So, if you’ve been paying attention, you already know that Robert Mueller III has been playing twelve dimensional chess, to Rudy’s 2-dimensional checkers. And Paul Manafort’s brand new, shiny cooperation-deal HAS to have Trump and his “team” panicking.
Trump once said that Manafort’s the only one who could directly incriminate him. So, he and Giuliani have been (not so covertly) letting Paulie know that he’ll be “taken care of” in the mafia sense of the phrase. In other words………..pardoned.
Up until now, however, it’d all been conjecture:
- Will Manafort be convicted?
- If so, will he plead?
- If he pleads out, will he cooperate?
- If he doesn’t, will Trump pardon him?
Well, the first three are now set in stone. What remains is the pardon itself. Marcy Wheeler (EmptyWheel) makes a good case that a pardon does trump no good at all:
But only one person so far, has brought up this little ditty:
If Trump and Giuliani weren’t only OVERTLY hinting to Manafort about a pardon, but were COVERTLY bargaining with him, then there’s a slam-dunk witness-tampering charge not only for Trump’s impeachment, but for Rudy’s indictment. ETTD.
And Paul Manafort KNOWS if they were talking about a pardon.
And Paul has already pleaded guilty to witness-tampering himself.
brancusi
Do you mean that the joint defense agreement was all a ruse? That Manafort was 'negotiating' with the WH under Mueller's instructions?
Yes, the JDA a ruse, but it was a ruse of Manafort and Trump's to create a legit looking cover for direct communication that enabled Rudy to dangle a pardon for silence in the course of "legitimate" exchanges of information.
Such legit exchanges clearly occurred based on Trump's tweetrages. But if in those discussions, Rudy was dangling a pardon in return for silence whether expressly or implicitly--and there's just no way the sociopathic arrogant dirtbag didn't, IMO--that is both obstruction of justice and witness tampering. That means the crime-fraud exception applies to those communications and they are not privileged. If it happened, Manafort (and his attorneys) would have been required to cough up all of that to get a cooperation deal.
And that raises the following further interesting points:
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If Rudy did that, he committed a crime. He personally did. Indeed, it's probably easier to pin Rudy than Trump with it. Even if Rudy used a cutout, he's fingerprints would be on it while Trump could play the "I had no idea" game.
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As to Manafort's lawyers, it isn't illegal to just listen to such an offer and any discussion they had with the client would likely be privileged, up to a point. But moving toward acting on the offer puts you and your client in greater and greater criminal jeopardy. I suspect this realization is what led to this deal. If there was a direct communication of a pardon deal, accepting it, or taking any substantial step toward accepting it, is conspiracy. Which means you get indicted as soon as the pardon occurs, your lawyers do too and they lose their licenses. So at some point, the realization sets in that the communication made the pardon deal illusory and you have to deal with Mueller.
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And, better still, if Mueller knows the offer was made and Trump pardons Manafort now, Mueller has him cold, dead to rights on obstruction and witness tampering, meaning Trump's ability to pardon his way out of this problem is gone! Bwahahahaha!
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Looking at this through the foregoing filter makes me wonder whether the witness tampering charge didn't serve a greater purpose than merely getting Manafort's bail revoked. That charge would have focused everyone's attention, the lawyers in particular, on the fact that discussing a pardon deal with Trump's lawyers was also witness tampering. If they were too caught up in the game to step back and realize how deep the shit they were walking into with their client had gotten, clarity would have begun to set in after the immediate fight to keep him out of jail pending trial was done.
Could it be so?
Could ANOTHER of Trump’s lawyers, the weasel amongst weasels, Rudolpho Ghouliani be sent behind bars as well?
Here’s Manafort’s agreement (PDF)
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Sentencing guidelines for Manafort’s offenses: