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The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for Trump gets a little worse:
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/30/mueller-manafort-gates-testimony-244339
Something I've learned from ongoing commentaries by ex-Federal prosecutors is that white-collar criminals are notoriously difficult to prosecute for the simple fact that they don't believe they're "real" criminals, therefore extracting confessions or, as in this case, flipping them, can prove challenging. It's clear, however, that Mueller is looking to apply as much pressure as humanly possible. Combined with the story that Papadopoulos was informed by a Russian national (thought to be Joseph Mifsud of the University of Stirling in Scotland) that Moscow "had 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton in the form of 'thousands of emails'” before his inclusion in the infamous "security meeting," and the fact that Trump appears to have forsaken Manafort and Gates after calling them "bad guys," it doesn't seem likely that Manafort will remain unflipped for very long.
The contrasting treatment of Manafort and Papadopoulos seems to be engineered to send a message to everybody else in Mueller's sights: cooperate and your treatment will be lenient. Don't cooperate and every Federal crime in the book will land on your head.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/us/politics/george-papadopoulos-russia.html
Mystery Professor in Mueller Case Had Contacts With Russian Officials – Mother Jones
Prosecutors convinced a federal judge to require a lawyer for Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort and Rick Gates to testify before the grand jury investigating Russian involvement in the 2016 election, a court ruling unsealed on Monday showed.
The unusual move is an indication of the aggressiveness of special counsel Robert Mueller's prosecution team as they prepared to indict Manafort and Gates on charges of money laundering and failing to register as foreign agents. The 12-count indictment was made public on Monday.
Lawyers for Manafort and Gates fought the prosecution's drive to intrude on attorney-client communications. But Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that an exception, which involves using a lawyer to commit crime or fraud, applied to contacts with an attorney who helped respond to inquiries about why the pair had not filed foreign-agent lobbying registrations with the Justice Department.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/30/mueller-manafort-gates-testimony-244339
Something I've learned from ongoing commentaries by ex-Federal prosecutors is that white-collar criminals are notoriously difficult to prosecute for the simple fact that they don't believe they're "real" criminals, therefore extracting confessions or, as in this case, flipping them, can prove challenging. It's clear, however, that Mueller is looking to apply as much pressure as humanly possible. Combined with the story that Papadopoulos was informed by a Russian national (thought to be Joseph Mifsud of the University of Stirling in Scotland) that Moscow "had 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton in the form of 'thousands of emails'” before his inclusion in the infamous "security meeting," and the fact that Trump appears to have forsaken Manafort and Gates after calling them "bad guys," it doesn't seem likely that Manafort will remain unflipped for very long.
The contrasting treatment of Manafort and Papadopoulos seems to be engineered to send a message to everybody else in Mueller's sights: cooperate and your treatment will be lenient. Don't cooperate and every Federal crime in the book will land on your head.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/us/politics/george-papadopoulos-russia.html
Mystery Professor in Mueller Case Had Contacts With Russian Officials – Mother Jones