Building a Case

   It's an article of faith among journalists that politicians lie. And lawyers, while they are seldom caught in an actual, incontrovertible lie, often shade the truth and use language that can easily be heard with several connotations, so that leaves them an out when confronted.
   For example, a lawyer for the current denizen of the Oval Office said, "To my knowledge, the president is not under investigation."
   Note the present tense, "is." Couple that with the opening phrase, "To my knowledge," and the lawyer is covered two ways. The president may indeed be under investigation, but the lawyer doesn't know about it. Yet.
   Secondly, the president may not be under investigation now, today, at this very moment. But that doesn't mean that the trail may well lead to him tomorrow, or next week, or next month.
  That's what investigators do. They pick up a thread and follow it. Along the way, they pick up other threads of information and weave them into what  they already have, and eventually, they have a tapestry that tells a story.
   And that's when they ask a grand jury for an indictment, when they have gathered all the bits and pieces of information, and formed a solid picture of who did what, where, when and perhaps why, along with how the perpetrators did what they are accused of doing.
   Note that prosecutors use the same set of Five Ws that journalists use. One difference is that journalists put the most important bit of information at the top of the story and then trail it downward in the form of an inverted pyramid.
   Prosecutors, on the other hand, build a solid base of information first, then add to it along the way, thus constructing a solid case toward the peak of the story.
   That's what is happening in Washington these days. The special counsel, Robert Mueller, is building a solid base of information -- without publishing or broadcasting what his investigative team is finding -- until they know every detail of every aspect relating to whatever it is they are investigating.
   Journalists, on the other hand, put the details further down in the story, in lesser and lesser degrees of importance.
   So it is today in Washington. The president currently is not under investigation, to the best knowledge of the defense lawyers.
   But.
   Stay tuned. When the prosecutors have finished their investigation of lesser figures along the way who helped build the pyramid that leads to stone mason in chief, then they will start investigating the chief.
   Meanwhile, it is technically true that the president is not under investigation.
   Yet.