Robert Mueller’s investigation gets real

This appeared in USA Today: The guilty plea of a former Trump campaign adviser and the indictment of two others should put to rest any notions that special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe is — choose your put-down — farcical, “fake news” or a fishing expedition.

In fact, the case against George Papadopoulos is the exact opposite. The one-time foreign policy aide has admitted that he lied to the FBI about his interactions with Russian operatives trying to discredit Hillary Clinton. His plea shows that he was trying to hide something from federal authorities and is now co-operating with them.

Unlike the Papadopoulos plea, the conspiracy case against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and assistant Rick Gates doesn’t directly pertain to the 2016 presidential campaign. Both men entered pleas of not guilty on Monday and are entitled to a presumption of innocence. But the charges — that they lobbied in Washington for a pro-Russia party in Ukraine without registering, laundered money for that party, and hid their fees from taxation — raise a number of troubling issues.

Less than six months into Mueller’s inquiry, and with other actions likely to come, the special counsel is proving his worth. The prosecutor is the one major player looking at Russia’s role in the 2016 election from a purely legal, non-partisan and factual perspective.