Mueller probe reels in three
Make no mistake, yesterday’s indictments and one guilty plea in connection with the Russia probe represent the low-hanging fruit. But then again that’s how criminal prosecutions begin.
Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, a Washington fixer for years, has been in the FBI’s sights at the very least since 2014 when his work for the corrupt Yanukovych government in Ukraine was beginning to attract international scrutiny. How he has evaded indictment this long, given the laundry list of offenses put together by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, is something of a marvel.
And then there’s George Papadopoulos, the millennial who somehow ended up as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign despite dubious credentials (he participated in a model United Nations once). He pleaded guilty earlier this month to lying to the FBI about the timing of overtures made to the Trump campaign by a London-based professor with ties to the Kremlin.
Or as his plea deal reads: “In truth and in fact, however, and as set forth above, defendant PAPADOPOULOS met the Professor for the first time on or about March 14, 2016, after defendant PAPADOPOULOS had already learned he would be a foreign policy advisor for the Campaign; the Professor showed interest in defendant PAPADOPOULOS only after learning of his role on the Campaign; and the Professor told defendant PAPADOPOULOS about the Russians possessing ‘dirt’ on then-candidate Clinton in late April 2016, more than a month after defendant PAPADOPOULOS had joined the Campaign.”
Now Papadopoulos tries his damnedest for much of that summer to arrange a meeting between Trump and Russian officials. At least a few folks with functioning brains around thencandidate Trump raised the issue that maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. What is unclear is whether Papadopoulos was totally freelancing, trying to build his own standing within the campaign — or not. It appears no such meeting ever took place.
Naïvete will never be an excuse, however, for Manafort and his business partner, Rick Gates, both charged with conspiracy to launder money, making false statements, and failing to register as agents of a foreign government.
The relationship with then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his party goes back to at least 2012. Yanukovych himself escaped to Russia in 2014 when his government was overthrown by a popular uprising. But according to the indictment some $75 million flowed into offshore accounts controlled by Manafort and Gates — at least $12 million of which was wired to entities in the United States to pay for what prosecutors called Manafort’s “lavish lifestyle.” That included a $5 million home renovation in the Hamptons, a Land Rover, a Mercedes and $849,000 at a men’s clothier in New York.
What does any of this have to do with Donald Trump — except to call into question his judgment for surrounding himself with people who are (1) greedy, (2) sleazy (3) self-aggrandizing or (4) all of the above. That’s hardly headline news.
To what extent any of the three — or players to be named later — were willing to break the rules to win a presidential election is the real question. And one, no doubt, Mueller will continue to ask.