While news surrounding the Russia investigation has slowed a bit in recent weeks, the special counsel's work is business-as-usual behind the scenes.
CNN reports Paul Manafort has been traveling often from Alexandria, where he remains incarcerated, to Washington, DC to meet with Robert Mueller. The men have met at least nine times in the last four weeks.
In addition to Manafort, Mueller's team has kept interviewing witnesses, gathered a grand jury weekly to meet in Washington on most Fridays, and kicked up other still-secret court action. Plus, the discussions between the President's legal team and the special counsel's office have intensified in recent weeks, including after the special counsel sent questions about possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government. The President's attorneys are expected to reply to the questions in writing.
People around Trump and other witnesses believe more criminal indictments will come from Mueller.
Attorneys who have dealt with Mueller's investigators and other officials expect that the special counsel's efforts, now 17 months in the works, will include in an active post-election period a much-anticipated report where Mueller will outline what his investigators decided to prosecute and what they declined.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the investigation, on Wednesday called the probe "appropriate and independent," in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
"[A]t the end of the day, the public will have confidence that the cases we brought were warranted by the evidence and that it was an appropriate use of resources."
According to CNN, Manafort, driven in a black Ford SUV, usually arrives at Mueller's office in SW Washington, DC around 10am. His lawyers meet him there, and the men stay inside for about six hours at a time.
The flurry of interviews with Manafort and other cooperating defendants leaves Trump's legal team somewhat in the dark on what Mueller is pursuing.
Manafort's lawyers have shared information with the Trump legal team, but according to sources familiar with the case, there is no formal joint defense agreement.
Manafort's criminal confessions and separate conviction by a jury dealt with his Ukrainian lobbying work and financial dealings largely before 2016. Yet his cooperation is widely expected to include helping the prosecutors build potential criminal cases about coordination between the Russian government and Trump campaign.
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Mueller's team has also been speaking with Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal attorney, who has spent hours with Mueller's team since his own guilty plea in August, in which he accused President Donald Trump of directing him to commit a crime.
Trump deputy campaign chair Rick Gates and former national security advisor Michael Flynn also have pleaded guilty and are cooperating.
When it's finished, Mueller's report is expected to explain the decisions of the Justice Department to bring or to decline to bring criminal cases during the course of the investigation. Mueller's findings and decisions will be confidential, unless higher-up officials in the Justice Department decide to make the report public.
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When asked by the Associated Press on Tuesday if he would sit for an interview with Mueller or simply answer written questions, as his lawyers have agreed to do, Trump said: "You know that's in process. It's a tremendous waste of time for the president of the United States."