Jack Shafer is Politico’s senior media writer.

There’s so much we don’t know about what Robert S. Mueller III knows about Trump and the Russians. Governed by its own rhythms, the Mueller black box opens every now and then to issue a girthy assortment of criminal indictments, plea agreements and sentencing memos and then slams shut again, returning to silence. But in the 19 months since his appointment as the special counsel to investigate the connections between President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian officials, he’s shown us all we need to know about how he operates and where his investigation may go in 2019.

Setting aside for a moment the 25 Russians charged for various cybercrimes—Russians who will likely never be extradited to the United States—Mueller’s top priority has been to stab liars with the law and then turn the blade inside the wound to get them to cooperate to implicate other liars and so on and so on until he reaches Liar Numero Uno, the president.


Early on, Mueller busted Michael Flynn for lying to investigators and converted him into a witness for the prosecution. Then came liars George Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, Alex van der Zwaan, all of whom felt his blade and were persuaded to cooperate. After flipping Flynn, Mueller gave former Trump official K.T. McFarland the opportunity to revise her claims to what she knew about discussions inside the Trump camp about Russian sanctions. Even Paul Manafort, convicted by Mueller and persuaded to plead guilty to conspiracy and obstruction of justice charges, got popped by the special counsel for telling “discernible lies.”

But Mueller’s biggest liar of 2018—or at least the most valuable liar for prosecutorial purposes—was former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty in November to lying to Congress about Trump’s Moscow tower project. Mueller, who conducted 70 hours of interviews with Cohen, urged the court in a sentencing memo to go easy on his witness because he’d been so helpful in assisting the special counsel’s investigation.

Cohen was both Trump’s personal cleanup man, scuttling behind him to straighten out personal and financial messes, and a lead operator in expanding the Trump Organization’s international reach, most notably in getting the Moscow project going. Think of Cohen as one of Mueller’s road maps to Trump’s potential financial crimes, crooked deals with politicians and governments, personal indiscretions, and sordid political entanglements. That Mueller gave a fatherly pat to Cohen’s head in his sentencing memo indicates that Cohen possesses clues to the business and personal lies Trump has told since his erstwhile lawyer went to work for the mogul in 2007. Cohen’s new investment in truth-telling got a workout this week as McClatchy reported for the second time (the first being in April) that it had obtained evidence that Cohen visited Prague in late summer 2016, as the Steele Dossier originally reported. Cohen has adamantly denied both McClatchy accounts. Is he telling the truth? Or is this a new lie?

Other alleged liars expect the attention of Mueller’s blade.

Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware went on record last May with his belief that Donald Trump Jr. lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee in his testimony when he categorically denied that foreigners had offered or given assistance to the Trump presidential campaign. According to the New York Times, Junior met in August 2016 with George Nader, an emissary from “the princes who led Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates [who] were eager to help his father in election as president.” (Nader, it should be noted here, is reportedly cooperating with the special counsel.) Erik Prince, the Blackwater founder who attended the meeting, may have also fudged his involvement in the Trump campaign in congressional testimony.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) also wants the special counsel to consider perjury charges against former Trump campaign aide Roger Stone for lying to Congress. Stone has denied having been in contact with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange about the hacked Clinton campaign emails, and has denied having been tipped off that WikiLeaks would publish them. Alas for Stone, emails from his associate Jerome Corsi indicate otherwise. As long as we’re cataloging all of the scandal’s accused liars, Corsi, who rejected a plea deal with Mueller, says he “did not intentionally lie” to Mueller’s investigators about the emails.

As Jon Swaine noted in the Guardian, other Trump allies, including Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner and Hope Hicks gave testimony to Congress. What lies or proof of lies are to be found there? More to the point, will Mueller be able to leverage their misadventures with the truth in a way that brings him closer to Trump’s perfidy?

The pattern of lies and lying that Mueller has uncovered isn’t random. Many of the verified lies told by Flynn, Manafort, Gates, Papadopoulos, Van Der Zwaan and Cohen were told to protect both the tellers and the man at the top of the prosecutorial pyramid that Mueller is building: Donald Trump.

I’m not foolish enough to predict when Mueller will close his case, but I’m brave enough to venture that Trump’s troubles are only now beginning. As Garrett M. Graff recently wrote, there are more than a dozen investigations into the various scandals connected to the president, from the Russians’ hack of the election to the purchase of influence by Middle Easterners to obstruction of justice to inauguration committee funding to campaign finance fraud. On Jan. 3, a Democratic House of Representatives will be seated and pursue aggressive, additional oversight into Trump’s affairs, further complicating his life. I can’t wait until Trump tweets his view that Congress should be dissolved.

Trump and his team will, I suppose, attempt to lie their way out of the jams that 2019 promises. It’s my guess that Mueller is hoping for exactly that. The old lies told in Trump’s service have brought him closer to the truth. Newer lies will only hasten the president’s demise.

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My resolution for 2019 is to tell a good lie at least once a day. Yours? Send promises of lies via email to [email protected]. My email alerts think you expect too much from the truth. My Twitter feed didn’t lie, it misspoke. My RSS feed will sue you for calling it a liar.