What I learned about Manafort from these docs:
justice.gov/file/1094156/d…
justice.gov/file/1094146/d…
Spoiler: He has no scruples & he’s a brilliant strategist.
And of course, and his guilty plea poses a real danger for Trump.
usatoday.com/story/news/wor…
He went to work enacting his smear campaign in the US—while hiding the fact that he was working for (and getting paid big bucks by) Yanukovych.
justice.gov/file/1094146/d…
justice.gov/file/1094156/d…
Privately the lawyers told Manafort that the evidence that Tymoshenko committed a crime was “virtually nonexistent.”
Where did the millions of dollars Manafort was paid come from?
Yanukovych is now accused of heading a mafia-style syndicate whose crimes cost Ukraine up to $100 billion.
In plain language: Manafort was paid with blood money.
reuters.com/article/us-ukr…
(Prosecutors included a telephone log of the many calls)
Here is something significant (I may be burying the lede in Tweet 10):
The phrase “and others” is repeated 5 times. . .
“Manafort conspired with Gates, Kilimnik, and others to act . . .”
There are five separate sentences mention "and others."
Who the heck are those others?
We don’t know.
But they know. And they know Mueller knows.
Manafort is a lot smarter than Trump. He's the smart guy Trump brought in to help him when he needed a campaign, and nobody in his circle knew how to run one.
Cohen, OTOH, seems like the flunkey.
Trump’s response to Manafort's plea has been somewhat muted.
Maybe that's because Manafort is higher in the criminal org than Trump.
My guess is that Team Trump is busy hatching a plan.
I expect something like another "release the memo" / dueling memos spectacle.
The goal? Get enough people so confused that the Manafort guilty plea & implications will get lost in the noise.
It will fail here, too. We're onto their tricks.