Robert Mueller suspects that Paul Manafort may have been the Trump campaign's back channel to Russians intent on meddling in the election.

Courtesy of Bloomberg:  

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s interest in former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort stemmed in part from his suspected role as a “back channel” between the campaign and Russians intent on meddling in the election, a Justice Department lawyer told a judge. 

The disclosure by U.S. prosecutors came Thursday during a hearing on whether Mueller exceeded his authority in indicting Manafort on charges of laundering millions of dollars while acting as an unregistered agent of the Ukrainian government. Manafort’s lawyers say those alleged crimes have nothing to do with Mueller’s central mission -- to determine whether anyone in the Trump campaign had links to the Russian government. 

Defense attorney Kevin Downing argued anew to U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington that even Mueller’s appointment order permitting him to probe “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation” wouldn’t cover the political consulting work that Manafort did in Ukraine for a decade. 

But Justice Department attorney Michael Dreeben said prosecutors were justified in investigating Manafort because he had served as Trump’s campaign chairman. “He had long-standing ties to Russia-backed politicians,” Dreeben told Jackson. “Did they provide back channels to Russia? Investigators will naturally look at those things.” 

Prosecutors hadn’t previously used such explicit language to describe their suspicions about Manafort. In a previous court filing, Mueller also cited business ties between Manafort and the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

Well if this pans out Manafort might be what they refer to in the legal profession as F.U.C.K'd.

David Corn of Mother Jones gets it:

How many times does this have to be explained? DJT Jr., Manafort & Kushner met with Russian emissary & signaled to Moscow they would gladly collude with secret Russian plan to help Trump by accepting HRC dirt. They showed Moscow they approved of efforts to intervene. https://t.co/JaLX9lxKiD

— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) April 19, 2018

And this only adds to the avalanche of legal problems that is crushing the life out of Manafort which include a five-count indictment in Washington on charges of money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent for Ukraine, and an 18-count indictment in Virginia on charges of bank fraud, tax evasion and failing to report foreign bank accounts.

Did I mention that he was F.U.C.K'd? 

Manafort would also like to have access to his bank accounts returned.

Not because he wants to flee the country, but because he desperately wants to flee the country.

You know all of this reminds me of that word we kept hearing all year. You know the one that rhymes with "confusion."

Contusion, intrusion, foregone conclusion, nah that's not it.

Don't worry, I am sure it will come to me eventually.

Search warrants reveal that Robert Mueller's interest in Paul Manafort is related to his time as the Trump campaign chairman, despite attempts by White House to say otherwise.

Courtesy of CNN:

The documents, used to obtain a search warrant in building the case against Manafort, were revealed in a court filing late Monday night. Manafort has pleaded not guilty in two federal cases, and the charges he faces do not include allegations about his time on the campaign. 

The search warrant makes clear that Mueller is also focused on Manafort's actions connected to the campaign. The White House and others have repeatedly said that the investigation into Manafort concerns his activities before he joined Trump's team in 2016.

Investigators in a search warrant application last July told a judge in Virginia that they sought evidence related to Manafort's interactions with a Russian real estate magnate and were suspicious of possible campaign finance violations. 

Specifically, the investigators sought from Manafort's apartment records "involving any of the attendees of the June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower" and anything involving Aras and Emin Agalarov, an Azerbaijani-Russian billionaire and his son tied to the meeting, the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and to a possible earlier unsuccessful attempt to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

So much for the argument that this investigation of Paul Manafort is only focused on activities that took place BEFORE he became the head of Trump's campaign.

And in other bad news for Paul Manafort it appears that yet another employee has sold him down the river.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

Former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort has trouble in his own house. According to court documents, one of Manafort’s former employees led an FBI agent to a storage locker filled with paperwork on Manafort’s businesses and finances. The person’s name is redacted from the filings. But he’s now at the center of a fight over evidence that could play a significant role in the government’s case against Manafort. 

“People do strange things when confronted with authoritative FBI agents,” said Sol Wisenberg, a criminal defense attorney with Nelson Mullins. 

This makes the second Manafort associate known to have aided the government in the sprawling investigation into foreign influence in U.S. politics. Rick Gates, Manafort’s long-time right hand, began cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office in February.

Currently Manafort's attorneys are fighting tooth and nail to get this evidence thrown out of court, which means that it is definitely something that Mueller does not want thrown out. 

Federal judge to Paul Manafort's lawyer “I don’t really understand what is left of your case.”

Courtesy of Reuters:

A federal judge tore into all of the legal arguments that a lawyer for President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort made on Wednesday in his long-shot civil case to convince her that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has run amok and should be reined in.

“I don’t really understand what is left of your case,” U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson said to Kevin Downing, Manafort’s attorney, after peppering him with a lengthy series of questions. 

Manafort filed a civil lawsuit on Jan. 3 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the Justice Department official who appointed the special counsel, in a key legal test of how far Mueller’s mandate extends. 

Jackson did not say when she might rule on the civil case, which the Justice Department is seeking to dismiss.

Manafort's accusation that the Mueller investigation had gone off the rails in its investigation of his past interactions with Ukraine and Russia, was essentially undermined by the revelation that Rod Rosenstein specifically directed Mueller to do just that: 

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told special counsel Robert Mueller in a classified August 2, 2017, memo that he should investigate allegations that President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was "colluding with Russian government officials" to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, prosecutors in the Russia probe revealed late Monday night. 

Mueller was also empowered by Rosenstein to investigate Manafort's payments from Ukrainian politicians, a cornerstone of the Trump adviser's decades-long lobbying career that has resulted in several financial criminal charges so far.

That does not leave Manafort a legal leg to stand on here, which is essentially what this judge is explaining to his lawyers.

All Paul Manafort has to do to make much of this go away is to flip and start voluntarily cooperating with the Mueller investigators.

The fact that he will not do that makes me think that there is more here than simply defending his former boss.

Donald Trump's lawyer John Dowd once floated the idea of pardoning Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

A lawyer for President Trump broached the idea of Mr. Trump pardoning two of his former top advisers, Michael T. Flynn and Paul Manafort, with their lawyers last year, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions. 

The discussions came as the special counsel was building cases against both men, and they raise questions about whether the lawyer, John Dowd, was offering pardons to influence their decisions about whether to plead guilty and cooperate in the investigation. 

The talks suggest that Mr. Trump’s lawyers were concerned about what Mr. Flynn and Mr. Manafort might reveal were they to cut a deal with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, in exchange for leniency. Mr. Mueller’s team could investigate the prospect that Mr. Dowd made pardon offers to thwart the inquiry, although legal experts are divided about whether such offers might constitute obstruction of justice.

I heard one of the reporters on cable news this morning clarifying that this suggestion came before Michael Flynn pleaded guilty and started cooperating with the Mueller investigation, and before Manafort's indictment.

Of course the question to ask is WHY would Donald Trump's personal attorney, who was not representing either Manafort or Flynn, have broached this option?

Just what are they so concerned about Mueller learning from these two?

And does it rhyme with "allusion?"

Of course John Dowd and the White House deny this conversation ever took place, which by the new fact checking rules of the Trump Administration means it ABSOLUTELY happened.

So what is going on with Paul Manafort and Rick Gates? Well as it turns out quite a bit.

Courtesy of Politico:

Though it is a virtual given that Gates will sell out his business partner and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, less understood is the direct threat Gates could pose to President Donald Trump.

While Gates now wears a GPS monitor around his ankle, in 2016 he wore a Secret Service lapel pin that gave him easy access to Trump on the campaign trail and at Trump Tower. 

“He saw everything,” said a Republican consultant who worked with Gates during the campaign. The consultant called Gates one of the “top five” insiders whom Mueller could have tapped as a cooperative government witness. One defense attorney in the case said Gates’ plea has triggered palpable alarm in Trump world.

Manafort may have struck a larger public profile, but Gates spent more time in Trump’s orbit. Manafort left the Trump campaign under a cloud of scandal in mid-August 2016. Gates, his right-hand man, stayed on through the election before assisting the Trump inauguration and Trump’s early presidency. 

Worst of all for the White House, Gates lacks hard-wired loyalty. He is not family, like Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., or his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Nor is he among true Trump believers like Corey Lewandowski and Brad Parscale. 

“Let’s be honest, Don Jr. is not ratting out his dad. Gates is different,” said Paul Rosenzweig, who served as a senior counsel to Whitewater independent counsel Ken Starr.

Yeah, while we are all distracted by the Stormy Daniels' three ring circus, the truly damaging evidence to the Trump presidency might be filling the notebooks of Mueller's investigators as we speak.

As for Paul Manafort well he is still trying to get the case against him dismissed.

Courtesy of Axios:

Paul Manafort's legal team has filed a motion to dismiss the indictment, filed in Virginia, brought against him by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which includes three charges for tax fraud from 2010 to 2014, failing to file reports from his foreign bank accounts, and bank fraud related to various property loans in the U.S.

This follows a nearly identical motion to dismiss his team filed on March 14, which dealt with the charges brought against him in D.C. 

Manafort's legal team argues that the charges do not “arise directly from” the Special Counsel’s investigation. His team argues that they cover things Manafort disclosed to the DOJ himself in 2014. They also write that Mueller's team acted outside of its authority, “without the discipline of limits on the public resources they consume," according to the document.

This will likely be just as unsuccessful as the last one, but it shows that Paul Manafort has a lot to hide and that he is desperate to keep it hidden from Mueller's team.

There is a lot of speculation as to what Manafort is guarding to aggressively, but there might have been a hint revealed just recently.

This new Mueller filing says Trump’s campaign chair *and* deputy campaign manager *knew* their associate was a former Russian intelligence officer. As they say in court, Um. https://t.co/oPyGU1Fnl7

— Ari Melber (@AriMelber) March 28, 2018

Well now, isn't THAT interesting?

The FBI has been trying to contact the two prisoners in Thailand who claim to have evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Courtesy of CNN: 

FBI agents have tried to meet a pair of self-styled "sex coaches" detained in a Bangkok jail who claim to have evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 US election, a senior Thai official told CNN. 

Belarussian citizens Anastasia Vashukevich and Alexander Kirillov sent a handwritten letter last month to the US Embassy in Bangkok asking for help in getting them released in exchange for information on alleged meddling in the US presidential election. 

The FBI agents contacted Thailand's Immigration bureau last week to try to organize the meeting, the highly placed source in the department said. 

The request was refused by Thai officials because only legal representatives and family members of the detainees are permitted access to the detainees, added the source, who is not authorized to speak to media.

As I reported before this Anastasia Vashukevich claims to have taped evidence that Russian oligarch Oleg V. Deripaska participated in the meddling. Deripaska also has close ties to Paul Manafort.

A number of people have tried to dismiss these women out of hand as simply saying anything to get out of that Thai prison, but it appears that the FBI might be taking their claims seriously.

We shall see.

Paul Manafort pleads not guilty of conspiracy, tax and bank fraud charges. Stumbles away wearing two ankle monitors.

WATCH: Heckler throws a Russian flag at Paul Manafort as he exits after court appearance. pic.twitter.com/6sdjJNc2lB

— NBC News (@NBCNews) March 8, 2018

Courtesy of NPR:  

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort pleaded not guilty to conspiracy, tax and bank fraud charges in an Alexandria, Va., federal courtroom Thursday afternoon. 

Judge T.S. Ellis set a trial date for July 10. 

Manafort faces a separate federal trial on Sept. 17 on other charges also brought by special counsel Robert Mueller's office in a Washington, D.C., case. 

For the Virginia case, Manafort will be fitted with a second electronic monitoring bracelet (he is already wearing one related to the D.C. case) and will be allowed to meet with lawyers, attend church services and make emergency medical trips as needed.

Two, count them TWO, ankle monitors.

I guess that is in case Manafort goes all feral coyote and chews off one of his legs.  

The prosecution has between 20 to 25 witnesses ready to testify against Manafort, not to mention all of that evidence that the Mueller team was able to dig up.

I think if you look up the word "fucked" right now there is a picture of Paul Manafort right next to it.

Axios gets its hands on Robert Mueller's hit list, and it's a doozy.

Yep, I'm still coming.

Courtesy of Axios:  

What Mueller is asking for: Mueller is subpoenaing all communications — meaning emails, texts, handwritten notes, etc. — that this witness sent and received regarding the following people: 

1. Carter Page 
2. Corey Lewandowski 
3. Donald J. Trump 
4. Hope Hicks 
5. Keith Schiller 
6. Michael Cohen 
7. Paul Manafort 
8. Rick Gates 
9. Roger Stone 
10. Steve Bannon 

The subpoena asks for all communications from November 1, 2015, to the present. Notably, Trump announced his campaign for president five months earlier — on June 16, 2015.

Ga-damn! Mueller is definitely not fooling around.

Take a look at how many of those on this list are no longer workign in the White House, and how many never even made it that far.

And you KNOW that Mueller has already gained access to these records from Rick Gates, Steve Bannon, and Carter Page.

I heard on cable new this morning that it appears Mueller is approaching this much the same way he did while investigating organized crime families.

Seems appropriate.

By the way it is clearly getting to Trump, who tweeted this out this morning.

Why did the Obama Administration start an investigation into the Trump Campaign (with zero proof of wrongdoing) long before the Election in November? Wanted to discredit so Crooked H would win. Unprecedented. Bigger than Watergate! Plus, Obama did NOTHING about Russian meddling.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 5, 2018

Not only is that completely inaccurate but it also indicates that Trump is freaking the hell out.

Robert Mueller hands out new tax and bank fraud charges to Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. Update!

Courtesy of Bloomberg:  

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his onetime deputy, Rick Gates, were indicted on tax and bank fraud charges as U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller mounted a fresh attack to strengthen his legal pressure against the men. Mueller used a new 32-count indictment in Alexandria, Virginia, to raise the legal stakes against the duo, who were initially indicted on Oct. 27 in Washington on charges of laundering millions of dollars and failing to register as foreign agents for their political consulting work over a decade in Ukraine.

The second indictment complicates the legal defense for both men and appears to signal that plea negotiations have been fruitless. Gates had been weighing a guilty plea, according to several reports. Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, has charged a total of 19 people and picked up the tempo of his public actions in recent days. 

“Manafort and Gates generated tens of millions of dollars in income as a result of their Ukraine work,” the new indictment said. “From approximately 2006 through the present, Manafort and Gates engaged in a scheme to hide income from United States authorities, while enjoying the use of the money.” 

The men are accused of filing false tax returns in each year from 2010 to 2014, and of conspiring to defraud three banks of more than $22 million through loans secured by Manafort’s properties. At one bank, a conspirator helped in the fraud, the indictment said. It also charged that as their political consulting income dwindled in Ukraine in 2014 and 2015, Manafort and Gates defrauded banks to allow Manafort “to have the benefits of liquid income without paying taxes on it.”

Apparently part of the evidence used against these two idiots is an email of Manafort asking Gates to convert a fraudulent document from a word file to a pdf.

Y'all I'm dying, Manafort created an incriminating paper trail because he needed someone to help him convert a Word doc to PDF. pic.twitter.com/CTE4oV7zj0

— Susan Simpson (@TheViewFromLL2) February 22, 2018

Pair of real geniuses here.

Speaking of geniuses this kind of makes me wonder just HOW MUCH incriminating evidence that Mueller has compiled to use in this investigation.

I mean he started out with indictments against Manafort and Gates accusing them of conspiracy, and when they failed to cooperate he simply indicts them on tax and bank fraud charges like it's nothing.

One has to wonder what else he has in the chamber if Manafort continues to hold out on him?

(You can read these new indictments here.)

Update: Well that was quick.

Gates has now agreed to plead guilty.

Courtesy of NBC News:

Former campaign aide Rick Gates has agreed to plead guilty, becoming the third associate of President Donald Trump to make a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller, a source familiar with the proceedings told NBC News. 

Gates, who was indicted with former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort in October on conspiracy and other charges related to their lobbying work in Ukraine, is expected to appear in federal court in Washington on Friday to enter the plea. 

The development comes a day after Mueller filed a new 32-count indictment against Gates and Manafort, hitting them with new charges of tax and bank fraud. It also follows a guilty plea by a Russia-linked lawyer who admitted he lied to investigators about his contacts with Gates.

And the dominoes just keep right on falling.

I think that once Mueller convinces Manafort to flip, that it is game over.

Update 2: Damn! Manafort just doubled down on his innocence.

NEW / Paul Manafort says Rick Gates did not have the “strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence” —> pic.twitter.com/2N3sDIDaqp

— Hallie Jackson (@HallieJackson) February 23, 2018

Okay somebody has definitely been offered a presidential pardon.

It looks like Robert Mueller has flipped another one.

Courtesy of CNN: 

Former Trump campaign adviser Rick Gates is finalizing a plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller's office, indicating he's poised to cooperate in the investigation, according to sources familiar with the case. 

Gates has already spoken to Mueller's team about his case and has been in plea negotiations for about a month. He's had what criminal lawyers call a "Queen for a Day" interview, in which a defendant answers any questions from the prosecutors' team, including about his own case and other potential criminal activity he witnessed. 

Gates' cooperation could be another building block for Mueller in a possible case against President Donald Trump or key members of his team. 

Once a plea deal is in place, Gates would become the third known cooperator in Mueller's sprawling probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. It would also increase the pressure to cooperate on Gates' co-defendant Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, who has pleaded not guilty to Mueller's indictment and is preparing for a trial on alleged financial crimes unrelated to the campaign. Gates pleaded not guilty on October 30 alongside Manafort.

That "Queen for a Day" expression was explained last night on the Rachel Maddow show, as being an arrangement where the subject HAS to tell the absolute truth about everything, knowing that he will not be prosecuted for the things that he personally confesses to, unless he attempts to walk back his statements later.

So that means that Gates in in a box, and his only chance of avoiding significant jail time is to cooperate fully with the investigation, and testify in court.

This also means that Paul Manafort is in a corner, and that if he does not also flip, he will definitely be seeing the insides of a prison cell.

I think it is beyond clear at this point that Mueller has built a strong case against Trump, and is now closing in.

Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee confirms that they will definitely still be interviewing Jared Kushner. Court date for Paul Manafort announced.

Courtesy of Newsweek: 

The Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmed Friday that President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will still be interviewed as part of the committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

“Kushner is still going to be interviewed,” Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, said at a town hall meeting in western Iowa. “We’re getting some more documents, and that’s not done.”

Grassley assured constituents Friday that the interview would happen just days after expressing hesitation that his committee could easily secure a voluntary interview with Kushner after his Democratic counterpart, Senator Dianne Feinstein, published a 312-page transcript detailing a private interview with the founder of Fusion GPS, the organization behind the so-called Trump dossier. Grassley said Friday that the committee is just waiting on documents that Kushner has delayed in handing over before conducting the interview. 

“We’re going to do that,” Grassley said as an Iowan rebuked him over the committee’s five-month delay in interviewing Kushner. “Right now, Senator Feinstein is wanting more documents, and we wait until we get the documents, go through the documents, then we have a basis for the interviews that we’re going to have.”

While we are on the topic it appears that Paul Manafort and his associate , Richard Gates, have a shiny new court date to look forward to.

Courtesy of Reuters:  

U.S. Special Counsel in the Russia probe Robert Mueller will request a trial date of May 14 for Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and Manafort’s associate Richard Gates, Mueller said in a court filing in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Friday.

Just a reminder that while all of these distractions about Trump's racism and piggish behavior are dominating the news cycle that the wheels of justice are still slowly moving forward. 

Speaking of lawsuits, Paul Manafort also filed one against Robert Mueller.

Stop it, stop it, stop it!

Courtesy of the AP:

President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman sued special counsel Robert Mueller and the Justice Department on Wednesday, saying prosecutors had overstepped their bounds by charging him for conduct that he says is unrelated to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. 

The lawsuit by Paul Manafort, filed in federal court in Washington, is the most direct challenge to date to Mueller’s legal authority and the scope of his mandate as special counsel. It comes amid Republican allegations of partisan bias among members of Mueller’s team, which for months has been investigating whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the outcome of the U.S. election. 

The lawsuit also takes aim at Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is overseeing Mueller’s investigation and recently said he was satisfied that the former FBI director was staying within the scope of his authority.

This is a "Hail Mary" pass that will definitely get thrown out.

However it illustrates how desperate Manafort is to keep his business dealings secret.

And I would not be at all surprised that he is also doing this on behalf of Donald Trump to help keep HIS business dealings secret.

These assholes are terrified of what's coming, and that only makes me more excited for the final reveal.

Robert Mueller's investigators have retrieved a treasure trove of information from Paul Manafort and deputy campaign manager Rick Gates.

Courtesy of CNN: 

Prosecutors in the Russia probe have obtained hundreds of thousands of documents and gotten a host of information from laptops and phones in the ongoing investigation into former Trump campaign advisers Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. 

So far, special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators have collected 400,000 documents including financial records, corporate records and emails involving the defendants.

They also have the information from 36 laptops, phones, thumb drives and other electronic devices that were seized during the raid of Manafort's house. The investigators have gotten 15 search warrants in the investigation, according to a new court filing Friday. 

That collection of documents breaks down into several different pots of information, according to the filing: foreign bank account records, 116,000 pages of US financial records, 89,000 records on one hard drive, 120,000 records on two other hard drives, and 80,000 records on a fourth hard drive. The federal prosecutors also noted they have documents from Manafort's tax preparer "that were identified by the government as particularly relevant." 

So far, the government lawyers have identified 2,000 documents as "hot," the filing said on Friday.

Just a reminder that while the conservatives and Donald Trump are working over time to undermine this investigation, Robert Mueller is simply plugging away and inching closer and closer to taking Trump down.

By the way removing Robert Mueller will not make this investigation shut down, in fact doing so would only cause it to grow exponentially and almost certainly result in a finding of obstruction of justice.

Robert Mueller abruptly reverses decision to support bail for Paul Manafort after learning of planned op-ed co-written with man who has ties to Russian intelligence.

Courtesy of Business Insider:

Special counsel Robert Mueller has abruptly reversed course on a bail agreement his office struck with Paul Manafort's legal team last week that would have allowed him to be released from GPS monitoring. 

Manafort evidently failed to tell the government that he was ghost-writing a draft op-ed about his work in Ukraine as late as November 30. He was working on it with his longtime protege Konstantin Kilimnik, who is believed to have ties to Russian intelligence, according to the special counsel's court filing. 

The government said that the court had initially "admonished" Manafort's lawyer for making public statements to the press about the case and on November 8 had barred both "the parties and counsel from making statements that could interfere with" a fair trial. 

"Even if the ghostwritten op-ed were entirely accurate, fair, and balanced, it would be a violation of this Court’s November 8 Order if it had been publish," the government argued. "The editorial clearly was undertaken to influence the public's opinion of defendant Manafort, or else there would be no reason to seek its publication." 

The filing continued: "Because Manafort has now taken actions that reflect an intention to violate or circumvent the court's existing orders ... the government submits that the proposed bail package is insufficiently reasonable to assure his appearance as required. The government's prior general consent to the bail package presupposed that Manafort was complying with the Court's existing orders."

It has been clear to me for months now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is not fucking around here. 

Apparently Manafort did not get that memo and did not understand that Mueller would drop the hammer on him if he even pushed a pinky over the line.

One thing I can say with some confidence is that this is definitely going to send a chill down the spine of everybody already targeted by the Mueller team, as well as those who believe their number will come up at any time.

If I were Jarred Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., or even Trump himself, I would probably have to sleep with the night light on tonight.

Robert Mueller has already questioned top White House aide who supervised cooperating witness George Papadopoulos.

Courtesy of NBC News: 

Sam Clovis, the former top Trump campaign official who supervised a man now cooperating with the FBI's Russia investigation, was questioned last week by special counsel Robert Mueller's team and testified before the investigating grand jury, a person with first-hand knowledge of the matter told NBC News. 

Clovis, who is President Donald Trump's pick to be the Department of Agriculture's chief scientist, could not be reached for comment. His lawyer, Victoria Toensing, would neither confirm nor deny his interactions with the Mueller team.

The court documents unsealed Monday describe emails between Papadopoulos and an unnamed "campaign supervisor." The supervisor responded "Great work" after Papadopoulos discussed his interactions with Russians who wanted to arrange a meeting with Trump and Russian leaders. 

Toensing confirmed that Clovis was the campaign supervisor in the emails. Clovis, a former Air Force officer and Pentagon official who unsuccessfully ran for Iowa State Treasurer in 2014, was the Trump campaign's chief policy adviser and national co-chairman.

Well now isn't THAT interesting?

So here is yet another top level campaign official who not only knew that there were conversations with the Russians, but considered those interactions "great work."

We all learned late yesterday why the FBI has former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort under strict house arrest.

The man has three passports:

Manafort currently has three US passports, each under a different number. He has submitted 10 passport applications in roughly as many years, prosecutors said. 

This year, Manafort traveled to Mexico, China and Ecuador with a phone and email account registered under a fake name. (The name was not disclosed in the filings.)

What's more that guy has either has 28 million or 63 million, depending on which application you go by.

So yeah, he's a flight risk.

So how is all of this going over in the Trump White House?

Not well it seems.

Courtesy of Vanity Fair:  

Although the White House had been anticipating charges in Robert Mueller’s “witch hunt” for months, news that one former adviser, George Papadopoulos, had pleaded guilty, and begun working with the F.B.I., exploded like a bomb. Rising before dawn and gluing himself to his television, Trump at first felt vindicated by the charges against Paul Manafort and Richard Gates, which were seemingly unconnected to Russia. “NO COLLUSION!” he tweeted triumphantly, after he spoke with his lawyers. Others were reportedly relieved that the first batch of indictments did not include Trump’s former national security advisor, Michael Flynn. (Manafort and Gates have pleaded not guilty.) 

But the president’s mood darkened after hearing that Papadopoulos had, apparently, turned state’s witness. “The walls are closing in,” one senior Republican in close contact with top staffers told the Post, echoing other sources who described Trump as angry and agitated. “Everyone is freaking out.” The New York Times reported that White House aides were “stunned and alarmed.”

I swear there is not enough popcorn in the world to cover all of this. 

The Washington Post asks "Just how early did Trump know that Russia claimed to have dirt on Hillary Clinton?"

George Papadopoulos has one degree of separation from Jeff Seasons and three from Trump.

Courtesy of WaPo:

Drilling down on Papadopoulos’s plea, we see a Trump campaign operative engaged in a prolonged effort to obtain Clinton dirt from the Russians. Moreover, we know he kept a “senior policy advisor,” a “supervisory campaign official” and a “high-ranking official of the campaign” in the loop. That’s no less than three other Trump associates who were aware of and/or countenancing the effort to work with Russian officials to find “dirt” on Clinton. 

The Lawfare Blog notes that Papadopoulos directly interacted with Trump about Russian contacts: 

"The stipulation also contains some rather damaging information about President Trump himself. Papadopoulos says he attended a “national security” meeting on March 31, 2016, at which Trump himself was present, along with his other foreign policy advisers. In that meeting, Papadopoulos told the group that he had connections to arrange a meeting between Trump and Russian President Putin. This means that Trump either knew or should have known about his campaign’s effort to interface with Russia, even as news of various criminal hacking and attempts to interfere with the U.S. election were becoming public."

It’s not clear yet whether Trump also knew that Papadopoulos was on the hunt for information from the Russians about Clinton. However, Trump, if he was paying attention, knew there were contacts with the Russians, something he continually denied publicly. Did Trump forget he heard about contacts between his campaign and the Russians? He says he has an excellent memory, so that’s a problematic defense. 

Papadopoulos also has stipulated that “other foreign policy” types were at the March 31 meeting. In the photo from the Trump campaign Web Site we see one of those who was in attendance was now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was named on March 3 chairman of Trump’s National Security Advisory Committee. You will recall he testified under oath he knew of no such contacts between the campaign and Russian officials. That will require explanation.

Yesterday White House spokesliar Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed that Papadopoulos was a nobody and the only meeting he attended was the one of which there is photograph evidence. (Funny how that works out.)

She also claimed to have no idea what the names of the other folks mentioned in the Papadopoulos plea were.

Sarah Sanders: “I’m not aware of the specific individuals” mentioned in the Papadopoulos plea https://t.co/t9AxPlXpRN

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) October 31, 2017

And yet we know this.

Manafort in May: Campaign needs someone low-level to travel to Moscow so as not to send a signal.
Carter Page traveled there in early July. pic.twitter.com/jmCCvjR4c0

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) October 31, 2017

Okay so that is at the very least all of those people in that meeting (Including Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump.) who should have known that the Russians were shopping around "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, Michael Flynn who was also having multiple contacts with the Russians, Paul Manafort who Papadopoulos emailed directly, Carter Page who the campaign apparently sent to Moscow to see this so called dirt, and Corey Lewandowski who okayed the trip.

And this goes as far back as March of last year when Papadopoulos was trying to arrange a meeting with members of the campaign staff and Russian operatives.

Which was at least two months before Trump Jr. had his infamous meeting in Trump Tower with the Kremlin connected lawyer on June 3rd.

So how long has Trump known that the Russians were shopping around "dirt" on Hilary Clinton?

A better question is "When did he NOT know?"

Twitler seems to be awfully agitated this morning. Gee, I wonder why?

The Fake News is working overtime. As Paul Manaforts lawyer said, there was "no collusion" and events mentioned took place long before he...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2017

....came to the campaign. Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar. Check the DEMS!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2017

I hope people will start to focus on our Massive Tax Cuts for Business (jobs) and the Middle Class (in addition to Democrat corruption)!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2017

"Democratic corruption?"There's a desperation play.

It's like Trump's ONLY go to move when in trouble is to shift the blame to the other guy.

He must have been a huge pain in the ass to his siblings growing up.

Trump's tweets are kind of like social media mental health checks.

You can literally gauge his level of stress or mental fragility based on what he posts on Twitter each morning.

The prognosis for today is, "panic stricken." 

First up in the Mueller indictment sweepstakes is former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his business associate. Update!

WATCH: Paul Manafort walking into FBI headquarters with his attorney. pic.twitter.com/Ebo1jPZqUH

— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) October 30, 2017

Courtesy of the New York 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. 

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.

I think a lot of people were putting their money on Paul Manafort from the moment we first heard about these upcoming indictments.

This Rick Gates guy is a complete surprise to me but I was just watching MSNBC and they were  explaining how deeply involved he was with the Trump campaign, the planning of the inauguration, and a Trump SuperPac right up until the spring of this year.

So though he may not be a familiar name to most of us, he was in it up to his armpits.

These are clearly only the first indictments that the Mueller team has in the chamber, and we can only speculate as to who's up next.

However what this does show without a shadow of a doubt is that Robert Mueller did not come to play. He is going to take these criminals down one by one, and there is nothing that Trump or his associates can do to stop him.

Update: Sources are now saying that this indictment contains 12 counts focused on conspiracy and money laundering.

Update 2: According to the indictment this investigation has been going on for at least a year. Mueller was only assigned to be the Special Counsel since May.

Update 3: From CNN:  

The indictment against the Manafort and Gates contains 12 counts: conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. 

The charges do not cover any activities related to the campaign, though it's possible Mueller could add additional charges.

That part about adding additional charges is being echoed by essentially every news outlet besides Fox News right now. 

They're still waiting for the Hillary indictments to be handed down.

Former Trump campaign manager offered private briefings to a Russian billionaire with ties to the Kremlin.

Hello Russia? I'm in.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

Less than two weeks before Donald Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination, his campaign chairman offered to provide briefings on the race to a Russian billionaire closely aligned with the Kremlin, according to people familiar with the discussions. 

Paul Manafort made the offer in an email to an overseas intermediary, asking that a message be sent to Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum magnate with whom Manafort had done business in the past, these people said. 

“If he needs private briefings we can accommodate,” Manafort wrote in the July 7, 2016, email, portions of which were read to The Washington Post along with other Manafort correspondence from that time. 

The emails are among tens of thousands of documents that have been turned over to congressional investigators and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team as they probe whether Trump associates coordinated with Russia as part of Moscow’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election.

There is no evidence that this billionaire took Manafort up on his offer, but then again there is no evidence that he didn't.

And while you are processing that, there is also this.

Courtesy of Politico:   

Former Donald Trump aide Paul Manafort used his presidential campaign email account to correspond with a Ukrainian political operative with suspected Russian ties, according to people familiar with the correspondence. 

Manafort sent emails to seek repayment for previous work he did in Ukraine and to discuss potential new opportunities in the country, even as he chaired Trump’s presidential campaign, these people said. 

Manafort had been a longtime consultant for Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president until 2014, and his Party of Regions. During the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, Ukrainian investigators said they had discovered evidence that Manafort received millions of dollars in off-the-books payments for his work there. 

In the emails to Konstantin Kilimnik, a Manafort protégé who has previously been reported to have suspected ties to Russian intelligence, the longtime GOP operative made clear his significant sway in Trump’s campaign, one of the people familiar with the communications said. He and Kilimnik also met in the United States while Manafort worked for the Trump campaign, which he chaired until an August 2016 shake-up.

I think it is pretty clear that Manafort was certainly not representing American interests while working on the Trump campaign.

I don't know if there is quite enough evidence to claim that Manafort was a Russian spy, but it is pretty easy to see why Robert Mueller had his home invaded using a no knock subpoena. 

US officials wiretapped Paul Manafort way back in2014, and that continued during the campaign and may have included conversation he had with Trump. Update!

Courtesy of CNN:

US investigators wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort under secret court orders before and after the election, sources tell CNN, an extraordinary step involving a high-ranking campaign official now at the center of the Russia meddling probe. 

The government snooping continued into early this year, including a period when Manafort was known to talk to President Donald Trump. 

Some of the intelligence collected includes communications that sparked concerns among investigators that Manafort had encouraged the Russians to help with the campaign, according to three sources familiar with the investigation. Two of these sources, however, cautioned that the evidence is not conclusive.

Special counsel Robert Mueller's team, which is leading the investigation into Russia's involvement in the election, has been provided details of these communications. 

A secret order authorized by the court that handles the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) began after Manafort became the subject of an FBI investigation that began in 2014. It centered on work done by a group of Washington consulting firms for Ukraine's former ruling party, the sources told CNN.

The surveillance was discontinued at one point and the restarted as the FBI launched its investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia.

The fact that this surveillance has been going on for so long, and that Mueller has access to every recording should make it almost impossible for Trump to sleep at night.

And apparently that might be part of Mueller's strategy.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

7The moves against Mr. Manafort are just a glimpse of the aggressive tactics used by Mr. Mueller and his team of prosecutors in the four months since taking over the Justice Department’s investigation into Russia’s attempts to disrupt last year’s election, according to lawyers, witnesses and American officials who have described the approach. Dispensing with the plodding pace typical of many white-collar investigations, Mr. Mueller’s team has used what some describe as shock-and-awe tactics to intimidate witnesses and potential targets of the inquiry. 

Mr. Mueller has obtained a flurry of subpoenas to compel witnesses to testify before a grand jury, lawyers and witnesses say, sometimes before his prosecutors have taken the customary first step of interviewing them. One witness was called before the grand jury less than a month after his name surfaced in news accounts. The special counsel even took the unusual step of obtaining a subpoena for one of Mr. Manafort’s former lawyers, claiming an exception to the rule that shields attorney-client discussions from scrutiny. 

“They are setting a tone. It’s important early on to strike terror in the hearts of people in Washington, or else you will be rolled,” said Solomon L. Wisenberg, who was deputy independent counsel in the investigation that led to the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton in 1999. “You want people saying to themselves, ‘Man, I had better tell these guys the truth.’”

Keep in mind that Mueller could not get these warrants or have the leeway to use these tactics, if he was not in possession of evidence that convinces judges to hand out these subpoenas like Halloween candy to his team.

Clearly Mueller is preparing to drop the hammer.

Update: Hammer is about to drop:  

The developments indicate that Mueller's investigation "is nearing the litigation stage," said Brookings Institution fellows and legal experts Benjamin Wittes and Susan Hennessey. 

"Combined with a flurry of stories about subpoenas, grand-jury appearances and other activity, it's reasonable to expect that Mueller is moving forward on a number of different fronts and is getting close to entering a litigation phase," wrote Wittes and Hennessey, a former attorney for the National Security Agency.

That sound you hear is the tightening of the noose.