Now, it is true that Trump can pardon Manafort (though that probably won’t happen right away). That’s the only sane explanation for Manafort doing what he did, that he is still certain he’ll be pardoned. But many of these charges can still be charged in state court.
Just about the only explanation for Manafort’s actions are that — as I suggested — Trump was happy to have Manafort serve as a mole in Mueller’s investigation.
But Mueller’s team appears to have no doubt that Manafort was lying to them. That means they didn’t really need his testimony, at all. It also means they had no need to keep secrets — they could keep giving Manafort the impression that he was pulling a fast one over the prosecutors, all while reporting misleading information to Trump that he could use to fill out his open book test. Which increases the likelihood that Trump just submitted sworn answers to those questions full of lies.
And that “detailed sentencing submission … sett[ing] forth the nature of the defendant’s crimes and lies” that Mueller mentions in the report?
There’s your Mueller report, which will be provided in a form that Matt Whitaker won’t be able to suppress. (Reminder: Mueller included 38 pages of evidence along with Manafort’s plea agreement, which I argued showed how what Manafort and Trump did to Hillary was the same thing that Manafort had done to Yulia Tymoshenko.) (our emphasis)Here's the Special Counsel's filing on Manafort (pdf). Here's a quick review of Manafort's legal history with the Special Counsel.
Of all the crooks and traitors snared to date in the Special Counsel's investigation, Manafort is arguably the most hardcore corrupt. But Manafort is also a stupid man, whose overwhelming greed and hubris resulted in amateurishly doctored financial statements and easily discovered tax evasion, crimes that can and certainly will be prosecuted at the State level to assure Manafort will do significant time regardless of any prospective Trump pardon (and, no, double jeopardy doesn't apply). Meanwhile, knowing Manafort was sharing information/ strategy with the Trump legal team all along, the Special Counsel simply waited for Dolt 45 to submit his responses to the Special Counsel's questions before pulling the rug out from under Manafort, potentially catching Rump in that ol' "perjury trap."
That he thinks he can outmaneuver the Special Counsel on the promise of a pardon from Dolt 45, and that his problems will disappear, indicates that the former Roger Stone business partner and professional Republican ratf*cker may have just made the most stupid mistake of his life.
UPDATE: You think maybe the ratf*cker was at the center of it all from the get- go?
Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort held secret talks with Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and visited around the time he joined Trump’s campaign, the Guardian has been told.
Sources have said Manafort went to see Assange in 2013, 2015 and in spring 2016 – during the period when he was made a key figure in Trump’s push for the White House.
It is unclear why Manafort wanted to see Assange and what was discussed. But the last meeting is likely to come under scrutiny and could interest Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor who is investigating alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
A well-placed source has told the Guardian that Manafort went to see Assange around March 2016. Months later WikiLeaks released a stash of Democratic emails stolen by Russian intelligence officers.This would be another confirmation of the validity of the Steele dossier:
According to the dossier written by the former MI6 officer Christopher Steele, Manafort was at the centre of a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between the Trump campaign and Russia’s leadership. The two sides had a mutual interest in defeating Clinton, Steele wrote, whom Putin “hated and feared”.
In a memo written soon after the DNC emails were published, Steele said: “The [hacking] operation had been conducted with the full knowledge and support of Trump and senior members of his campaign team.”Boom!
4 comments:
I suspect that Monofart, like Trump, suffers not just from stupidity but from stupidity leavened with hubris. When you've been doing shady stuff for decades and getting away with it, eventually you start believing you'll always get away with it.
But he actually has less excuse than Trump. Trump spent his life as a con man existing on the fringes of the business world, and never played in the political big leagues until he ran for President. He'd never previously had to contend with anything like Robert Mueller or a House with a hostile majority, and he doesn't understand what he's up against. Monofart has operated among the really powerful before, in Ukraine and Russia if not here. Maybe he never quite grasped the fact that the US isn't a gangster state like Russia and the President isn't a mob boss with unlimited power to protect his henchmen.
But really, he's a multi-millionaire approaching his seventies. He could have just stayed out of the Trump circus and lived the rest of his life peacefully in luxury. Now he'll spend the rest of it in prison. Getting involved with Trump in the first place is the best proof of his stupidity.
I read about this last night and am still trying to unpack all of the information. It seems like mostly a win, in spite of losing Manafort as an actual source who could testify on the stand. Mueller is no fool, so I would assume that he's used Manafort up and can toss him aside to spend the rest of his miserable life in prison. I know nothing about legal proceedings or how this all works, but based on what I've read, Mueller has been working carefully and methodically with an equally dedicated team and soon they'll be able to bring it all to fruition.
If Manafort thought he could outsmart Mueller, he's about to get smacked upside his jughead with a dose of cold reality. If Manafort was actually acting as a mole for Trump, he would have fed him false information and Trump will have lied on his report back to Mueller. And all of the other players in this big drama are probably also pretty nervous.
If Manafort lied out of fear or overconfidence or smugness, he's still in deep trouble. If Trump can actually pardon him, he will have no money or property, no means of support, and no respect. I can't imagine how he would thrive again. But let's hope he doesn't get to find out.
Infidel - he, like many in the political consultant/ fixer world, was an access seller, in this case to the Trump campaign. Having his greed and stupidity fused with that of Trump, it was bound to reach critical mass. We are fortunate that, like Trump, Monofart (lol) is criminally inept; imagine what they could have done had they been competent.
donnah - as I said to Infidel, we're fortunate that these are criminally inept dumbasses!
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