Get ready for Mueller's end game
LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV
DECEMBER 1, 2018 1:00PM (UTC)
It’s been axiomatic from the start of the Russia investigation that it is different from Watergate in one important way: the crimes that Nixon committed behind closed doors in the White House secretly, Trump is committing out in the open. Repeatedly lying to the American public? Every time Trump tweets or opens his mouth. Obstruction of justice? Firing Comey. Firing Sessions. Calling Mueller’s investigation a “witch hunt” and calling for its end. Tampering with witnesses? Dangling pardons. Engaging in a cover-up of a crime? As he lives and breathes.
But there is one thing Donald Trump and his people have sought to keep secret from the earliest days of his campaign right up to the present moment: their connections with Russians. If, in the past, we thought we knew about most of the Russian contacts, events this week have taught us that we were wrong. First there were new revelations about Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi serving as cut-outs between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks. The Guardian even reported that Stone had met with Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Then it was announced that the cooperation agreement between Special Counsel Robert Mueller and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had blown up. Incredibly, it was revealed that Manafort’s lawyers have maintained an open channel of communication with Trump’s legal team, presumably informing them of the focus of Mueller’s investigation and everything the FBI and prosecutors from Mueller’s team had asked Manafort. Mueller filed a document telling the same court that had signed off on Manafort’s plea bargain that he had lied to the FBI and withheld information in violation of his cooperation agreement with prosecutors.
On Thursday morning, Mueller sprang another surprise when his prosecutors marched into federal court in Manhattan with former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen. Judge Andrew L. Carter Jr. patiently took Cohen through the steps of pleading guilty to lying to two congressional committees about the project initiated by Donald Trump to build a tower in Moscow. “I made these misstatements to be consistent with Individual 1’s political messaging and out of loyalty to Individual 1,” Cohen told the judge, referring to Trump as “Individual 1.” He went on to admit “I was aware of Individual 1’s repeated disavowals of commercial and political ties between himself and Russia, his repeated statements that investigations of such ties were politically motivated and without evidence, and that any contact with Russian nationals by Individual 1’s campaign or the Trump Organization had all terminated before the Iowa Caucus, which was on February 1 of 2016.”
Read more: https://www.salon.com/2018/12/01/get-ready-for-the-end-game/
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And Manafort's not alone. Everybody on Team Trump is a mere pawn.
