The news that Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort’s guilty plea includes a cooperation agreement with the special counsel’s office marks a huge shift in the investigation of connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. It also demonstrates—and not for the first time—just how the team under Special Counsel Robert Mueller builds detailed cases, moves forward with one inexorable step after another, and stays absolutely leak-proof in every instance.
Politico reports that just hours before the announcement, White House staffers fully expected Donald Trump to pardon Manafort of all charges. Trump and attorney Rudy Giuliani spent the earlier part of the week praising Manafort for not being “a flipper.” On Wednesday, Giuliani claimed that Trump felt absolutely confident about Manafort.
Giuliani: There’s no fear that Paul Manafort would cooperate against the president because there’s nothing to cooperate about and we long ago evaluated him as an honorable man.
Everyone, everyone, expected Manafort to go down with the ship and wait for Trump to wave his magic pardon wand. Even when news leaked on Thursday that Manafort had agreed to plead guilty, the immediate assumption was that he was following the steps most likely to keep him in Trump’s good graces: get off the stage quickly, stay out of the headlines during election season, chill until a pardon arrives.
But while Rudy was smiling and Trump was planning his pardon tweet, Manafort had already begun to cooperate with the special counsel’s office. As Marcy Wheeler pointed out: The revelations of Manafort’s cooperating agreement was an jaw-dropping moment in court, but the action is already over. Manafort has already given the most critical information to investigators.
Donald Trump could fire up the pardon machine right now … and it won’t matter. It won’t bring back the $46 million of property Manafort has agreed to forfeit. And it won’t save Trump from one moment of important testimony.
At this point, Robert Mueller has the cooperation of Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and Michael Flynn. If that’s not enough, he has Michael Cohen begging to cooperate and Trump accountant Allen Weisselberg testifying to the US attorney under a grant of immunity.
Donald Trump should be very, very worried. So should Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner, and Roger Stone, and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, and that’s just a start. And what Mueller demonstrated again this morning should be a gut-wrenching sign for Trump: We don’t have the slightest clue of what he knows or what actions he might take. For example, Michael Flynn was facing a laundry list of potential charges that might well have included not just foreign lobbying but conspiracy to commit kidnapping. However, Flynn was given a much nicer deal than the one that Manafort just received. What information did Flynn provide in order to skate away? We don’t know.
To date, Rick Gates has been that guy who made a minor appearance in the first Manafort trial and his name has appeared mostly as a partner in Manafort’s schemes. But he was there longer than Manafort, even serving as part of the transition team. We don’t now what testimony he has provided on subjects other than Manafort.
And Paul Manafort just found himself released from five of seven counts he was to face this week in Washington, D.C. In addition, the deal includes a recommended maximum sentence of 10 years. It’s not clear whether this sentence would be in addition to any sentence resulting from his eight convictions on money laundering and fraud at his first trial in Virginia, or whether the two sentences would run concurrently. While until this morning it seemed likely that for Manafort, who is 69, any sentence would be a “life sentence,” based on the given guidelines and standard procedures, he could easily be out on probation in 3-5 years. What did Manafort give investigators to warrant this agreement? We. Don’t. Know.
What we do know, what has been demonstrated time and again, is that Robert Mueller runs an airtight ship. The Manafort filing also shows, again, that Mueller’s investigators generate detailed, documented, all-but slam dunk charges that stand up to scrutiny and are difficult to fight.
There are other people in the campaign who have yet to face charges who will face charges. But there’s only one name above Manafort, Gates, and Flynn. And he should be seriously upset by Friday morning’s agreement.