The Department of Justice's Russia probe will likely run deep into 2018 now that the first indictments have been approved, a legal analyst said Friday night.
CNN's Jeffrey Toobin was asked what the charges in the investigation, led by former FBI director and special counsel Robert Mueller, mean in the big picture.
"If anybody thinks the Mueller investigation is going to be wrapping up in the next couple of months, this decision [Friday] pretty much guarantees that the Mueller office will be up and running well into 2018, if not through the whole year and beyond," Toobin said.
Toobin noted that in investigations such as this one, which could be classified as a "white-collar" probe, the first indictments are generally filed against people who the investigators are trying to flip and work with them.
"In white-collar investigations, usually the first indictments are against individuals that you hope will plead guilty and cooperate against others," Toobin said. "You don't indict the big fish first. You indict smaller fish in hopes of getting the big fish."
There are also multiple congressional investigations looking at Russia's involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and if the Trump campaign colluded with it.
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