I've been pretty quiet about the indictments because I wanted to digest it all. I remember what it was like when the first of Nixon's dominoes started to fall and this is much deeper. Allow me to lay it all out for you:
1) Papadopoulos pleading guilty - from the reports he's been a cooperating witness since July. Despite all of the words from the White House, Papadopoulos was working for the administration - he was part of a mission to Israel back in January. Also, one of the other men indicted, Richard Gates, is the person who sent Papadopoulos to Russia in the first place. Everything is intertwined.
2) Failing to register as a foreign agent - this is one of those things that Fox "News" will call a political charge only. If there wasn't a political campaign involved no one would care. They're right about that, but that's part of why it matters. It shows just how much about the political world these morons simply don't know or understand.
3) Money Laundering. To my mind this is the big one. Trying to hide money at this level earned is the kind of thing that gets thrown at mobsters. $75 Million was magically turned into $17 Million by running the money through a bank and multiple shell corporations. The bank used to do this was run by a man named Wilbur Ross. I'll get to that in a moment, because it's fucking HUGE. Manafort and Gates hid $58 MILLION DOLLARS. Do you honestly think that this is the kind of thing that no one notices?
4) Wilbur Ross. He hasn't been indicted. But he is the current Secretary of Commerce - appointed by Trump. Mr. Ross was the head of the Bondholder's side of the negotiations when Trump declared bankruptcy over the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. If you've followed that story you know that almost everyone on the Bondholder's side got screwed. Trump came out smelling like a rose. I sense a bit of quid quo pro in Trump's hiring of Ross, but that's actually not illegal in this case. But Ross headed a bank (in Cypress) that laundered Manafort's money. He's going to get indicted.
5) Trump is a real estate developer. I've worked with them for a couple of decades now, managing their money, and most developers I know well all agree that Trump is the kind of developer that gives all of them a bad name. That said - any developer worth his salt (which Trump is) knows where every dollar goes. Developers tend to micro-manage, because a few hundred dollars here and there will have an impact on the yield on their investment. Trump cares about two things; his name and his money. I would consider it VERY unlikely that he didn't know all of this was happening, so that he could weigh the impact. I seriously doubt that he thought about the political laws at all. He simply hasn't lived in that world.
6) Ignorance is no fucking excuse. These laws have been put together over decades after some rather extreme abuses. A real political campaign hires people to keep tabs on this stuff. For the Hilary Clinton campaign that was a man named Marc Elias. He is presently the lawyer for the Democratic National Committee AND the Democratic Governor's Association. He worked in the past for such people as John Kerry, Al Franken, Donald Trump didn't have anyone in this role during the campaign. No one would have stopped anyone from fucking this up - because no one even knew. This is what you get when you put amateurs in charge.
7) And for me, this is what it all boils down to. These people had no idea that they were breaking certain laws because they had never been in the world of politics. This is why the special prosecutor has taken the time to indict people on Money Laundering charges. Everyone understands that Money Laundering is bad. They've seen Breaking Bad. They know that someone had better call Saul. This is where the whole house of cards is going to fall apart.
Because if there was money involved - TRUMP KNEW. Trump had a hand in it. No real estate developer wouldn't know about something that would have this sort of impact on the bottom line. What this indictment tell me is something I already suspected.Trump is a political amateur, but he knows money. He understands money. He knows how to follow it - he's been doing it his whole life. Trump knows that the money has been laundered.
And THAT is Conspiracy. The CRIME of conspiracy.
TRUMP IS A CROOK.