Mueller details $6.7M spent on Russia probe
Reports: Subpoena issued for Trump bank records
WASHINGTON — The special counsel investigation into possible coordination between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential election has cost more than $6.7 million so far, according to a financial report released Tuesday.
The release of the report by special counsel Robert Mueller’s office comes as the investigation appears to be gaining steam: Prosecutors have gained a key cooperator in their investigation and revealed that they are keenly focused on the actions of the president and his inner circle.
Of the overall price tag, about $3.2 million was spent directly by the special counsel’s office. An additional $3.5 million was paid out by the Justice Department to support the investigation, though the special counsel’s office says that money would have been spent on ongoing probes anyway, even if Mueller had not been appointed.
Mueller incorporated several active investigations within the Justice Department including those of Trump campaign contacts with Russia, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s business activities and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
The details of the expenditures related to Mueller’s investigation were laid out in a report released publicly. The report covers from May 17, the date of Mueller’s appointment, through Sept. 30, the end of the federal fiscal year.
According to Mueller’s report, the special counsel’s office spent about $1.7 million for salaries and benefits and more than $223,000 for travel-related expenses. The majority of the travel costs stemmed from the relocation of Justice Department employees temporarily assigned to the investigation.
The office also spent nearly $734,000 on equipment and about $363,000 on rent, communications and utilities.
Previous special counsel investigations, including probes of President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s, have also spent millions over a few months’ time.
A 1999 General Accounting Office report, for example, showed that independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s office spent $6.2 million in the last six months of 1998, though it’s unclear if that amount included both direct expenditures by the special counsel and supporting agency costs. In the report released Tuesday, Mueller’s office noted that previous special counsels only reported direct costs and not those incurred separately by the Justice Department on their own expenditure reports.
The 4 investigations headed by Starr and his successor, Robert Ray, cost more than $52 million in taxpayer funds as they probed Clinton and thenfirst lady Hillary Clinton.
Starr’s predecessor, Robert Fiske, spent an additional $6 million investigating the Clintons’ involvement in the Whitewater real estate deal, according to a May 1999 GAO report.
In addition to the congressional probes, Tuesday brought more questions about Mueller’s investigation into whether anyone in Trump’s orbit assisted Russian interference in the election.
Bloomberg, Reuters and the German newspaper Handelsblatt reported that Mueller had subpoenaed Deutsche Bank for financial records related to $300 million in loans it gave to Trump before he ran for president, a sign that the special counsel was expanding his investigation beyond the campaign.
The bank would neither confirm nor deny receiving a subpoena, but a lawyer for Trump said the reports were inaccurate.
“No subpoena has been issued or received,” the lawyer, Jay Sekulow, said in a statement. “We have confirmed this with the bank and other sources.”