Manafort and aide indicted; Trump campaign official admits lying to FBI

Originally posted by @kazetnagorra
But what about Hillary's e-mails?

Did anybody notice that the Manafort indictment has absolutely nothing to do with Trump or the Trump campaign and that it's based mostly on events that occurred before the escalator ride, let along before any Russian collusion were relevant?

Originally posted by @phranny
Get over it. Hilary's emails are not worthy of an indictment. Mueller is set to clean up the Team Trump putrid swamp. If Trump pardons Manafort, he will face charges from New York State and Trump's pardoning authority does not stretch that far.

Hilary's emails are not worthy of an indictment.

So blatantly currupting the nomination process to the disadvantage of Bernie Sanders and in turn the will of the people voting in the process does not merit an indictment. Well, to be fair, the nomination process in American elections has always been riddled with undemocratic perversions, but even with a high and justified level of cynicism, one could hope that there was some legal restraint on the dirty and dishonest tricks that can be played on the public in a procedure as fundamental to democracy as this one is.

If you want to carry conviction when attacking Trump over the electoral process it would help to have clean hands.

Besides, is the prospect of an indictment actually the point, rather than the Democratic party understanding that Hillary was a disastrous choice of candidate, even against a donkey, let alone Trump, and remains a mistaken choice of figurehead for the current anti-Trump campaign? Maybe there is after all a limit to the capacity of capital to purchase votes from turkeys for Christmas.

Originally posted by @sh76
Did anybody notice that the Manafort indictment has absolutely nothing to do with Trump or the Trump campaign and that it's based mostly on events that occurred before the escalator ride, let along before any Russian collusion were relevant?

Which is it?
"Absolutely nothing" or 'mostly'

Originally posted by @sh76
Did anybody notice that the Manafort indictment has absolutely nothing to do with Trump or the Trump campaign and that it's based mostly on events that occurred before the escalator ride, let along before any Russian collusion were relevant?

For it to have "absolutely nothing" to do with Trump, wouldn't it have to be based entirely on events that occurred well before "the escalator ride"?

Originally posted by @sh76
Did anybody notice that the Manafort indictment has absolutely nothing to do with Trump or the Trump campaign and that it's based mostly on events that occurred before the escalator ride, let along before any Russian collusion were relevant?

I noticed; so what? Should Mueller ignore crimes that his investigation reveals if they are not directly related to Russian collusion?

Anyway it's fairly clear given that a small fry has pled to Russian collusion related crimes contingent on cooperation with the Mueller investigation, that this prosecutor intends to use the present charge against Manafort as leverage to get him to "flip".

Originally posted by @no1marauder
I noticed; so what? Should Mueller ignore crimes that his investigation reveals if they are not directly related to Russian collusion?

Anyway it's fairly clear given that a small fry has pled to Russian collusion related crimes contingent on cooperation with the Mueller investigation, that this prosecutor intends to use the present charge against Manafort as leverage to get him to "flip".

I'm not saying Mueller should ignore it, but until Manafort does flip, this news is unrelated to Trump. Yes, that Manafort might flip becomes more likely now, but people are treating this as though the indictment of Manafort in itself is significant to show Trumps' wrongdoing.

I don't think most people could care less about Manafort in a vacuum.

Originally posted by @kazetnagorra
For it to have "absolutely nothing" to do with Trump, wouldn't it have to be based entirely on events that occurred well before "the escalator ride"?

Manafort wasn't involved in the Trump campaign until long after the escalator ride and even if there were any actions after his joining the campaign that are relevant to the indictment (which is not clear), they are related to his money laundering activities which were well under way long before the Trump candidacy.

Except insofar as this may give Mueller leverage to flip Manafort against Trump, this is not relevant to Trump and doesn't reflect on the Trump administration (save, perhaps, for calling into question Trump's judgment in picking a shady character for her campaign).

Originally posted by @stevemcc
Which is it?
"Absolutely nothing" or 'mostly'

"nothing to do with Trump" assertion = absolutely

timing assertion = mostly

Originally posted by @sh76
Did anybody notice that the Manafort indictment has absolutely nothing to do with Trump or the Trump campaign and that it's based mostly on events that occurred before the escalator ride, let along before any Russian collusion were relevant?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/30/george-papadopoulos-donald-trump-russia-charge-putin

For months the White House has denied collusion with Russia. But in court documents released on Monday, new evidence emerged of an ambitious plot by a former Trump foreign policy aide to arrange a meeting with Vladimir Putin on behalf of the future president. The plan featured a mysterious London professor, a female Russian national inaccurately referred to as “Putin’s niece” – and bold promises that the Kremlin was ready to dispense “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

The most explicit evidence yet of a campaign official’s attempts to work with the Kremlin emerged in an indictment brought by Robert Mueller, the special counsel who since May has headed the investigation into Trump-Russia contacts.

Originally posted by @vivify
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/30/george-papadopoulos-donald-trump-russia-charge-putin

For months the White House has denied collusion with Russia. But in court documents released on Monday, new evidence emerged of an ambitious plot by a former Trump foreign policy aide to arrange a meeting with Vladimir Putin on behalf of the future ...[text shortened]... e special counsel who since May has headed the investigation into Trump-Russia contacts.

That's Papadopoulos, not Manafort.

Originally posted by @sh76
That's Papadopoulos, not Manafort.

But Papadopoulos was sending those e-mails directly to Manafort:

Four weeks later, on May 21, Papadopoulos emailed Paul Manafort, who was then Trump’s campaign chairman (and has now been indicted on tax fraud charges), to reiterate that Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was “eager to meet Mr. Trump.” Manafort forwarded the email to another Trump campaign official, Rick Gates (who has since been indicted alongside Manafort), with a note attached. “Let’s discuss,” said the note. “We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.”

What signal was Manafort trying to avoid? The charitable theory is that he didn’t want to convey disrespect to Russia by having a senior campaign aide explicitly reject Russia’s outreach. That’s implausible, since assigning the brushoff to a junior aide conveyed even less respect. Nor would that theory explain why, when the email chain was leaked and published in the Washington Post two months ago, the part about avoiding a “signal” was left out. It’s more plausible that Manafort was trying not to alert nosy Americans—perhaps the same ones who, on behalf of our government, might have monitored a Trump–Putin meeting more easily in the United States than in London. That would explain why, once the Russia scandal exploded, the sentence about a “signal”—indicating an attempt to keep contacts between Russia and the campaign secret—was omitted from the material given to, or at least published by, the Post.

On June 19, 2016, Papadopoulos wrote to a high-ranking Trump official—apparently Manafort again—this time passing along word from the Russian foreign affairs ministry that if Trump couldn’t travel for a meeting, Russia would like to meet with a representative from Trump’s campaign. “I am willing to make the trip off the record,” Papadopoulos wrote, “if it’s in the interest of Mr. Trump and the campaign to meet specific people.” According to the stipulation, this offer led to weeks of communication about possible off-the-record meetings. On Aug. 15, a campaign supervisor wrote back to Papadopoulos, telling him “I would encourage you” to “make the trip.” The trip never happened. But the campaign’s authorization of an off-the-record meeting did.

The juiciest disclosure in the stipulation involves a breakfast in London on April 26, 2016, a day after Papadopoulos sent his initial query about a Trump–Putin meeting in London. At the breakfast, an “overseas professor” told Papadopoulos “that he had just returned from a trip to Moscow where he had met with high-level Russian government officials” and had “learned that the Russians had obtained ‘dirt’ on then-candidate [Hillary] Clinton.” Specifically, the Russians had “thousands of emails” from or about Clinton. But the stipulation says nothing about Papadopoulos passing this information to the Trump campaign. It says he “continued to correspond with Campaign officials” and his Russian contacts. But the correspondence spoke only of working “to arrange a meeting between the Campaign and the Russian government.”

This is quite puzzling. We know that the Trump campaign wanted dirt on Clinton. That’s clear from email correspondence leading up to the June 9, 2016, meeting between Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Russian representatives. Why, then, didn’t the campaign follow up on the April 26 offer? The answer is we don’t know that it didn’t. All we know is that the campaign’s correspondence after April 26 didn’t mention dirt or Clinton’s emails. Maybe Papadopoulos didn’t pass the information along. Or maybe he did, and the vague record that follows is what happens when an incriminating conversation goes offline.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/10/papadopoulos_plea_blurs_the_line_between_collusion_and_cover_up.html

Originally posted by @sh76
That's Papadopoulos, not Manafort.

The title of this thread is "Manafort AND aide indicted", not "ONLY Manafort indicted". Papadopoulos, obviously, was a Trump aide

Manafort was Trump's campaign manager...and has a 12-count indictment with conspiracy to launder money, making false statements and other charges in connection with their work advising a Russia-friendly political party. That just adds to the overall picture of Trump colluding with Russia, and surrounding himself with others who have ties to Russian interests in order to do so.

Originally posted by @vivify
[b]The title of this thread is "Manafort AND aide indicted", not "ONLY Manafort indicted". Papadopoulos, obviously, was a Trump aide

The aide was referring to Gates, not Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos was not indicted yesterday; he took a plea several weeks ago.