Robert Mueller has slowly been circling the Trump organization, subpoenaing communications and speaking with multiple members of the campaign. However, now he’s taken the usual step of subpoenaing the Trump Org directly, specifically for any communications it has with Russia and “other topics” the probe is investigating.
According to the New York Times, the breadth of the subpoena, which was issued in the last few weeks, is not clear, and it’s also striking that Mueller went directly to a court-issued order to turn over documents, instead of simply requesting them from the organization. This may have something to do with the Trump Org’s long history of destroying documents even when ordered to preserve them by the court; Mueller’s team may not have wanted to alert the Trump Org to exactly what they wanted.
This raises a few problems for Trump, not the least of which is his insistence that Mueller looking at his finances was a “red line.” That raised a few eyebrows, and in recent weeks, reports have come out about the financial exposure of Trump associates such as son-in-law Jared Kushner, who keeps being forced to disclose more conflicts of interest. It also means that Mueller is far from done in a probe Trump was hoping would wrap up by early 2018, and it ratchets up the pressure for Trump to decide whether to submit to an interview with Mueller’s team.