Trump's written response and increased pressure on key figures like Julian Assange and Jerome Corsi suggest Mueller's investigation is accelerating.
- Special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation appears to be speeding up.
- Axios highlighted recent developments that suggest some big indictments might be coming soon.
- President Donald Trump's written responses to Mueller's question and increased pressure on key figures like Julian Assange and Jerome Corsi, an associate of former Trump adviser Roger Stone, suggest the investigation is accelerating.
- This comes as Mueller is reportedly moving toward his final report of his findings.
The pace of special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election looks like it's speeding up and could lead to big indictments soon.
Axios reporter Garrett M. Graff, who wrote a book about Mueller, identified recent developments that suggest the investigation may be accelerating.
President Donald Trump has now turned in his written answers to Mueller's investigators after he continually resisted being interviewed as part of the investigation.
Jerome Corsi, a far-right conspiracy theorist and close associate of GOP strategist and former Trump adviser Roger Stone, is also in talks with Mueller about a possible plea deal — though he has reportedly turned it down.
Corsi is one of the central figures in Mueller's investigation into whether people in Trump's campaign had advance knowledge of Russia's hack of the Democratic National Committee and WikiLeaks's subsequent dissemination of stolen emails.
And Ecuador appears to be losing its patience with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, suggesting that they may turn him over. The government removed its ambassador to the UK that supported Assange and all diplomats that knew Assange.
Read more: Here's everyone who has been charged and convicted in Mueller's Russia probe so far
Assange's connection to Trump and Russia was put back in the spotlight this week when he was forced to deny a report from The Guardian that he met with Manafort, the one-time head of Trump's campaign, in 2016. Mueller is reportedly probing Ecuador's president over whether he and Manafort discussed Wikileaks or Assange in a 2017 meeting.
Alleged Russian operative Maria Butina is also reported to be in talks for a plea deal, NBC News reported.
And Axios noted that a number of Mueller's prosecutors were working on Veterans Day as Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen traveled to Washington to talk to Mueller's team.
Mueller's team had been in a period of public quiet, but CNN reported in November that Mueller has begun compiling a final report of his findings.
Read more: Mueller's report will be 'politically very devastating' for Trump, Alan Dershowitz predicts
ABC News also reported that there was an "unusually high" number of sealed indictments filed over the year in DC. Of the three dozen filed, 14 were added in August, when Mueller was quiet publicly, leading legal experts to speculate to ABC News that they may be part of Mueller's investigation.