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发帖数: 5309 | 1 Robert Mueller just snagged his golden goose
Manafort's lawyer says he 'accepted responsibility' with plea deal
Lawyer Kevin Downing said Paul Manafort is accepting responsibility "for
conduct that dates back many years," with his plea deal on Sept. 14. (
Reuters)
By Aaron Blake
September 14 at 1:34 PM
It took longer than Robert S. Mueller III probably wanted — and longer than
Paul Manafort probably should have waited — but Mueller on Friday finally
landed his golden goose.
Manafort’s plea deal with prosecutors includes a requirement that he
cooperate with Mueller’s Russia investigation. Manafort’s lawyer Kevin
Downing was asked if it was a full cooperation agreement, and he responded,
“It is.”
This makes him the latest former aide to President Trump to flip. But he’s
also likely the biggest, at least when it comes to the Russia probe.
Although he was in a position to potentially know a lot, we don’t know what
Manafort will flip on — or whether any of it might implicate Trump. But it
has been evident from Mueller’s dogged pursuit of him and from Trump’s
commentary on the matter that this has been the main event for everyone
involved.
While Mueller has farmed out other cases, including Michael Cohen’s, to
other prosecutors, he kept Manafort’s for himself. He did so even as
Manafort wasn’t charged with crimes specifically pertaining to Mueller’s
mandate on Russia’s 2016 interference — the underlying crimes all predate
the 2016 campaign — and he did so even as it meant prosecuting two separate
trials, one of which concluded with no deal.
As I argued last month, it was readily apparent that Mueller was keeping the
Manafort case for himself because of Manafort’s potential to flip. Cohen
was seen as a target for flipping, too — and he eventually did — but
Mueller even sent that one to the Southern District of New York. The cases
of other political consultants who, like Manafort, were facing suspicions of
illegal foreign lobbying were also sent up north.
Manafort was special, and his case was evidence that Mueller had hardly
thrown in the towel on the collusion question. Here’s what I said in August:
Critics of Mueller’s investigation, including President Trump, have seized
upon the Manafort trial as an example of what Mueller hasn’t produced —
specifically, anything proving collusion between the Trump campaign and
Russia. Manafort is charged with financial and other crimes that predate the
2016 election.
But experts say the fact that Mueller is farming out things like the [Tony]
Podesta, [Vin] Weber and [Gregory] Craig cases — and even the Michael Cohen
case, which also went to SDNY — reinforces the idea that Manafort is still
seen as a potentially key figure in the Russia collusion case. And that
goes for basically anything else Mueller has apparently kept under his
purview, up to and including the Seychelles meeting, Erik Prince, George
Nader and Roger Stone. Mueller has now shown he’ll hand off multiple things
that don’t further that specific aim, and everything that hasn’t been
handed off would logically still seem potentially pertinent to the collusion
probe.
...
So why would Mueller refer the Cohen case (along with Podesta-Weber-Craig)
to SDNY but not the Manafort one?
The one obvious difference would seem to be that Manafort was a key figure
in the Trump campaign and had existing ties to Russian interests that could
conceivably be involved in the case’s future. While Cohen may know
derogatory things about Trump — and reportedly is even telling people Trump
knew about the Trump Tower meeting — Manafort may still be viewed as more
of a potential collusion witness.
Through it all, though, it was looking more and more as if Mueller’s bet
wouldn’t pay off — that it would all be for naught, possibly because Trump
was going to pardon Manafort regardless. Manafort resisted a cooperation
deal even as he was being convicted of eight counts at his first trial, in
Virginia. And even this week, as news of plea negotiations broke, ABC News
reported that Manafort’s lawyers were not entertaining a cooperation
agreement as part of the deal.
That wound up being a head-fake. But it made sense, given that cutting a
deal after you’ve already been convicted in one case is hardly ideal, and
leaves you far less leverage. Why on Earth would you wait that long, after
all, if you were just going to flip anyway?
And in that way, Manafort appears to have miscalculated. The new plea deal
still requires Manafort to forfeit millions of dollars in assets, and it’s
unclear how it will impact his ultimate sentence.
Trump, too, seems to have miscalculated, doing a premature victory dance
when Manafort resisted flipping during the first trial. Trump tweeted that
prosecutors had “applied tremendous pressure on him and . . .
he refused to ‘break’ — make up stories to get a ‘deal.’" The president
added: “Such respect for a brave man!”
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family. “Justice”
took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure
on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to “break” - make up stories
in order to get a “deal.” Such respect for a brave man!
9:21 AM - Aug 22, 2018
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On Friday, that “brave man” was finally cracked by another brave man who
is looking increasingly formidable: Robert S. Mueller III. |
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