I am so stealing that!
New article is basically just Manafort saying the campaign will help Russia.
I’m not sure I know what you’re saying, but there’s nothing in that article about the campaign helping Russia. The article is in line with my earlier speculation that Manafort was using his Trump connection to help himself financially with some Russian Rich Guy.
Followed by 120 moments before the next moment.
After a moment, another minute passed quickly past…
Yeah, it was the campaign chairman, not the campaign. And it was a Kremlin-linked oligarch, not Russia. Huge difference.
You’re missing the point.
It’s not the distinctions you made. It’s that the article suggests it was Manafort acting on his own, on behalf of in his own interests, and not on behalf of the Trump campaign. Possibly even against the interests of the Trump campaign.
I think you might be missing the point or perhaps more accurately not everyone is in agreement as to what the point is.
For the point of this thread, I’ll refer you to the thread title, “Trump associates may have coordinated with Russians, according to US officials.” To me the point is that Trump associates may have coordinated with Russians and that point is all but proven as far as I’m concerned.
There are still open questions as to what extent Trump officials coordinated with Russians and to what end, but I think we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg of the Mueller investigation. Insisting that there’s nothing to see here ignores the fact that what I see is that Paul Manafort is almost certainly going to jail.
Paul Ryan says he is “concerned”. Lindsey Graham said that everyone knows Trump couldn’t be trusted, then turned back to focusing on his bill to remove health insurance coverage from his mom.
Lock him up! Lock him up!
Am I doing it right?
You seem to have misunderstood. When I wrote “the point”, I was not referring to the point of this thread, but rather to the point of my post, which Snarky Kong quoted and addressed, in the post I was responding to.
There is no room for disagreement about the point of my post. I wrote that post and am the ultimate authority on what my point was.
Nobody is saying “there’s nothing to see here”, AFAICT.
However, many people - including me - would think there’s a very substantive difference between Manafort using his campaign insider status to help himself personally with a Russian oligarch, and Manafort in his capacity as Trump representative offering to coordinate with and/or assist a Russian oligarch. Therefore, pointing out that by all indications he was doing the first and not the second is relevant.
So it’s not that “there’s nothing to see”, but rather a discussion of what it is that we’re seeing.
Re Manafort going to jail, I think your confidence is misplaced. Mueller’s team has some pretty aggressive prosecutors, and the fact that they’re playing hardball with Manafort isn’t a good indication that he’s legally guilty of anything. Of course, it’s very possible that he is. But insisting at this point that this is “almost certainly” the case suggests partisanship and hubris.
It doesn’t have to be one or the other. I think he definitely did the first and probably, in doing so, did the second as well, possibly inadvertently.
OK, but that’s just speculation. Anyone can speculate all they want.
But the text of the emails Manafort sent don’t indicate anything more than the first, and the Atlantic article linked by SK is also heavily focused on the first angle. That’s what I was pointing out.
Agreed. Though, it should be noted that Trump is not exonerated in either case. In the one instance, he’s a traitor to the nation. In the other case, where it was revealed to him that he had hired a Russian stooge, and he kept on talking to the guy and being friendly for the next year, still leaves him as an idiot of sufficient proportions as to be dangerous to the nation.
The former is, by all means, worse. But Trump’s complete idiocy and blitheness shouldn’t be overlooked.
Between Trump’s ability to pardon Manafort for anything Federal and Putin’s ability to assassinate Manafort for cooperation, I’m not sure that Mueller has much hope no matter how hard he hits the guy.
It might make more sense to target Keith Schiller or someone else in Trump’s native orbit than Manafort, if Mueller is looking to flip someone.
I would think it’s extremely unlikely that Putin would whack Manafort. Whatever meddling Russia did in the last election has already backfired big-time, in provoking enormous anti-Russia sentiment in the US, particularly among Democrats. If the Russians were found to have bumped off Manafort in an effort to shut down an investigation this would be magnified enormously. Putin is pretty ruthless but not a complete fool.
Nonetheless, that appears to be what he’s doing, e.g. with pre-dawn raids and handcuffing Manafort’s wife etc. Mueller has some people on his team with long histories of aggressive tactics.
It’s true that rich white people are usually handled much more delicately. But that cuts both ways. It also means that judge probably scrutinized that no-knock warrant a lot more carefully than in the average case, which means you can reasonably infer from the fact of its issue that there actually is probable cause that Manafort committed a crime, unlike a typical case in which warrants are regularly rubber-stamped.
I’m skeptical.
Besides for not buying the whole “rich white guy” angle to nearly the extent that you do, I also think it’s unlikely that a judge would turn down a warrant in a case like this. For one thing, the judge only hears one side of the story, and judge or not, any human being who hears only one side of the story is going to be biased towards that side of the story, and if all he needs is probable cause that’s pretty hard to turn down. And for another, a judge is going to appreciate the significance of this particular investigation, and is not going to want to be the guy who stymied an investigation of this magnitude over a decision he could easily make without being second-guessed.
If Manafort flips and tells the US that Putin bought off and installed a President of their own choosing, I’m pretty sure that Russia is going to get hit a lot harder by Trump’s replacement than they would get hit for assassinating some slimeball who was famous once, for 15 minutes, in 2016.
To be sure, they might take a blow for assassinating Manafort. But the alternative could be significantly worse. Life doesn’t always give us the options between “Life is good” and “Life will suck”. Sometimes we only get various degrees of suck to choose from. Putin is the sort of person to understand that and take action to minimize the suckage.
I don’t think so, especially since if they whack Manafort that would be widely taken as confirmation of exactly what it is they’re trying to suppress.
You’re not considering all the relevant facts. Chiefly, there is significant reputational (and potentially practical legal) downside to approving an insufficient warrant application in a potentially historically important case. Moreover, what happens if he declines the warrant isn’t that the investigation comes to a halt or something. They re-work the application once they have some more facts. It happens all the time when high social status people are the target of investigations.
Of course you’re right that ex parte proceedings to determine probable cause are inherently unreliable. That’s why we don’t send people to prison based on them. But as a measure of the prosecutor’s likelihood to indict (which is the main factor in determining whether someone will be found guilty in our system), it’s reasonably reliable. And my sole point is that it’s even more reliable when the person involved has high social status.