This went pretty much according to Mueller’s plan. By letting the 2nd indictment fly in EDVA, Mueller forced Gates to choose Green, formally dump his old lawyers, and also stop messing around with new counsel.
Mueller will only deal with Green where Gates is concerned. Gates is a moron who has been manipulated by Manafort for years. Green can help Gates get out of jail reasonably soon but only in exchange for FULL cooperation - that means giving up all of the contacts with Russian intel and pro-Russian Ukrainians who took orders from Moscow. It also means giving up everything he observed and participated in with respect to Russian contacts during the campaign. I am almost certain that whatever action items Manafort took note of following the Trump Tower meeting on 6/9//16, he had Gates do the follow-up. I want to know if he managed Carter Page and Papado. I want to know why he was a RNC liaison. What purpose did a guy like Gates serve other than as a possible conduit to launder Russian money into GOP campaigns? I want to know why he was on the campaign plane on Election Day. What did he do after Manafort left to earn that level of importance? Why did Manafort work for free? What is the Manafort-Tom Barrack relationship? Were they encouraged to join the Trump campaign? Who did that? I believe that Manafort ended up on that campaign because Putin put him there. I want to know how that transpired.
Manafort offered to work for the Trump campaign for free. Manafort hadn’t had American campaign experience in more than a decade if I remember what I heard last night. So he’s not some stand-out applicant for the job.
Trump’s not completely stupid. So why offer the job unless there’s something in it for Trump? Trump didn’t think he’d win until about the time Hillary conceded so up to that point (at least) he’s looking at everything as an opportunity to grift.
I think Manafort offered a piece of the action to Trump in return for the job.
It is worth noting that Mikey Flynn showed up to work on The Orange Urine-Stain’s campaign after General Flynn’s trip to Moscow to sit next to Mr. Putin at a banquet. He didn’t work for free, but one does find the timing interesting, and of course, there’s that whole ugliness with the fact that more than half a dozen folks on Drumph’s campaign staff all met with/had conversations with/lied about contact with/had deep financial ties to Russian Intelligence agents.
George Papadopoulos
Michael Flynn
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III
Sam Clovis
Paul Manafort
Rick Gates
Carter Page
Donald “Qusay” Trump Jr.
Jared Kushner
Paul Manafort made a very lucrative career by defending the indefensible. He would not be out of place in a House of Cards episode. But the MuellerNoose is closing, and I suspect that his opportunity to cooperate with the investigation has now passed.
I’d also bet a small sum of money that at least part of the recent sudden flurry of “conservative” (hah!) voices agitating for presidential pardons was instigated by him. Trying to nudge Trump along, because that appears to be the only card in his hand.
The court just shot down his latest bail proposal, too. Things are just not going very well for the master manipulator.
There’s an expression used in the flying community – a pilot is said to “run out of runway and ideas at the same time”. I think that’s about where Mr. Manafort’s legal strategy is headed.
The reality of how long this legal process will likely take, the cost, and the circus-like atmosphere of an anticipated trial, AND THE FACT THAT I AM GUILTY OF ALL CHARGES are too much.
The charges are pretty tangential to Donald so far.
I think Mueller is accomplishing two things here. First, to put pressure on Manafort to get him to testify against Trump. Second, he is laying a foundation for how Russian money flowed into the campaign and directly influenced it.
Manafort is being indicted now for receiving illegal money from foreign entities while working on a Presidential campaign…that he “volunteered” to work for free. (Probably the first time in his life he ever volunteered to do anything for free).
So we have Manafort being paid by Russia to further their policy goals, while acting as Trump’s campaign manager/chairman. And lo and behold, more and more senior advisers suddenly find ways to talk with Russian agents. The RNC platform changes. Trump is praising Putin every chance he gets.
That’s more than a little coincidental, don’t you think?
There’s another consideration that Rick Wilson has emphasized mainly in connection with Manafort’s reluctance to flip: namely, that if he gives up all the information on the Russians he’s going to wind up dead. I wonder if those considerations apply to Gates as well. Of course, it may be that he does not have as much information about the Russian side of things as his boss.
A lot of people talk about Mueller wanting to flip Manafort to get Trump. I’m not so sure. Manafort has left a trail of slime leading through a huge number of the more despicable dictators and autocrats in the world. Manafort was, for example, reportedly involved in organizing a protest in the Ukraine that included protesters throwing rocks, as I recall, at US soldiers. And in commissioning a report to cover for Viktor Yanukovich’s jailing a political opponent. Among many other extremely unsavory acts. Recall that Mueller is a veteran as well as a career law enforcement officer. I bet Mueller wants very much to take Manafort down very hard, and will resist giving him a deal to get Trump unless he really has no other choice.
As a completely serious question, they would have gotten away with all of this had trump lost the election, right? How much energy would a Clinton Administration FBI have been able to put into an investigation of the losing candidate?
He got a kick out of answering his phone, “Mueller, Homicide.”
“I love everything about investigations,” Mueller said years later . . . . “I love the forensics. I love the fingerprints and the bullet casings and all the rest.”
From the WaPo article. This is a guy for whom no detail is too small. Nothing is inconsequential. Nothing overlooked.
This is going to take longer than some of us would like. It may take a trial and conviction of Manafort to break the dam.
The original Watergate burglars were arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced (by Judge “Maximum” John Sirica). After their sentencing, the burglars wanted Stormy Daniels levels of hush money, and Nixon and his staff discussed payoffs in the Oval Office (White House counsel John Dean: it will take a million dollars for all of them over the next two years; Nixon: “we could get that”). Dean, sensing he was being set up as the fall guy, belatedly turned against his employer and publicly disclosed the “cancer on the presidency” (and went to jail for his role).
I swa Rick’s statement and I don’t agree. IMHO, if a connected guy like Van der Zwaan gets nailed and another much higher connected guy Prighozin gets indicted, there’ll be no political capital expended for Paul Manafort.
Manafort’s choices are simple:
go to jail for the rest of his life.
go to Ukraine and get executed
Cooperate w/Mueller, give up the whole game, implicate Trump, get 5 years.
