Sen. Richard Blumenthal said he is less certain President Donald Trump himself would end up facing charges. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Blumenthal: ‘99 percent sure’ of Russia indictments Manafort and Flynn are among the Trump aides likely to face criminal charges, says the Connecticut senator and former state attorney general.

Criminal charges against two former top advisers to President Donald Trump are virtually certain, Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal said Tuesday.

Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort are almost sure to be indicted as a result of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the Connecticut senator told POLITICO.


“I'm about 99 percent sure there will be some criminal charges from this investigation,” said Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Blumenthal has also served as a U.S. attorney and spent 20 years as his state's attorney general.

Blumenthal said he is less certain Trump himself would end up facing charges, including for possible obstruction of justice for his firing of FBI Director James Comey.

But he said that several Trump associates may find themselves under indictment.

Manafort and Flynn "are the most prominent,” he said, "but there may well be others."

Manafort, a Republican lobbyist who served as Trump’s former 2016 campaign chairman, reportedly first came under FBI scrutiny in early 2014—long before Trump announced his presidential bid—for his lucrative political consulting work in Ukraine. That probe has since been folded into Mueller’s investigation and includes a review into Manafort’s lobbying work with a variety of pro-Russian clients.

Sign up here for POLITICO Huddle A daily play-by-play of congressional news in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Federal agents raided Manafort’s northern Virginia home in late July, a move many legal analysts consider a likely precursor to indictment.

Flynn served as a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser and then White House national security adviser, but resigned that post in February after reports that he misled Vice President Mike Pence and others about private conversations with Russia's ambassador to Washington.

A spokesman for Mueller and an attorney for Flynn both declined requests for comment, and a Manafort spokesman did not immediately respond.