The internet is full of rumors about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s undermining of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and Russia’s connections to the Trump campaign. And it has been for almost two years straight. Rational people take this talk with a boulder-sized grain of salt.

Reputable news outfits, however, also regularly weigh in on the matter, with actual inside sources rather than just hopes and dreams. Even then, of course, it’s hard to be sure what’s real, for Mueller and his team run a tight ship -- that is, they don’t leak.

Yet there was the British magazine The Spectator’s pseudonymous political column, Cockburn, on Friday insisting Mueller’s report has been completed -- and that the special counsel wants to indict President Donald Trump himself.

An excerpt from the column:

“Several sources tell Cockburn that the Special Counsel has indeed completed his report. It is said to recommend indicting three of President Trump’s children -- Don junior, Ivanka and Eric -- as well as his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The Attorney General, William Barr, is said to have ‘silently assented’ to this. It’s also claimed that Mueller wants President Trump himself to be indicted. Barr is said to oppose this. The two men met on Friday but apparently could not agree and this was the reason for the delay in any announcement from the [Department of Justice]. At least this is what the sources say.”

Cockburn acknowledges that its sources are, at best, third-hand: they heard it from “the people briefed by the people in the room.” But the column insists that all of its sources, from different places within the government, are saying the same thing.

They all claim the Trump children and Kushner will face charges for “financial crimes” while the president, if Barr allows it, will be hit with obstruction of justice.

Current U.S. Department of Justice policy says a sitting president can’t be indicted, but the attorney general can overrule the policy.

Could it be true that indictments are about to fall on the Trump kids, Kushner and maybe even the president himself? We don’t know. Here’s what we do know: The right-leaning, 191-year-old Spectator says its U.S. edition, where the Cockburn column resides, is “pro-America and pro-Americans.”

Read the Cockburn column:

-- Douglas Perry

@douglasmperry

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