The confluence of moves this week related to Rober Mueller's investigation underscores the fact that numerous storylines of the special counsel's probe are coming to an end. | Win McNamee/Getty Images Mueller Investigation The week that could reveal Mueller’s end-game 'A number of the threads are finally starting to merge together,' said Matthew Miller, a former Obama Justice Department spokesman.

Buckle up: The next five days could reveal how the Mueller probe will play out.

Paul Manafort will know how long he’ll be serving in prison, closing the book on special counsel Robert Mueller’s most visible legal fight. Roger Stone will know his trial date, putting a timeline on when the public will get more details about his alleged contacts with WikiLeaks. And status reports are due for two of Mueller’s biggest cooperators — Michael Flynn and Rick Gates — that will signal whether the special counsel has tapped them for all the information investigators need.


This week could even include the ultimate exclamation point: Attorney General William Barr announcing that Mueller has completed his assignment and that a summary version of his findings is imminent.

“It’s one of those moments when a number of the threads are finally starting to merge together, which is to be expected because we do appear to be near the end,” said Matthew Miller, a former Obama Justice Department spokesman.

In one way, the timing for this week’s Mueller moves is in one way happenstance — coinciding schedules from a series of individual criminal cases that represents the public face of the special counsel’s often secretive work. But the confluence also represents the fact that numerous high-profile storylines of the Mueller probe are finally coming to a conclusion.

Combined, the moves will generate an avalanche of additional attention on the $64,000 question about Mueller’s end-game and whether he has more criminal indictments up his sleeve. The court filings and hearings also could elaborate on any plans to hand off unfinished business to federal prosecutors scattered across the Justice Department, including the powerful Southern District of New York, where probes appear to be ratcheting up against the president’s business, 2016 campaign and inauguration.

Each event will ignite furious debate on Capitol Hill over everything from presidential pardon powers to obstruction of justice charges to whether Democrats should launch impeachment proceedings.

The centerpiece of this week’s action is Manafort’s sentencing. The punishment will put the final period on the federal charges against Trump’s former campaign chairman. All eyes will be on U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, the Obama appointee who is scheduled to issue the second of two prison terms for the veteran Republican lobbyist.

For Jackson, the question is whether she’ll use her full power and tack on as many as 10 years to the almost four years Manafort received from Virginia-based federal Judge T.S. Ellis III last week for a series of financial fraud crimes. The sentence Ellis gave was well below federal guidelines and drew outrage from some legal circles.

Jackson is sentencing Manafort following his guilty plea last September to charges that he acted as an unregistered foreign agent for Ukraine, laundered money and tampered with a witness. Manafort later had his plea deal ripped up after Jackson ruled that he lied to federal prosecutors and a grand jury during cooperation sessions.

“I think she’s going to whack it to him,” said Alan Dershowitz, the retired Harvard constitutional lawyer whose Mueller critiques on Fox News and elsewhere has earned Trump’s praise. “The last thing I’d want is to be sentenced by her.”

A longer sentence from Jackson would turn attention to Trump, who last Friday said he feels “very badly” for Manafort after Ellis handed down his sentence. The president still hasn’t ruled out a politically explosive pardon for his former campaign aide, and a heavy penalty could drive the pardon-loving president to act.

This week also is big for Stone, the longtime Trump confidant facing charges of lying to Congress and obstructing lawmakers’ Russia probe. Jackson, the same judge overseeing Manafort’s case, is scheduled to set a trial date during a Thursday hearing that will represent a useful tea leaf for gauging Mueller’s plans.

The prosecution team — which has asked the judge for a trial in October — already includes two assistant U.S. attorneys from Washington. Legal experts say their presence is a potential sign that Mueller is creating a contingency plan to hand off the case if he formally shuts down before then.

Jackson has another issue to work through with Stone — his gag order. The judge ruled last week that Stone is already in violation of a gag order restricting his public commentary about his case and demanded that his lawyers explain why the self-described dirty trickster failed to disclose plans for the re-release of a book he wrote critical of the Russia probe. That explanation is due Monday.

Because Jackson has given Stone repeated warnings to stop talking about the case, some legal experts say she could conclude during Thursday’s hearing that her best move is to send Stone to jail.

“I think she might send a message with a brief stint or fine, maybe a weekend in jail or a couple of nights in jail,” said Shanlon Wu, a former defense counsel for Gates. “I think that might be a message she wants to send.”

Still more hints about Mueller’s trajectory may rest with status reports due in court for two of the special counsel's longest-running cooperators: Flynn and Gates.

Lawyers for Mueller and Flynn must tell a federal judge by Wednesday whether they can move to sentence the former Trump national security adviser over a guilty plea in late 2017 for lying to the FBI.

Flynn’s sentencing has been repeatedly delayed because the Mueller squad is still apparently pumping him for information about other lines of inquiry. This week’s report will be the first update on the subject since December, when the federal judge presiding over Flynn’s case convinced him during a tense court hearing to postpone his sentencing until his cooperation was complete.

The government will likely make Flynn a “principal witness” in its case against Bijan Rafiekian, a former Flynn business partner who faces charges of conspiracy and acting as an unregistered foreign government agent for Turkey, according to a defense court filing earlier this month. Rafiekian’s Alexandria, Va., trial is scheduled to start July 15.

For Gates, a Friday deadline looms. The former Trump campaign deputy was the star witness against Manafort at his Virginia trial last summer and has been cooperating for more than a year with federal prosecutors. Attorneys for the special counsel and Gates have filed status reports four times with the court since his guilty plea in February 2018, requesting delays in his case while he helps with several ongoing investigations.

Friday’s filing could answer the question of whether Gates is still assisting prosecutors. If he is, it might indicate that the onetime Manafort colleague is aiding a probe into Trump’s inauguration committee, which is facing questions about the source of its donations and how it spent its record-level haul. Gates helped spearhead the inaugural alongside real estate developer and longtime Trump friend Tom Barrack, putting him at the center of the effort.

“Generally, if you are the prosecutor, you want to keep them on the hook. Once they’re sentenced they have a lot less incentive to help,” said Annemarie McAvoy, another former Gates defense attorney.

Even a Justice Department budget due out Monday could give clues about how much longer Mueller will operate. Last year’s funding proposal included monetary projections for the special counsel's work.

But each incremental development would quickly drown under a feverishly anticipated DOJ announcement that Mueller is done. Muller obsessives have been on tenterhooks the last few weeks as news reports and legal maneuvers point to a looming conclusion.

“I would suspect certainly no later than mid-March,” predicted Ty Cobb, one of Trump’s former personal attorney in the Russia probe, on a recent ABC News podcast.

Mueller’s efforts — a spokesman for the special counsel declined comment on this week’s sequence of events — won’t be the only Trump probe in the spotlight.

House Democrats have plans to vote as early as Tuesday on a nonbinding resolution demanding DOJ commit to the “full release” of the final report that Mueller is required to submit to Barr. So far, Barr has only pledged to make public a summary of that report.

This week also will be busy for the 81 people, companies and government entities that House Democrats recently pumped for documents related to a slew of investigations into allegations of presidential power abuse, corruption and obstruction of justice. Their information will go to the House Judiciary Committee, which has the power to launch impeachment proceedings against Trump.

Their deadline? Next Monday.