Conspiracy and RICO charges necessitate many low level indictments to demonstrate to the court that there is probable cause to the indict the bigger fish and re

Conspiracy and RICO charges necessitate many low level indictments to demonstrate to the court that there is probable cause to the indict the bigger fish and restrict them until trial. There will be no trial in this case, so your point is moot. The government gained no leverage with these indictments either, because the people it indicted are beyond the reach of the US government. That was the whole point of my comment. There is exactly one person that was affected in any way by this indictment - and that was Mueller himself, who was congratulated on a job well done by a press that is hungry for Russia-related headlines. The case itself will not be prosecuted unless one of these guys happens to come to the US on vacation or something, but that is extremely unlikely since they know they are under indictment. Mueller has already brought these charges in front of a judge I see that someone else already corrected you on this, but for the record, that person is correct. No judge has ruled on the merits of this case, and the standard that the grand jury uses to indict is very low relative to the standard used at trial. So, in closing, there are 2 undeniable facts at issue here: 1) All of those indicted are Russians residing in Russia; and 2) Russia does not extradite its citizens to the US. Therefore, it is not "clearcut propaganda" but rather an undeniable fact to say that this case has no chance of actually being prosecuted in the US, and that the only person affected by this indictment at all was Mueller himself. Mueller presumably knew that he was indicting only Russians that would never be extradited, and therefore knew that the case was not going to actually be prosecuted.