The first Morning Jolt of the week features a new ad urging President Trump to get rid of Obama-era regulators and regulations, disturbing news about yet another high-profile Hollywood actor, more inappropriate comparisons to Walter Cronkite, and of course, the morning’s big news:
It Begins: Manafort and Business Associate Told to Surrender to Authorities
Insert all the appropriate caveats: A prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich, every man gets his day in court, the accused will likely have the best defense lawyers that money can buy, and so on.
But come on, we all put the most money on Paul Manafort in the indictment pool, right?
Paul Manafort and his former business associate Rick Gates were told to surrender to federal authorities Monday morning, the first charges in a special counsel investigation, according to a person involved in the case.
The charges against Mr. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, and Mr. Gates, a business associate of Mr. Manafort, 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.
Mr. Gates is a longtime protégé and junior partner of Mr. Manafort. His name appears on documents linked to companies that Mr. Manafort’s firm set up in Cyprus to receive payments from politicians and businesspeople in Eastern Europe, records reviewed by The New York Times show.
Mr. Manafort had been under investigation for violations of federal tax law, money laundering and whether he appropriately disclosed his foreign lobbying.
Back in August of 2016, Manafort was making public denials of corrupt behavior that didn’t pass the smell test, statements like, “I have never received a single ‘off-the-books cash payment’ as falsely ‘reported’ by The New York Times, nor have I ever done work for the governments of Ukraine or Russia.” No, but he worked for the pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. If someone did work for the Democratic National Committee or Obama for America in 2012, does that mean they can say they’ve never done work for the U.S. government or President Obama? In both cases, they’re answering to the president, and it seems reasonable to conclude their viewpoints and interests align.
Manafort also made statements like, “My work in Ukraine ceased following the country’s parliamentary elections in October 2014.” Well, yeah, there wasn’t as much left he could do for his primary client after the security forces guarding him opened fire on demonstrators and Russian special forces whisked him away to a safe haven in Russia.
If you pull that kind of technically-true-but-deeply-misleading slipperiness in an interview with federal law enforcement, do you get hit with obstruction of justice charges?
It’s also fascinating to see the “Resistance” celebrating so much over this morning’s news. Isn’t it likely that any “violations of federal tax law, money laundering and whether he appropriately disclosed his foreign lobbying” occurred long before his three-month stint as Trump’s campaign manager?
UPDATE: The indictment can be read here. The twelfth count is indeed a charge of making “materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements” to the Department of Justice.