October 31, 2017
The indictment of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his partner, Rick Gates, along with the guilty plea of former Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos landed with brute force in Washington yesterday. Manafort’s indictment was clearly anticipated, judging from the crowd of reporters staked out in front of his suburban Virginia condo in the pre-dawn hours, looking to catch what we can only hope is the first of many perp walks of the Trump administration. The twelve count indictment against Manafort and Gates details a money laundering scheme involving more than $75 million dollars, stretching back to 2008. It includes charges of conspiracy against the United States, Conspiracy to launder money and False and Misleading statements in connection with registration under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The 31 page indictment details an elaborate fraudulent scheme employed by Manafort and Gates to disguise their work for Russian backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. The indictment details how Manafort used millions of dollars laundered through an offshore account in Cyprus to fund the purchase of three Range Rovers, nearly One Million Dollars’ worth of Oriental rugs and Five Million Dollars’ worth of renovation costs on his home Water Mill, New York (Source: United States of America v. Paul J. Manafort, Jr. and Richard W. Gates, III, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, October 27, 2017).
Although nothing in the indictment explicitly details collusion with Russia, the fact that the campaign manager for the current U.S. President was allegedly the mastermind of a vast, international criminal conspiracy should be disqualifying on its face. Manafort’s lavish lifestyle was funded by his work for the Russian-backed corrupt authoritarian Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych (Source: “Who Did Manafort and Gates work for in Ukraine and Russia?” by Max Bearak, The Washington Post, 10/30/17). Yanukovych jailed his primary political opponent, Yulia Tymoshenko and was finally chased from power by a popular uprising in 2014 (Source: “Here Are Some People Who Actually Jailed Their Political Opponents Post-Election, “ by Sheera Frenkel and Hayes Brown, Buzzfeed, 10/10/16). Keep that in mind when you hear deranged harpy Jeanine Pirro calling for Hilary Clinton to be “locked up,” and Robert Mueller to be fired (Source: “Fox News host with close ties to Trump calls for Clinton to be jailed and Mueller to be fired,” by Judd Legum, Think Progress, 10/28/17).
Despite the damning information contained in them, Trump somehow found these indictments exculpatory, prematurely and dishonestly tweeting yesterday morning that the Manafort/Gates indictment was “proof” that there was no collusion. Less than two hours later, Robert Mueller released evidence of that collusion in the guilty plea of low level campaign staffer, George Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos admitted that he attempted to coordinate with Russian nationals to arrange meetings between Trump campaign officials (or even Trump himself) and Russian government officials. In April of 2016, Papadopoulos met with a Russian national who alerted him that the Russians had obtained “dirt” on Hilary Clinton, nearly three months prior to the WikiLeaks release of the DNC e-mails (Source: “Timeline: How a Trump adviser tried to work with the Russian government,” by Philip Bump, The Washington Post, 10/30/17). Although Trump today derided Papadopoulos as a dishonest, low-level “volunteer,” the fact is that Papadopoulos’ callow criminality and credulousness is of a piece with first sons, Jared Kushner and Donald Trump, Jr. At this point, no one should harbor any illusion that anyone in Trump’s orbit is anything more than a racist, avaricious, soulless hack with no qualms about profiting from the oppression of people here and abroad. Remember that our elected officials swear to defend our Constitution from enemies, “both foreign and domestic.” As of yesterday, they are on notice. We’d better make sure that they act accordingly.