The Manafort Indictment: Not Much There, and a Boon for Trump

NRO ^ | 10/30/2017 | Andrew McCarthy

[mojito]

The Paul Manafort indictment is much ado about nothing . . . except as a vehicle to squeeze Manafort, which is special counsel Robert Mueller’s objective — as we have been arguing for three months....Do not be fooled by the “Conspiracy against the United States” heading on Count One (page 23 of the indictment). This case has nothing to do with what Democrats and the media call “the attack on our democracy” (i.e., the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 election, supposedly in “collusion” with the Trump campaign). Essentially, Manafort and his associate, Richard W. Gates, are charged with (a) conspiring to conceal from the U.S. government about $75 million they made as unregistered foreign agents for Ukraine, years before the 2016 election (mainly, from 2006 through 2014), and (b) a money-laundering conspiracy. There are twelve counts in all, but those are the two major allegations.

(....)

From President Trump’s perspective, the indictment is a boon from which he can claim that the special counsel has no actionable collusion case. It appears to reaffirm former FBI director James Comey’s multiple assurances that Trump is not a suspect. And, to the extent it looks like an attempt to play prosecutorial hardball with Manafort, the president can continue to portray himself as the victim of a witch hunt.

[smileyface]

ha!

[smileyface]

...or Manafort was really working for Hilliary all along, and tried to set up Trump...

[Alberta's Child]

And, to the extent it looks like an attempt to play prosecutorial hardball with Manafort, the president can continue to portray himself as the victim of a witch hunt.

President Trump can also portray himself as a victim of Manafort, if it turns out that Manafort got hired by the Trump campaign while he had fraudulent foreign registered agent documentation on file with the U.S. government. If the Trump team had done a background check on him to see if there was any danger of foreign influence, he would have come up clean.

[RetiredTexasVet]

Get it while it’s hot, the Mueller Nothing Burger!

[SargeK]

Exactly. Let no one be fooled. McCarthy is an ardent anti-Trumper and he wanted the dossier to be true as badly as Rosie O’DingDong and Keith
Uberdouche. Not two months ago he wrote an article in NR about it.

[hinckley buzzard]

Manafort is a long time DC operator who has been a hired gun for years. Mueller and everyone else knew he would be dead meat if anyone ever bothered to prosecute. What he did, like a hundred others of both parties, was skirt the edges of the law and assume the authorities would not bother. Well, they would not have, except he had the bad luck of joining the Trump campaign, which meant a target was on his back. Mueller needed some low hanging fruit to earn his paycheck, and Manafort was there for the taking. That’s really about it for this round.

[mojito]

Spot on.

[hoosiermama]

That thought crossed my mind. Thought again: Manafort only looks out for Manafort and leans to whomever pays him the most.

[generally]

I wonder if it’s your internet service provider deciding what they will allow you to see.