Post-Dispatch, his political opponents on the council openly suspect Stenger is the target of the investigation.

But it’s too early to tell exactly what the feds are after, how much they already have or how long the investigation might stretch on.

“What you don’t know is what other secret stuff may or may not have been done before the subpoena got served,” said Mike Reap, a retired assistant U.S. attorney who served as the acting attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. “Now there could be none, but they didn’t just pick a name out of a hat and serve a grand jury subpoena on them. Some information had to come, and you don’t know how long that’s been going on.”

And he cautioned that resolution might not come too quickly.

“I wouldn’t expect things to come to fruition (soon) on any of these things,” Reap said. “They take forever. They’re like glaciers that move uphill.”