Mueller's Gates swings wide, Manafort feels draft.

[_MeDotOrg]

You don't rat down, you rat up. Gates can clearly go after Manafort.

These are financial crimes that do not directly impact the Trump campaign. But from the timeline in the indictments, after the fall of Viktor Yanukovych's kleptocracy Manafort and Gates were desperately trying to get alternative income streams, making numerous false declarations of assets to banks in order to secure loans. Manafort stops his frantic attempts for money to offer to run the Trump campaign, for no salary. This did not appear to be a time where Manafort could be so financially magnanimous.

And while it would seem unlikely that Manafort would volunteer to run Trump's campaign for free, you can also ask yourself why Trump picked Manafort as well. He was replacing Lewandowski at the time, and the rap on Corey was that he was a neophyte in a sophisticated enterprise. So why does Trump pick a man to run his political campaign whose recent expertise is lobbying for corrupt dictators?

What was the quid pro quo? One is mentioned in the indictment: the offer of a political appointment in exchange to securing a loan through an S&L in Chicago. But one area not mentioned is the is the language change in the GOP platform having to do with support for Ukrainians against the Russians. This could be one of the quid pro quos delivered by Manafort.

I don't know if and or how Mueller can tie this to Trump. I don't think Manafort ever went to Trump and said "Listen, I'm up to my ass in debt to Russian Oligarchs, just tweak your foreign policy a bit and it will all work out." But this begs the question of what other ties might exist?

With the Gates, Manafort and Flynn indictments, I think the best outcome for the Trump administration would be to spin a story that their foreign policy agenda was manipulated because they were neophytes to the political world.

I don't think anyone thinks we are anywhere near end of the road with respect to indictments. We haven't heard about the server hackings, Wikileaks or any other possible channels of cooperation. But the cooperation of Rick Gates certainly puts the screws to at least Manafort, and possibly other, especially given his tenure with the campaign.

[_Some Schmo]

Lately I've been thinking that Drumpf is denying collusion not because of the legal implications. I don't think he cares. He's been walking between legal raindrops his whole life.

I think for him, it's all about how people perceive the legitimacy of his election, and that's it. He's all brand, no substance. I'm pretty sure the best way to insult Drumpf, to really get under his skin, would be to tell him the election was tampered with and he didn't win legitimately. The would blow the ugly orange carpet right off that ugly orange head.

But anyway, it seems blatantly obvious that Manafort was installed in the Drumpf campaign by foreign oligarchs in order to settle some debts (or at least, due to debt leverage).

[_Gunnar]

I don't think Trump even recognizes, in his own mind, that there is anything inherently problematic with the prospect of his having won because the election was tampered with in his favor. I suspect that he is more inclined to boast about that than be embarrassed or apologetic about it. The more obvious it becomes that this is indeed the case, the more likely he will be inclined to claim that this is merely additional confirmatory evidence of his cleverness and sagacity, and therefore fitness for the office he now holds.

[_EAllusion]

The indictment makes it extremely clear they were desperate for money enough to be engaging in careless criminal activity to generate it. Then those same clandestine foreign agents for Putin proxies, who are indebted to Putin connected Russian oligarchs known to behave like the mafia, offer to head the Trump campaign for free at the exact same time Russia is running an espionage / influence campaign within the US to get Donald Trump elected.

The very same people who see conspiracies in everything, for example believing that mass shootings are staged events put on by a global conspiracy to disarm them, can't see anything to connect here.

[_Some Schmo]

The very same people who see conspiracies in everything, for example believing that mass shootings are staged events put on by a global conspiracy to disarm them, can't see anything to connect here.

That's because authentic conspiracies are mundane (people, ya know... talk).

The conspiracy has to seem impossible to a rational observer before the fruitcakes will buy it (e. g. all the scientists in the world are in on the climate change hoax).