Former Trump presidential campaign aide Rick Gates has agreed to testify against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and will plead guilty to fraud related charges, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The Times reported Sunday a revised plea will be presented in federal court "within the next few days."
CNN first reported last week that Gates was finalizing a plea deal and that he had been in plea negotiations with special counsel Robert Mueller's team for a month.
Gates can expect "a substantial reduction in his sentence," to likely about 18 months in prison if he cooperates with the investigation, according to the LA Times report. He is also likely going to have to forfeit any cash or valuables obtained through his alleged illegal activity.
Aside from the legal maneuvering, the father of four has faced personal and financial pressure to bring his legal proceedings to a speedy resolution, a person familiar with the situation told CNN.
Apparently Gates had hoped that wealthy GOP donors would have come to his rescue and donate to his defense fund, but since he is not a gun lobby or a candidate running for office, they simply could not be bothered.
I wrote about this on Friday, but now we know some of the details.
This of course ramps up pressure on Manafort who seems so far to be holding his ground, and maintains that he is not guilty of the charges against him.
Let's see how long that lasts now.
O beats Reagan
ReplyDeleteTrump’s first year in office was so bad that scholars already rank him as the worst president ever
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/02/19/opinion/how-does-trump-stack-up-against-the-best-and-worst-presidents.html
https://sps.boisestate.edu/politicalscience/files/2018/02/Greatness.pdf
Trump’s Evolution From Relief to Fury Over the Russia Indictment
ReplyDeleteTrump began the weekend believing that something good had just happened to him. An indictment leveled against 13 Russians for interfering with the 2016 election had not accused him or anyone around him of wrongdoing. “No collusion” was his refrain.
But once ensconced at his Florida estate on Friday, Mr. Trump, facing long hours indoors as he avoided breezy rounds of golf after last week’s school shooting a few miles away, began watching TV.
The president’s mood began to darken as it became clearer to him that some commentators were portraying the indictment as nothing for him to celebrate, according to three people with knowledge of his reaction. Those commentators called it proof that he had not won the election on his own, a particularly galling, if not completely accurate, charge for a president long concerned about his legitimacy.
What followed was a two-day Twitter tirade that was unusually angry and defiant even by Mr. Trump’s standards.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/18/us/politics/trump-blames-obama-and-democrats-for-failing-to-stop-russian-meddling.html
Bobby is flipping them faster than a cook at IHOP
ReplyDeleteHere's a critical point: BEFORE anyone can be charged with conspiracy, racketeering, and the like, you must FIRST prove there is a conspiracy.
ReplyDeleteMueller's indictment against 13 Russians and several Russian organizations establishes the FACT of a conspiracy. The indictment also refers to other persons “known and unknown.”
The next step — now that a conspiracy has been proven — is to prove that an American/several Americans were involved in this conspiracy.
For example, if any American(s) had a meeting with Russians at which they discussed the Russians providing to them damaging material on one candidate to help the other candidate, that American (or those Americans) are guilty of conspiracy. Hmmmm . . . why does this scenario sound familiar?
" if any American(s) had a meeting with Russians at which they discussed the Russians providing to them damaging material on one candidate to help the other candidate, that American (or those Americans) are guilty of conspiracy. Hmmmm . . . why does this scenario sound familiar?"
DeleteBecause that is exactly what team Hillary and the DNC did paying for their fake 'dossier'?
Going to Amazon right now to find a can of "Russian Troll B-Gone."
DeleteKeep rollin, rollin, rollin,
ReplyDeleteThough Russians are trollin,
Keep them charges goin,
Indict!
Don't try to understand em,
Just charge, cuff and jail em.
Soon we'll be living free and wide.
My brain's calculatin,
Impeachment will be waitin,
Waiting at the end of the ride.
Charge em up. Arraign em in. Flip em o'er.
Indict.
Charge em up. Arraign em in. Flip em o'er.
Arraign em in, indict!
Trump, panicking, reveals the depths of his awfulness
...It was a new low, hiding behind the bodies of dead children and teachers to shield himself from accountability.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/02/19/trump-panicking-reveals-the-depths-of-his-awfulness/
'President' Trump is losing control
...Multiple reports today from journalists covering the White House paint a picture of a president who spent the weekend seething with rage — at Mueller, at the media, at members of his administration, at the fact that he couldn’t play golf because it would have been unseemly in the wake of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting — and lashing out at everyone in sight, up to and including Oprah Winfrey. This is not a man with a firm command of his impulses.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/02/19/president-trump-is-losing-control
We’ve just hit a new presidential low
...His claim was grotesque and baseless, even by Trumpian standards. His self-absorption is such that he cannot see beyond his own fixation, which is that all of this has no meaning beyond the legitimacy of his own election.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/02/18/weve-just-hit-a-new-presidential-low/
The sad truth this Presidents’ Day
...Today the party of Lincoln is under the sway of a president more openly divisive, on grounds of race, ethnicity, religion and culture, than any in our modern history.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-sad-truth-this-presidents-day/2018/02/18/116828e2-1324-11e8-8ea1-c1d91fcec3fe_story.html
For Mueller, this is only the beginning
ReplyDelete...As a lawyer and former FBI agent who conducted counterintelligence investigations, I believe Mueller achieved five things with this indictment, all of which suggest this is not the end of the story.
http://www.cnn.com/2018/02/18/opinions/mueller-indictment-goals-opinion-rangappa/index.html
“WE’VE GOT ANOTHER SHOE TO DROP”: WHY MUELLER’S CHARGES DON’T VINDICATE TRUMP
ReplyDeleteThe Justice Department’s latest indictments don’t implicate the Trump campaign. But the president is far from exonerated, either.
...It is hard to predict what to expect next from Mueller. At every turn, the special prosecutor has managed to keep his chess game secret—no easy feat in a town where practically everything else has leaked to the press. But there is a consensus that something more is coming. “It is hard to speculate on what is next,” Jeffress told me. “But I would say that if [Mueller] has been able to uncover that same kind of evidence on the hacking that he has been able to uncover on these campaign-type activities then we’ve got another shoe to drop.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/02/robert-mueller-donald-trump-russian-indictments
Donald Trump's Russia delusion bubbles over
ReplyDeleteDonald Trump has long been obsessed with the idea that the investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election is really nothing more than a political scheme to rob him of the credit he so rightly deserves for winning that race. Over the last 24 hours, however, that obsession has been tuned up a notch, with Trump unleashing a series of bitter tweets attacking even his own top advisers and agencies for their alleged complicity in this narrative.
The Trump tweets, taken together, sound less like the views of the President of the United States and more like the sort of paranoid, conspiracy theories of InfoWars founder Alex Jones.
...Why would Trump stoop so low as to elevate either unproven or disproven conspiracy theories to the level of a federal investigation into a foreign power actively meddling in our election?
Insecurity -- plain and simple. He made that plain in another one of his stranger-than-fiction tweets over the last 24 hours.
http://www.cnn.com/2018/02/18/politics/donald-trump-russia-analysis/
Robert Mueller Has Trump Cornered
DeleteSpecial counsel Robert Mueller is methodically, brilliantly filling in pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. When complete, the puzzle will depict a president who is ripe ― overripe ― for impeachment.
Mueller’s indictment on Friday of Russia’s cyberwarfare against the 2016 election was a tactical and investigative masterstroke. President Donald Trump is now cornered. Mueller’s report makes a total liar out of Trump for his repeated claims that he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin when Putin says Russia had nothing to do with it, that the hacking could have been “some guy in New Jersey.”
The indictments do not quite connect the Russian operation to Putin personally, but that’s beside the point. No serious person believes that an operation as sensitive as deliberate disruption of the U.S. election could go forward without Putin’s full knowledge and support in a state as authoritarian as his.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-kuttner-mueller-russia_us_5a8a3dfde4b004fc31939016
Manafort has his own problems. More bank fraud uncovered. More charges. He ass is grass. The only way he is going to save himself is also to flip.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/16/mueller-manafort-bank-fraud-accusations-416509
"Special counsel Robert Mueller’s office has told a federal judge it has found evidence that Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, committed bank fraud not addressed by the indictment last October in which he was charged with money laundering and failure to register as a foreign agent.
As legal wrangling continues over a $10 million bail package for Manafort, prosecutors this week accused him of submitting false information to a bank in connection with at least one of his mortgages."
"The filing by Mueller’s office says Manafort obtained a mortgage using “doctored profit and loss statements” overstating “by millions of dollars” the income for his consulting company, DMP International. Prosecutors appear to be referring to a $9.5 million mortgage that Federal Savings Bank of Chicago extended in late 2016 to a Manafort-linked firm, Summerbreeze LLC.
Prosecutors’ references to “conspiracies” suggest that someone beyond Manafort was involved in the alleged fraud, but no further details were given."
Wow. Who does Manafort know that has a lot of experience with real estate and fraud?
He looks a lot like John Cleese...
ReplyDeletedoes he do any funny walks?
Does he have a dead parrot?
He said it himself. You pay to play.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you think all those foreigners are renting rooms and space at his D.C. hotel and never showing up? It's BRIBES. They're paying to curry favor.
Trump has made us into a corrupt third world country. We're no better than Zimbabwe.