The charges have been ordered sealed by a federal judge in Washington DC after they were approved by a grand jury on Friday

The first charges have been filed in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, a report suggests.

A grand jury approved the first charges put forward during the probe on Friday, and those involved could be in custody as early as Monday, CNN reported.

The report surfaced just hours after the White House tried to undermine Mueller's investigation and insisted that it would be over soon.

A federal judge in Washington DC ordered the charges to remain sealed over the weekend, meaning it is a mystery as to who will be indicted.

Many key players who were involved in Trump's presidential election campaign and have been part of his administration, including former manager Paul Manafort and fired National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, have been under intense scrutiny for their ties to Moscow.

A spokesperson for the special counsel's office declined to comment on the matter.

Mueller was appointed to lead the investigation into possible Russian meddling in the 2016 general election in May and has since been gathering evidence and interviewing witnesses.

On Friday, the Trump administration appeared confident that Mueller's investigation would soon be drawing to close, saying it was his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton that should be worried.

'If anyone was colluding with the Russians to influence the election, look no further than the (Bill and Hillary Clinton) and the DNC,' White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told Fox News.

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Law enforcement officials have been notified to be on ready to make arrests as early as Monday

'Everything that the Clinton campaign and the DNC were falsely accusing this president of doing over the past year they were actually doing themselves, it turns out,' she added.

Sanders earlier also said during a White House press briefing that media attention and money spent investigating the matter is a 'waste.'

'Your news organizations have actually spent probably a lot of money on this...we would consider probably a pretty big waste,' Sanders told reporters.

Trump later tweeted an article by the New York Post titled 'How Team Hillary played the press for fools on Russia.'

Above the quote, the title of Clinton's recently released book, 'What Happened,' can be read.

The article claims that Hillary Clinton and her campaign associates constructed the Russia meddling narrative in order to distract from her loss in the general election.

'Within 24 hours of her concession speech, [campaign chair John Podesta and manager Robby Mook] assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn't entirely on the up-and-up,' Paul Sperry writes in the article.

'For a couple of hours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.'

Mueller was appointed to the special counsel position following Trump's abrupt firing of FBI chief James Comey and was tasked with finding out if the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to gain an advantage during the race for the White House.

Mueller, Comey's predecessor at the FBI, is also looking into possible obstruction of justice charges against the president, who may have tried to hamper the investigation.

Sanders earlier said during a White House press briefing that media attention and money spent investigating the matter is a waste

One of Trump's closest associates during the election was former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who since the election has come under a deluge of scrutiny for his links to Moscow.

Investigators with the Mueller investigation have been interested in Manafort's possible ties to wealthy Russian figures close to the Kremlin since reports surfaced of his involvement with Ukrainian politics over the past several years.

A company owned by Oleg Deripaska, an aluminium magnate thought to have close ties to the government of President Vladimir Putin, gave a $26million loan to entities linked to Manafort, according to NBC News.

The report cited financial documents filed in Cyprus and the Cayman Islands – two countries that have poor reputations as havens of money laundering.

The revelation means that in the past decade, Manafort and Deripaska have concluded close to $60million worth of business dealings that are now drawing scrutiny from federal investigators.

It remains unclear if Manafort or Flynn have been charged in Friday's filing with the grand jury

Roger Stone (Pictured July 2017), a long-time Trump associate, said he spoke with Manafort at 5pm on Friday, saying that the former campaign manager 'knew nothing' of Mueller's charges

In August 2016, Manafort stepped down as head of Trump's campaign after reports surfaced of alleged shady financial dealings.

Roger Stone, a long-time Trump associate, said he spoke with Manafort at 5pm on Friday, saying that the former campaign manager 'knew nothing' of Mueller's charges being approved by the grand jury, according to Huffington Post.

Former National Security Adviser for the Trump administration, Micheal Flynn, has also come under intense scrutiny since his unceremonious ouster from the White House in January.

Forced from government service into retirement in 2014 by the Obama administration, Flynn went on to set up a company that accepted speaking fees from Russian entities and later did consulting work for a Turkish-owned business.

He joined the Trump campaign and then the administration, but the Trump White House ousted him after saying he mischaracterized conversations with Russia's ambassador to the U.S.

A wide range of his actions - including foreign contracts and payments, and whether he lied to officials - are under scrutiny by investigators.

It remains unclear if Manafort or Flynn have been charged in Friday's filing with the grand jury.