Almost anything can happen, but it looks like Manafort is the one.
My money is on him.
Unless he decides to get chatty this weekend.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
I only know what I’ve read about all of this. Manafort, maybe Flynn, and whomever else Mueller had his investgative net tossed over must be nervous this weekend.
It would be glorious to see the Booman Tribune frog finally put to good use!
. . . still reigns over the universe, though, as long as Rove continues to evade his own earned and long overdue frog-marching “out of the White House in handcuffs” [–Joe Wilson]
Hmmmm…Manafort on charges in Virginia or Manafort on charges in New York? I’m thinking about this citation from the American Bar Association, “A U.S. president has broad but not unlimited powers to pardon. For example, a president cannot pardon someone for a state crime. And constitutional experts are divided on whether a president can pardon him- or herself.”
I think that is the endgame, but not the first move. Federal indictment first. Let Trump pardon. Then the case for state prosecution is much stronger. I think Trump will attempt to pardon a state case, damn the Bar Assoc., – and send it to the Supreme Court. Harder for the court or public to bitch if Orange transparently covered his federal ass with pardons.
I’m not sure it’s Manafort. I think the abrupt resignation of Dana Boente suggests it’s Flynn. Boente was the lead on the Flynn investigation and had convened a grand jury (pretty sure I have that right). Perhaps he’s becoming a witness for Mueller? Who knows – but his resignation is almost certainly not coincidental to these indictments.
Also, “at least one person” is what is being reported. It could be both Manafort and Flynn. Personally, I’d like to see this start with Carter Page, who may have been the most direct liaison between Moscow and the Trump campaign. Since he was clearly being surveilled, Mueller probably has the most damning evidence against him. He’d also be an easy to flip – this guy would not do well in prison (I suspect Manafort would quickly become a boss in prison).
I also suspect that Mueller may be moving the schedule up given the increasing likelihood Trump will try to remove him. That is almost certainly the reason behind the hastily thrown together right-wing narratives about Clinton/FBI/DNC/Steele Dossier/Uranium this week – prepping the ground for firing Mueller. Now that indictments have been handed down, it makes it even harder to fire Mueller. And given the thrust of these narratives – trying to turn the collusion narrative on its head – it looks like it’s collusion indictments that the White House is most concerned about. Manafort being caught laundering money is bad, but not deadly. It can be separated from the campaign – it doesn’t prove collusion. The attempts to distract and deflect suggest that the WH is worried that Mueller is going for collusion.
That all said, let’s face it: Trump’s best option is indeed to fire Mueller. He’s almost certainly toast. Might as well gamble that the Republicans in Congress will protect him. That seems like a good bet to take. Ultimately, the GOP care far more about cutting taxes for the rich and dismantling the regulatory and social welfare state than they do about having a Russian puppet in the White House. On the other hand, given how little progress they’ve made in their policy agenda, maybe they’re thinking it’d be better to ditch Trump, regroup, and try again with Pence before they lose control in 2018.
I was thinking it would be Flynn, too. Not to say that Manafort doesn’t have an indictment coming (which could be on Monday too) but as you point out, Manafort’s crimes could be separated from the campaign. Strategically Flynn makes the most sense for Mueller.
First, as a senior campaign official Flynn is a lynch pin for both Russian Collusion and Obstruction of Justice cases. Especially since it was the FBI’s investigation of him that drove Flynn to resign in disgrace despite Trump’s efforts to protect him, and Trump to fire Comey after refusing to provide loyalty to the Trump.
Secondly, it’s worth noting that Flynn’s attorneys said that he “had a story to tell”. I assumed that meant Flynn would be a willing witness, but perhaps his request for immunity are more than the Special Counsel is willing to go far, or they are playing hardball so they indict him on a litany of charges to coerce him to testify against Trump et al for a lesser deal.
Thirdly, it’s a move to see how Trump reacts. Does Trump fear that Flynn will talk and/or that the investigation is getting too close so he fires Mueller? If so, that further proves the Obstruction of Justice charge against Trump, and if the GOP-led congress does not proceed with Impeachment then it gives Dems a lot to run on in 2018. (My guess is that the McConnell may actually prefer to lose the house in 2018 so that after tax cuts are passed this year, the Dems will have to find ways to cut costs to pay for them when the GOP suddenly becomes deficit hawks again).
If Trump moves to pardon Flynn, then it frees-up Flynn to testify against Trump in the Senate/House hearings without being able to take the fifth, while also having an admission of guilt by Flynn.
Simultaneously, it reveals to Mueller that if they are going to go after Manafort, Jared, Cohen, etc… then they have to it through Schneiderman or another State AG’s office. Likewise if Mueller is fired and the Congress is too whipped to move on impeachment, then the state AG’s can pick up where Mueller left off.
Reporting that the grand jury looking at Manafort meets on Fridays and his real estate partner had refused to testify claiming privacy issues was overruled by the judge on last Tuesday so he had to testify last Friday giving this Friday to the prosecutor to wrap things up and ask for the indictment.
Seems like a good bet it’s Manafort.
And this is just the beginning. If Trump thought health insurance was complicated, he’s about to get a dose of legal complications like he can’t imagine.
So far his twitter account has been silent on this Sat morning.
Isn’t RICO seizure of Manafort’s possessions available to the New York charges? That and tax evasion would be so apropos for the Republican noise machine.
It’s Flynn and his son. Mueller’s case against Flynn will show some real corruption and possible collusion questions that even the Trumpers will want answers to. I have never understood why Flynn dealt so openly with Russia/Turkey when he knew every western spy agency was watching his every move. I also think Mueller is setting up the donald. He wants to challenge the donald’s pardon authority to further the obstruction of justice charge.
I have never understood why Flynn dealt so openly with Russia/Turkey when he knew every western spy agency was watching his every move.
Turkey is supposedly an ally. So it’s all about the money there. I wonder if the indictment, if it is for Manafort, is on tax charges. Not paying income tax on all that money he made. Not reporting it. That kind of thing.
My guess is money laundering. Those bank accounts were neon signs of money laundering. Tax evasion might be in there, but it’s regularly a slap on the wrist.
Money laundering might get him for what is for all intents and purposes, life.
.
Money laundering might get him for what is for all intents and purposes, life.
He could get 20 or 30 years for money laundering? I hope the event lives up to the hype. We have 36 hours, or so, to find out.
Another possibility.
No, make that a probability.
No…on third thought, make it a sure thing.
From The Hill:
That sound you’re hearing?
It’s all the workers in Mueller’s section celebrating another year of paychecks.
Watch.
Even if Mueller is sacked…and although I wouldn’t be surprised to see Trump try, I would also be surprised if an old DC swamp rat like Mueller hasn’t already set up a counterstrike of some kind…but even if he is, how many staffers is he using? Hundreds, I’ll bet. Including secretaries and whatnot? Hundreds. These investigations are like any small business. Their primary goal is sales. Why? So the business prospers of course, as do the employees. In this case, “sales” equals “indictments.” New boss? Same as the old boss, only maybe different indictments. The show must go on.
Watch…
AG
They should work for free, like I do.
Unbought.
Unbossed.
Insolvent.
Venal people think everyone is venal.
In a kakistocracy, everything is venal. Everything is monetized. Including “honor.”
Damned near, anyway.
since the Eisenhower farewell “Military-Industrial Complex” speech, this government has been bought and sold so may times by so many hustlers that the history books can’t catch up.
AG
I am battling to understand what is so controversial in these remarks. At this point in our history we have established the nature of the enterprise and are merely haggling over the price; if not since the Eisenhower administration at least since Nixon.
If it’s just because Arthur said so that seems unfair.
It’s controversial because he’s saying that the Mueller investigation is profit-based — not because there’s anything that distinguishes this investigation from Watergate or Iran-Contra (or Whitewater, or Benghazi) or any other investigation but because everything is profit based, man, because it’s all just the Man keeping us down…and other undergraduate-dorm points that the rest of us are too naïve and/or complicit to appreciate.
He’s Mercutio, and unless we join him in screaming “A plague on both your houses” every single time anything at all happens, we’re just eliciting his contempt. It’s the most ridiculous and juvenile of positions.
Come on, are you really going to argue that the main feature of Mueller’s investigation is that it’s about deliberate cost overruns?
It’s what libertarianism always comes down to.
Juvenile bullshit.
.
“A libertarian is a conservative who smokes pot.”
No. But I’ll bet dollars to donuts there are indictments for shenanigans such as those the Podestas and others have been involved in over the years; borderline FARA violations seem very fashionable. How ’bout Lanny Davis?
Democratic rank-and-file have had to tolerate this weaselling around money for decades. It enables the GOP to do the same and worse. We should all clean house.
The next party to adopt ‘rule-of-law’ and make good existing statutes that through lack of enforcement become grey-area profit-centres for a generation of connected lobbyists, clever tax evasion and insider financial trading will be in power for quite some time. They would have my vote. I am sick of it and it doesn’t matter which party.
The Parties, and their associated political movements, are not the same. Those who claim that the Parties are the same and have been for the last half century are engaging in a poisonous and damaging lie.
As expressed by the votes and policies of their State and Federal Legislatures and Executives, the Parties are further apart today than they have ever been in our lifetimes. Arthur lies when he claims otherwise.
They are true believers, Shaun…no matter what the accumulated evidence to the contrary. My posts are incendiary to them. Why? Because I’m not snotty-nosed “nice” about it. Blamers gotta blame. Just look at HRC for all you need to know about that idea. I don’t care what they do or what they say. Both major parties are as crooked as a snake with a broken back, and have been so at least since the assassination years.
Also…do not discount the possibility that some of them may be paid opponents.
Go here for more on that idea…a rare post from Lisa Pease (Real History Lisa), someone who gave up on this blog years ago. The PermaGov has been running that that game in various ways since the Dulles brothers.
Watch…
AG
Also, what Jordan said.
What is controversial about claiming the point of the investigation is just to give people jobs?
I mean, are you reading this shit?
I compared you to Trump a couple days ago and you rose to the bait obliviously (with absolutely no self-awareness or perpspective) just as I predicted you would.
Now you’re continuing your same form of miserable commentary, wherein — just as in Trump’s asinine tweets — an automatic reduction of everything, everywhere to a fraudulent game which you can pretend to understand better than the rest of us thanks to a sort of eight-grader cynicism (and a solipsistic, childish need to condescendingly parade that “greater” understanding to those who are actually discussing the issue at hand rather than throwing cartoon-character images at it).
Keep up the good work, Arthur. Every community needs a court jester clogging up the works, as part of its karmic balance.
You are actually a believer, aren’t you. A believer in the “progressive” Democratic Party and the “honor” of the high-level denizens of the DC duopoly swamp.
Have you been watching the ruckus about Harvey Weinstein’s dishonorable sexual misadventures in Hollywood? Watching how the waves are forming around that first breakthrough, reaching more and more Hollywood types? That’s a good thing, right?
I am not excusing Weinstein here, but I am drawing a parallel. Were Bill Clinton’s many and various “conquests” as he rose from the ranks of Little Rock’s wannabes to the governorship and eventually the presidency any different than Weinstein’s act?
No, they were not. And Clinton presided over the final sale of this country to the multinationals. Do you think “honor” has fences around it? that someone can be dishonorable in private life and honorable in public life?
I do not.
And yet this Democratic Party to which you apparently kneejerk…granted, in your own oblique way…is still essentially run by the same kinds of people who surrounded…and protected/]…Clinton while he was in power.
Why you would trust any of them is beyond me.
AG
You have absolutely no idea what my opinions or beliefs are. By your own admission, you don’t even bother to distinguish between the voices on this blog that are not your own. You are (as I keep ssying) a Trump-level narcissist.
It’s just sad at this point.
Given the full-court freakout coming out of the White House this week and continuing today, I’m thinking it’s more than just Manafort.
I’m expecting that Monday will bring the fruits of a broad, sweeping investigation and a clear path forward leading to full prosecutions of all the guilty that will ultimately deliver justice for the American people and ensure corruption-free elections forever. Also, too, Republicans will see that making sure America is the greatest democracy in the world is absolutely required for political and economic equality.
Just kidding.
The most we can hope for is that Mueller is at least committed to unraveling these crooks and liars. Monday will show the signs of that commitment to a long term process, one way or another.
you had me standing in front of my chair cheering with your first paragraph, and collapsing back into my seat in laughter with the second. allI can say is, …….really, I got nothin.
Well, I did forget the pony.
I have to wonder whether Mueller has, or should, indicted someone in order to see if Trump will pardon him/her. That would be a good guide as to how to proceed with the rest.
Remember all the giddy anticipation and excitement among the progressive chattering classes a few years ago over “Fitzmas”? Yeah, so do I. Let’s not get carried away with speculation, because that’s all it is. Monday will come soon enough.
Ahhhh, yes. “Fitzmas”. I seem to recall that Fitzgerald, the “Elliot Ness of Harvard”, was going to be the undoing of the Bush/Cheney cabal. And we ended up with nothing more than the scalp of Scooter Libby, whose sentence was summarily commuted by The Shrub. Oh, and how can we ever forget that game changing jailing of Judith Miller for not revealing her sources regarding good old Scooter.
After months and months of feverish buildup and liberal fantasizing, we ended up with the most anticlimactic and inconsequential prosecution of modern political times. Let’s hope this one will not top it in that regard.
The failure of Fitzmas was a typical structural failure of the media due to coziness with power.
Rove’s attorney has drinks with a reporter at Time who conveys that Rove’s reliance on Mike Allen to back him up will end up in a perjury conviction. Rove quickly finds a pretext to `update his testimony based on new facts’ and Fitzgerald lets him skip.
When people talk about the failures of the MSM they don’t even know the half of it.
The Bush (Cheney??) administration could not have survived their term intact without the direct complicity and support of the MSM. One of the most maddening things of the Bush era was how obvious it was that they felt it their duty to maintain the semblance of normality and veneer of respectability for one of the most criminal enterprises in modern political history. It wasn’t until well past the time the neocons had their war lust sated and Cheney’s buddies had pillaged hundreds of millions, or billions, of dollars at the cost of hundreds of thousand of human lives did the MSM finally get their head out of their ass and recognize at least some of the rank incompetence that existed throughout those eight years. And even then, it only had to do with the administrative incompetence related to Katrina. The rest of it was mostly just swept under the rug and shoved down the memory hole.
After all, it was only a bunch of dumb fucking hippies who were screaming about it at the time.
“The media” was no more to blame for the “Fitzmas” fiasco than it is to blame for most fiascos. In fact, inasmuch as it was still concerned with maintaining the legitimacy of the invasion of Iraq, and validating the narrative on which that invasion was based (and which the media thoroughly bought at the time), it had less interest in building the “Fitzmas” hoopla.
What set “Fitzmas” apart was the online left, not “the media”. Look up “FireDogLake.com”. Look up Jane Hamsher.
The enthusiasm with which FDL and all the rest drove the “Fitzmas” narrative was directly proportional to their lack of power to do anything about it, to influence it in any way whatsoever. It was a sign of the impotence of the online left. In that, the Fitzgerald investigation then is similar to the Mueller investigation today. It’s a cautionary tale.
No, you’re not looking at the details on Fitzmas.
Rove had perjured himself testifying at Fitzgerald’s grand jury, just as Libby did. Both of them were relying on the reporters to not reveal their sources.
Rove’s lawyer was a pretty savvy guy who calls up his contact over at Time magazine to get a feel for how solid Rove’s strategy is and finds out Matthew Cooper is going to burn him when Cooper testifies. (Had wrong name before)
Rove’s lawyer goes back to Rove and says we have to come up with a pre-text that says you’ve had your memory refreshed by some item you weren’t aware of at the time you testified and now you’ll need to correct your `inadvertently misleading testimony, I.e perjury’ before you are caught red handed.
So that is exactly what Fitzgerald allowed Rove to do. Once corrected, there was no perjury, no prosecution, or conviction.
It was a specific act by a specific reporter that allowed a perjurer to go scot-free because that person couldn’t keep their mouth shut when gossiping with a representative of known perjurer.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/10433919/ns/politics/t/time-reporter-told-key-detail-rove-attorney/
OK, I’ll grant your point on the detail and I also agree with your broader argument: as a rule, the media did not and does not maintain an adversarial relationship with the people they cover when those people hold significant wealth and/or political power. That’s how I take your statement about “typical structural failure of the media due to coziness with power”, and you’re right.
But evidently Fitzgerald didn’t have much of an adversarial relationship going on either:
This makes it sound like Fitzgerald intentionally let Rove walk.
Now, maybe that’s the way it’s always done, in every other case. Maybe Fitzgerald was playing it “by the book”. Either way it seems safe to say in hindsight that Fitzgerald interpreted his job very narrowly and was determined to do no more than he was authorized to do in filing charges. But my point about the online left still stands because the online left had no grasp at all of this nuance — they were hoping the whole justification for the Iraq invasion, if not the Bush administration itself, would be toppled. Clearly Fitzgerald had no such idea in mind. So it seems to me that the left was naive.
Twelve years later and we’re looking at the Mueller investigation. What are we hoping for this time? Two things:
#1 is possible, and that’s an interesting development: it means that there is a sector of the elite that is willing to take historically unprecidented measures against a President they can neither predict nor control, who they fear will destroy the empire they created out of the ashes of World War II.
I don’t see #2 happening at all.
And really, all we can do is speculate: this is all completely beyond our influence and control. The one thing we can control is our expectation for another Fitzmas, I’ll pass on that one.
Hmm.
I am thinking the indictments better include Donald J Trump.
I don’t think Mr Trump is going to tolerate another chaos inducer in his patch. Firing someone who’s been instrumental in indicting you should be sufficient to create a constitutional crisis that might come to something, otherwise, not.
Just a thought.
It may be Manafort, but who it/they are is not as important as the fact that this signals the beginning of what I hope is an exposure of the truth and an unraveling of this corrupt joke of a Presidency.
. . . about right to me:
Ding ding ding! Manafort turns himself in this morning.
Not to worry. Pardon on the way.
Be interesting to see if Trump’s reflex to distance himself (e.g., Manafort is a BAD man, not like us!) would make it harder/impossible to then pardon Manafort. Wouldn’t make sense. Then again, he reverses himself every second…
Well, I want a cookie or a yo-yo! I guessed correctly.
Can I interest you in a used pony?