While we know the basic story of what happened in the 2016 election — i.e. Russia hacked the DNC and stole massive amounts of data that they then dumped via WikiLeaks; Trump narrowly won the electoral vote, managing to pull off razor-thin margins in states such as Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin — we only have snippets of what laws may have been broken and what crimes committed.

Now, however, thanks to a remarkable new report from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), we appear to be much closer to understanding what we can expect before 2018 comes to an end.

Reporter Garrett Graff has written extensively on the Russia investigation, had this to say recently on the CBC show “The Investigators”:

“Between now and the end of the year we’re going to see significant movement in the investigation.

“Every single court filing he’s done — indictments, guilty pleas or what have you — has been deeper, more knowledgeable, more insightful and better informed than we had realized Bob Mueller was up until that moment.”

So it now seems that we’re about to get some big moves as it relates to the Russia probe, but what might Mueller be taking an especially close look at? Graff address that, too:

“Mueller is laser-focused on these two questions of Russia’s role in the 2016 election and Donald Trump’s attempted or perhaps active obstruction of justice of that investigation ever since.

“One of the things that has been clear right from the start of this investigation is that Bob Mueller is far ahead of our public understanding of where he is.… Generally, his investigation is running about four to six months … ahead of where we think he is.”

In other words, Mueller has been crafting his case on the crimes of collusion/conspiracy and obstruction of justice.

Graff also noted that the special counsel will be moving with very deliberate speed in the weeks ahead, if only because he knows acting attorney general Matt Whitaker may attempt to shut him down:

“He knows he doesn’t have forever, and he certainly has been well aware since the summer of 2017 that he might be fired, or this investigation might be shut down almost at any moment. So he has clearly had plenty of time to prepare whatever doomsday type plans he might actually have.”

The Russia investigation is reaching its final chapter, and it appears Robert Mueller holds all of the cards.