Manafort indicted on 12 counts 
Surrenders to FBI
Rick Gates ordered to surrender
Another campaign advisor pleads guilty
The mystery deepens

By
October 30, 2017 8:48 am - NewsBehavingBadly.com

Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign chairman, and Richard W. “Rick” Gates III, his business associate, have been indicted in 12 counts:

  • conspiracy against the United States;
  • conspiracy to launder money;
  • unregistered agent of a foreign principal;
  • false and misleading FARA statements;
  • false statements;
  • seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts.

The indictment makes it clear that Team Mueller has accused Manafort of committing crimes during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign — a very significant assertion. You can read all 31 pages here.

And, in a closely related story,

one of the early foreign policy advisers to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about a contact with a Russian professor with ties to Kremlin officials, prosecutors said on Monday.

Mr. Papadopoulos admitted that in a January interview with the F.B.I., he lied about his contacts with a Russian professor, whom he knew to have “substantial connections to Russian government officials,” according to court documents. Mr. Papadopoulos told the authorities that the conversation occurred before he became an adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaign. In fact, he met the professor days after joining the campaign.

The professor took interest in Mr. Papadopoulos “because of his status with the campaign,” the court documents said.

Papadopoulos and prosecutors reached their deal on October 5th, and it was unsealed this morning; the agreement suggests he is getting a lighter sentence in exchange for cooperating with the Special Counsel’s team.

So yes, today’s developments touch Donald J. Trump directly.

Manafort got a cuffless, escorted-by-his-attorney “perp walk” to FBI headquarters, which suggests he may already be cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

As reported by the NY Times:

Paul Manafort surrendered to federal authorities Monday morning, after a person close to the case said the first charges were filed in a special counsel investigation.

The charges against Mr. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, were not immediately clear but represent a significant escalation in a special counsel investigation that has cast a shadow over the president’s first year in office. Also charged was Mr. Manafort’s former business associate Rick Gates, who was also told to surrender on Monday, the person said.

Mr. Manafort walked into the F.B.I.’s field office in Washington at about 8:15 a.m. with his lawyer.

NBC News reported:

Manafort and his longtime business associate Rick Gates have been told to surrender to law enforcement on Monday, a senior U.S. official told NBC News.

They are the first people to turn be ordered to surrender in the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia and Moscow’s interference in the election last year.

Possible charges against Manafort, the former chairman of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and his ex-business associate Rick Gates were not immediately known. …

Gates is a lesser known figure, who worked with Manafort in Ukraine and participated in Moscow flew to Moscow for meetings with associates of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who paid Manafort and Gates tens of millions of dollars, NBC News has reported.

There are unindicted co-conspirators:

Kyle Griffin tweets:

And there’s this Hannity blast from the past:

The mystery: will more indictments drop today?

D.B. Hirsch
D.B. Hirsch is a political activist, news junkie, and retired ad copy writer and spin doctor. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

< News Behaving Badly home