Paul Manafort, right, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, arrives at Federal District Court for a hearing, Wednesday, May 23, 2018, in Washington. ( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Yesterday, former Trump campaign manager, delegate wrangler, and alleged Russian mob fixer Paul Manafort pleaded guilty in federal court in Washington, D.C. to two felony charges. One was pretty much the chickensh** we’ve come to expect of Mueller’s team. Manafort pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice relating to him making telephone calls to people he planned to call as witnesses for his defense. Mueller essentially criminalized exercising your rights under the Sixth Amendment. The second guilty plea was to an overarching “conspiracy against the United States” charge that encompassed the tax fraud and money laundering charges that an Eastern District of Virginia jury hung on last month.
In return, Manafort agreed to cooperate fully with Mueller’s prosecutors and his he was promised the prosecution would ask for a sentence of no more than ten years. As Manafort is 69 years old, the possibility of not dying in prison had to weigh heavily in his decision. In fact, it is entirely possible that Manafort will serve something less than 10 years of the potential 80-90 years he would be eligible for had the figurative book been thrown at him.
“One thing I can conclusively say is Manafort would have been facing a life sentence and my expectation is he will receive somewhere between three to seven years in jail for everything put together,” Seth B. Waxman, a former prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, said, noting that Manafort will also get credit for time served.
Waxman called it shocking that Gates and former national security adviser Michael Flynn are now eligible for probation for agreeing to work with prosecutors.“Mueller’s office is clearly willing to hand out sweetheart deals.”
Most of the media and the left was in a state of multiple orgasms over Manafort “flipping” on Trump but, as real lawyers and not Politico writers pointed out, Manafort got this deal because he’d already told prosecutors everything he had that was of any value. You only offer plea concessions when the defendant has delivered.
Here are a series of tweets that spell out the significance.
First up is Ken White who is known a @popehat on Twitter. He’s a former federal prosecutor and current defense attorney.
This thread is about right on the assessment of the significance of Manafort cooperating.
But I have a little more cold water to dash upon your furrowed brows.
— ProfanityLadenTweetsHat (@Popehat) September 14, 2018
/3 So, if Manafort had anything really specific and juicy about anyone higher up of value, I would have expected to see it incorporated into the plea. It does not seem that it was. That's not conclusive, but it weighs against him already having provided a smoking gun on anyone.
— ProfanityLadenTweetsHat (@Popehat) September 14, 2018
This a Democrat political hack from Illinois:
1/ Today prosecutors with Mueller’s office announced that Manafort’s plea agreement in the D.C. case was a “cooperation” agreement. That is big news—Manafort has agreed to tell Mueller everything he knows about potential criminal activity by anyone.
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) September 14, 2018
3/ For that reason, Manafort is not cooperating against one person in particular—he has agreed to say everything he knows, and in order to receive a deal, he had to already begin doing so. Prosecutors don’t give deals until after the defendant provides useful info.
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) September 14, 2018
5/ Until we see the plea agreement, we won’t know exactly what Manafort is receiving in return. But aside from being capped at ten years, the main benefit he would likely receive is the government recommending a lower sentence based on his cooperation.
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) September 14, 2018
7/ Trump recently praised Manafort for refusing to “break.” His reaction to this this deal will be worth watching. Manafort was chair of the Trump campaign and he was present at the Trump Tower meeting, so Trump has a reason to be concerned about what he might tell Mueller. pic.twitter.com/506d5cjZoH
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) September 14, 2018
8/ That said, today’s cooperation deal does not necessarily mean that Manafort is getting the deal to flip on Trump. He may be getting the deal because of information he provided about someone else. But the deal does mean that he has to tell Mueller all he knows about Trump. /end
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) September 14, 2018
Shortly afterwards, NPR, hardly a pro-Trump outlet, was reporting:
Paul Manafort's cooperation agreement with the special counsel does not include matters involving the Trump campaign, according to a person familiar with the case, @johnson_carrie reports
— NPR Politics (@nprpolitics) September 14, 2018
And this seems to confirm it:
https://twitter.com/MarkSimoneNY/status/1040696222732959745
If we go back to Ken White’s tweets, we can assume that the scope of Manafort’s cooperation is revealed in the plea agreement. As that plea covers financial crimes, this makes sense:
Revealing observation by @CNN: "Any action against Craig or Skadden would be an extraordinary step, given Craig’s prominence and Skadden’s position as one of the largest and most prestigious law firms in the country." As opposed to Paul Manafort, a nobody: https://t.co/WW0u9mjCa4
— John Hinderaker (@jhinderaker) September 15, 2018
And this:
NEW: People who worked with MANAFORT in Ukraine think his real value to MUELLER may be flipping on the oligarchs, the pols they funded & the Western firms/operatives who assisted them, including ones he recruited, like TONY PODESTA, MERCURY & @SKADDENARPS. https://t.co/eubx2gJzfq
— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) September 15, 2018
BAD FOR GREG CRAIG: His white shoe law firm @SKADDEN_ARPS accepted $4M from MANAFORT through overseas accounts to write whitewash report on YANOKOVYCH while privately expressing doubts about the report & also secretly working more broadly for Yanukovych's pro-Russian regime. pic.twitter.com/j6puIgZwdY
— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) September 14, 2018
NEW: SDNY is weighing criminal charges against former Obama WH counsel & former Skadden partner Greg Craig as part of FARA probe. SDNY is also considering action (potentially a deferred prosecution agreement) against Skadden Arps itself. W/ @evanperez https://t.co/On79soUYcQ
— erica orden (@eorden) September 14, 2018
If CNN and the New York Times are saying the same thing about Mueller’s intentions, you can take it to the bank.
Was Manafort’s plea agreement a “betrayal” of Trump? Sure, Manafort wanted to avoid life in prison. And he had some state criminal liability that a presidential pardon wouldn’t overcome (though I think Josh Gerstein is just writing Resistance porn here). But in a critical mid-term election, the last thing the GOP needed was a Manafort corruption trial going on.
That second trial could have been an embarrassing distraction for Trump and the White House in the lead-up to the November midterm elections https://t.co/CCOE4Xc4rL
— POLITICO (@politico) September 15, 2018
In the end, I think this is a wash. Mueller got a conviction. He got the press release saying Manafort is cooperating. But the denouement here is really a warning to the Resistance that there isn’t any there there when it comes to collusion.
For the rest of us, this is probably best described by Winston Churchill, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
=========
=========
Like what you see? Then visit my story archive.
Follow @streiffredstate
I’m on Facebook. Drop by and join the fun there.
=========
=========
Join the conversation as a VIP Member