Paul Manafort was the chairman of President Donald Trump’s campaign when he offered a Russian oligarch “private briefings” on Trump’s bid. He was spearheading the campaign when WikiLeaks began dumping thousands of emails from the Democratic National Committee that had been stolen by Russian operatives. Perhaps most importantly, he was one of three top Trump campaign officials to attend a meeting with two Russian lobbyists offering kompromat on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton at the height of the campaign.
On Friday, Manafort pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy and obstruction, and Andrew Weismann, a prosecutor working for the special counsel Robert Mueller, told a federal judge that Manafort had flipped and would be cooperating “in any and all matter as to which the government deems the cooperation relevant,” including “testifying fully, completely” before a grand jury. Patrick Cotter, a former federal prosecutor who worked with Weismann in the past, didn’t mince words when he reacted to the development. “Manafort’s cooperation is the single most important advancement for the Mueller probe,” he said. “He is the single most important witness thus far, because his position was such that he can shed light on the most critical question of what the president knew, and when he knew it.”
It’s impossible to know precisely how significant Paul Manafort’s decision on Friday to accept a guilty plea in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe and agree to cooperate with investigators will ultimately prove to be. Every indication, though, is that it is tremendously bad news for President Donald Trump. Trump’s former campaign chairman confessed to a series of criminal actions taken as part of a conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government by working for a pro-Russian Ukrainian political party before he joined the Trump team, as well as to obstruction of justice. His plea agreement didn’t say anything about possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and the Russian military intelligence officials who are alleged in another Mueller indictment to have attacked the 2016 election for the benefit of Trump. So, it’s true that the pair of charges to which Manafort pleaded guilty does not involve actions he took as a member of Trump’s campaign. This was the official White House line on Friday. The implications of the agreement, however, point to many, many ways that Manafort’s decision could damage Trump legally and politically, both concrete and hypothetical.
Paul Manafort had something very, very special that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III wanted so badly: His cooperation. Today, as he promised to plead guilty to a set of reduced charges, Manafort agreed to cooperate “fully, truthfully, completely, and forthrightly” with the special counsel’s investigation. Documents Mueller might want to inspect? Manafort has agreed to provide them. His attendance and participation at prosecutor debriefings? Done. Perform from the witness stand for prosecutors? You betcha. Why is Manafort’s cooperation so valuable to Mueller? He’s been operating inside Trump World for almost four decades and, as Trump’s campaign chairman for the crucial period including the Republican convention, he is the most powerful of all Trump’s aides and associates to be indicted.
Manafort’s cooperation could change everything. He had close access to Trump, and his knowledge should go not merely to collateral matters but right to the heart of Russian conspiracy with Trump and his campaign. The closest members of Trump’s inner circle and family now face genuine danger of criminal indictment, and Mueller may even have the evidence to implicate the president in a crime, or at least to make a strong recommendation of impeachment to Congress. To be fair, perhaps Manafort doesn’t have the goods on Trump, or can’t directly implicate him in Russian election interference. Either way, we will know soon enough whether Trump’s oft-repeated cry of “no collusion” is reality, or the final delusional gasp from a deeply troubled president.
Unless Mr. Trump is watching Fox News, he can’t be feeling too good right now. In January, NBC News reported that he had told friends and aides he had decided Mr. Manafort wouldn’t “flip” on him. And the two men’s lawyers have been in regular contact as part of a joint defense agreement, according to Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. If any of those conversations involved the dangling of a pardon for Mr. Manafort — which prosecutors might consider to be obstruction of justice — they would not be protected by any privilege and would probably be fair game for Mr. Mueller. What else might Mr. Manafort reveal? Mr. Mueller is very interested in that curious meeting he attended, along with Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, at Trump Tower in June 2016 — the one with the Russian government representative who promised to provide “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. The White House’s defense is that the crimes for which Mr. Manafort was convicted, committed long before joining the Trump campaign, have nothing to do with the president.
The bad news for Mr. Trump is that there are still many unanswered questions about how Mr. Manafort exploited his Russian connections in the service of helping Mr. Trump’s campaign, and whether Mr. Trump knew or was involved in any way. Beyond the Trump Tower meeting, there’s evidence that Mr. Manafort hoped to use the campaign job — for which he took no paycheck — to help Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with close ties to President Vladimir Putin, and to extract himself from a multimillion-dollar debt to the tycoon. For now, Mr. Manafort can take comfort in the knowledge that he joins an ever-growing crowd of top Trump associates who have pleaded guilty to federal offenses: Michael Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser; George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign; Rick Gates, Mr. Manafort’s business partner and deputy campaign chairman; and Mr. Cohen, whose case is being handled by federal prosecutors in Manhattan. All have agreed to cooperate with authorities, except Mr. Cohen — and even that may be changing. How many more guilty pleas and convictions will there be in Trumpworld before all this crime starts to look — how can we put it — organized?
The comedian and activist Randy Credico met last week with investigators working with special counsel Robert Mueller. He came away impressed. “I think these people know everything already,” said Credico, who was there to answer questions about his old friend Roger Stone, a sometime adviser to Donald Trump. “They have all the information.” “All the information” grew significantly on Friday, as Mueller announced that the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had entered into a cooperation agreement with prosecutors requiring him to testify indefinitely about any matter of interest to investigators, potentially including the inner workings of the campaign, its contacts with Russia, Trump family business dealings in Russia or his own contacts with Russia. One former assistant US attorney called the plea deal an “existential threat to the presidency”. The fundamental focus and progress of the Mueller investigation is unknown, owing to the prosecutorial team’s extreme informational continence. But by all reports, and judging by indictments handed down so far, Mueller’s flashlights have penetrated deeply into the side caverns and underground tunnels of the Trump campaign and presidency. His central mission is to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election and alleged cooperation by the Trump presidential campaign. So what is the status of the Mueller investigation, with the midterm elections less than two months away?
First came George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign adviser who was arrested by the FBI when he stepped off a plane at Dulles International Airport and soon agreed to help the special counsel’s office as part of a plea agreement. Then there was Michael Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser who admitted he lied to the bureau and would now be cooperating with Robert S. Mueller III’s team to make things right. Next to fall was Rick Gates, Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman who conceded he conspired to defraud the United States and tried to deceive investigators looking into his overseas work.
One by one, the special counsel’s office methodically turned allies of President Trump into witnesses for its investigation — irking the commander in chief so much that he has suggested the commonplace law-enforcement tactic “almost ought to be illegal.” But former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had long eluded Mueller’s team, with his resistance to a plea deal so intense that some in law enforcement figured he must know he would soon receive a pardon. On Friday, though, the special counsel finally nabbed his white whale. Manafort, whose role in the Trump campaign and ties to a Russian-aligned strongman and a suspected Russian intelligence agent make him an enticing cooperator, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of justice. As part of his agreement with prosecutors, he said he would tell the special counsel’s office all that he knows.
Manafort’s plea could be a key cog in pushing Mueller’s case toward its ultimate end. Legal analysts say Manafort must have something valuable to share with Mueller’s team, which agreed to drop five of the seven charges he faced and potentially urge leniency at his sentencing, if his cooperation is helpful. Generally, those who plead guilty sit down with prosecutors to detail what they know in a “proffer” session, so the government knows what it will get in the bargain. Manafort’s plea makes reference to a written proffer agreement on Tuesday — showing he has been in talks with the special counsel’s office at least for several days.
It’s tempting to view Paul Manafort’s guilty plea and cooperation agreement with special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe in gladiatorial terms: Manafort brought utterly to heel; Mueller in full triumph; and the vainglorious orange-haired emperor sulking in the royal box, his chosen warrior having turned tail and abandoned him. The actual story is even more exhilarating. In his all-out, morally bankrupt assault on the Mueller probe, the president had chosen Manafort as his poster child for justice. Manafort, the multi-million dollar tax cheat and mercenary servant of Russia’s interests, became Manafort, the stand-up guy. And the two men appeared to be enacting an obstruction of justice in plain view: Manafort keeping quiet and going to jail in the expectation of a corrupt pardon from Trump, which the president had shown himself very willing to give. All that is blown to bits after the plea deal announcement, which is, more than anything, a triumph for the rule of law and the notion that, Rudy Giuliani’s buffoonish proclamations to the contrary, truth is truth.
A plea deal by former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort to cooperate with U.S. prosecutors in their investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election suggests he could shed light on unanswered questions revolving around the campaign, legal experts said on Friday. Manafort’s agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller to cooperate “fully, truthfully, completely, and forthrightly” could put to the test U.S. President Donald Trump’s denials of campaign collusion with Russia, lawyers not involved in the case said. Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor and a law professor at George Washington University, said the agreement, which caps at 10 years a sentence that could have been much longer, was a “pretty good deal” that suggested the Mueller team valued Manafort’s cooperation.
Paul Manafort vowed he’d never flip on Donald Trump. After Manafort’s conviction in federal court last month in Virginia, the president declared he had “such respect for a brave man!” because his former campaign chairman hadn’t folded. About three weeks later, Manafort broke. The longtime GOP operative, who pleaded guilty Friday in a Washington D.C. federal courtroom days before he was set to go on trial, is now the third close Trump associate to reverse course and throw himself at the mercy of government prosecutors. The surprise twist provided further evidence of the overwhelming power of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, before which a growing roster of defendants are finding resistance to be futile. While Mueller passed up the opportunity for a public trial that would bring to light more proof of wrongdoing, legal experts say Manafort’s plea agreement contained important new details that continue what has been a public education campaign of sorts by the special counsel. “The Mueller team is the A team, for real,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a senior fellow at the nonprofit R Street Institute and a former senior counsel to independent counsel Kenneth Starr. “And they are using a series of speaking indictments to, in effect, file their final report.”
Mueller’s thoroughness has upended the defense plans for other Trump loyalists. Lawyers for Flynn had maintained regular contact with the president’s attorneys until late November 2017, just a week before the former Trump national security adviser pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s prosecutors rather than face trial for lying to the FBI. Mueller’s investigators also sicced federal prosecutors in New York on Cohen, whose guilty plea last month – on the same day as Manafort’s conviction in Virginia — rocked the president’s inner circle. Even after the FBI raided Cohen’s home, office and hotel room in April, Trump spoke by phone with his longtime fixer, who once said he’d take a bullet for the president. Rudy Giuliani, a personal attorney to Trump, didn’t signal until mid-May that Cohen was no longer representing Trump. Those cases and others are earning Mueller’s team new praise as the latest cooperation agreement sinks in. “The Manafort plea confirms what many observers knew from the outset — that Mueller had assembled a superb team of professional prosecutors who could track through complex financial transactions and figure out whether federal crimes have been committed,” said Philip Lacovara, an attorney who served on the Watergate special counsel team. “The track record of convictions demonstrates that Mueller is systematically building his cases and charging only persons who have been caught dead to rights,” he added. “Manafort’s belated capitulation should signal anyone else charged by Mueller that there is little chance to escape.”
Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor who attended Manafort’s Virginia trial, credited the Mueller team with securing the guilty plea and Manafort’s cooperation by redrafting their indictment against him to encompass all his misconduct in a single conspiracy against the U.S. charge while dismissing the remaining counts. “This accomplished two goals — requiring him to admit to all of his criminal conduct while at the same time reducing his potential sentencing exposure because of the five-year statutory maximum for that count to provide an incentive to plead guilty,” she said. Duke University law professor Samuel Buell, another federal prosecutor, said he’s most impressed by the Mueller team’s “incredible discipline with which they have been able to tune out and seal off everything around them and just do what federal prosecutors and FBI agents do.” “So far, it’s as if Trump and his political operation practically don’t exist for them,” added Buell, who worked with Weissmann to prosecute the Enron case. “What is happening to Mueller’s targets is the same thing that has happened to hundreds of others, for years and years, when faced with experienced, talented, determined, and patient prosecutors and agents.” “In those circumstances, federal criminal law wins almost every time,” he added. “These prosecutors knew that going in and they’ve kept their eyes on that ball.”
The most important reason is that with news of Paul Manafort’s cooperation with the special counsel, one must appreciate how much better Mueller has been at fulfilling Trump’s campaign promises than Trump himself. Trump promised to drain the swamp of corruption. He and his administration have instead relabeled the Beltway from “swamp” to “elite mud bath” and invited the entire GOP to come hang out at the spa. The raft of administration scandals puts the lie to the notion that Trump would be an anti-corruption fighter. Instead, all the Republicans accused of ill-gotten gain can do is copy Trump and blame the Deep State. Mueller, meanwhile, appears poised to use the Manafort plea deal to go after other lobbyists for foreign governments who skirt the rules. According to the New York Times’s Kenneth Vogel, the cooperation agreement will put pressure on some of Manafort’s partners: “Mr. Manafort’s friends, and associates who worked with him in Ukraine, say that he might have more valuable information about Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs and politicians, and the Western firms that have helped them, including ones that he recruited, such as Podesta, Mercury and Skadden.”
With Manafort’s plea agreement, one final difference is revealed. When he was running for president, Trump ludicrously claimed that he would be able to eliminate $19 trillion in U.S. federal debt in eight years. In actuality, the federal government’s debt has exploded since he came into office. This is entirely consistent with his record as a businessman. One of Trump’s minor-key complaints about Mueller is the cost of the investigation. He tweeted, “At what point does this soon to be $20,000,000 Witch Hunt, composed of 13 Angry and Heavily Conflicted Democrats and two people who have worked for Obama for 8 years, STOP!” That was all sorts of wrong when Trump tweeted it, but it is even more wrong now. In reaching his plea deal, Manafort agreed to hand over more than $46 million in property and more liquid assets to the federal government. As Marcy Wheeler noted, “with this forfeiture, the Mueller investigation just more than paid for itself.” No one is perfect, and I am sure Mueller has made mistakes in his life. But when one compares him to Trump, one cannot help but conclude that he is better at every aspect of governing.
Foreign Threats
Those of us who are critics of Russia—and Vladimir Putin in particular—are usually focused on Putin’s retrograde politics. Putin has shut down the press; murdered his opponents; jailed dissidents; used homophobic legislation to stoke bigotry and reactionary rage; co-opted the church to portray himself as the only reliable protector of Russian culture; killed off opposition parties; and just generally centralized authority in himself to a degree last matched in the post-Stalin Soviet era. But there’s also his aggressive foreign policy: wars in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea, and threats against the Baltic states and others. Regional hegemons usually engage in a fair amount of military activity, so perhaps much of this can be written off as nothing all that unusual. Your mileage may vary. But Russia’s cyberwarfare is something quite different: it is destructive, highly advanced, and very definitely not restricted to the ordinary kind of hegemonic military activity, which is typically targeted at either border states or very limited engagements in proxy wars that are temporarily deemed important for some reason. Russia has made it clear that cyberwar is something it takes very seriously and is willing to use against anyone, whether they’re at war or not. That obviously includes us. And just as obviously, our current president has decided to do almost nothing about it. For most of us, we can only hope that the Pentagon and the NSA are ignoring Donald Trump and doing a good job of fighting this stuff on their own. In the meantime, the big question is: Why doesn’t Trump care? And why does the Republican Party allow him to get away with not caring?
President Trump just dramatically escalated his efforts to interfere with the Russia investigation. Late Monday afternoon, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders released a banal-sounding statement: that, “for reasons of transparency” and in response to requests from Congress, President Trump has directed the Justice Department to declassify a whole bunch of materials related to the Russia investigation — the ongoing inquiry into his own campaign — immediately. Those materials include a few specific things Trump wanted declassified: certain sections of the Carter Page FISA application (but, notably, not other sections of it) and FBI interviews related to Page, as well as FBI interviews with Justice Department official Bruce Ohr. The real bombshell, though, was in the second paragraph of Sanders’s statement: “President Donald J. Trump has directed the Department of Justice (including the FBI) to publicly release all text messages relating to the Russia investigation, without redaction, of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr.”
In other words, the president is demanding the release of an enormous amount of internal material, without redaction, about an ongoing investigation into his campaign and his associates. And he’s doing this days after his former campaign chair, Paul Manafort, finally agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s team. The goal appears obvious: Trump is searching for something, anything, new he can use to try to discredit the investigation. The GOP has been making hay of the texts between Strzok and Page all year, and this is an effort to surface similar material Trump can use to attack Mueller. And, again, Trump is essentially demanding a look at the inner workings of an investigation into his own campaign, an investigation that he has routinely attacked and undermined. He’s not releasing these for “transparency.” He’s looking for ammunition.
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