Where did the indictment leak come from? Not from Mueller's team. Maybe from the Justice Dept or the WH:
Who is putting this story out there?
We don’t know. But there is some suggestive wording in the stories.
All three outlets go with the decidedly vague “sources briefed on the matter.” It’s hard to come up with many classes of people who would be briefed on this at this early stage. For one thing, the indictment is reportedly a sealed matter before a grand jury, and therefore the defense bar—a common source of proper disclosures of grand jury information—would have no reason to know about it. It seems unlikely Congress would have been briefed at this stage either. The nature of the term “briefed” suggests we are not dealing with Mueller’s staff, who wouldn’t need to be briefed on their own investigation, or court staff before whom the matter takes place. The only obvious group of people who would have been “briefed” are the deputy attorney general and his staff at the Department of Justice.
[ I'm thinking the DOJ has contact with the WH and keeps them informed of things. ]
In lieu of sourcing specifics, CNN does offer an account of how it came to be tipped off that something was up. To wit, someone happened to run into Andrew Weissman at the courthouse:
On Friday, top lawyers who are helping to lead the Mueller probe, including veteran prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, were seen entering the court room at the DC federal court where the grand jury meets to hear testimony in the Russia investigation.
Reporters present saw a flurry of activity at the grand jury room, but officials made no announcements.
We strongly doubt Weissman gave CNN a wink and sang “Indictment time!” as he walked out.
So based on both the text of the story and the likely pool of people in the know, this is most probably a law enforcement leak—at least in terms of confirmation of what was going on—and one that came from the Justice Department.
And it’s a bad one. For obvious reasons, the FBI doesn’t usually let people know they plan to arrest them. That can allow people to flee. It can also allow destruction of evidence or moving of assets. So while it’s possible that arrests will take place Monday, as the stories suggest, don’t be too surprised if the fact of the story’s leaking accelerates law enforcement plans.
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