Monday morning, Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates were (finally) charged in connection to Robert Mueller’s investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Manafort started his political career as a consultant and lobbyist, and became the second person (after Corey Lewandowski and before Kellyanne Conway) to head Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Let’s not forget that Manafort’s influence on the administration didn’t really go away after being replaced by Conway, either. He was instrumental to picking Mike Pence for the VP slot, and even as accusations mounted against him over the course of the year, he still maintained connections with a variety of Trump’s associates and aids.
Gates too stayed on after Manafort was officially ousted as manager. He helped plan the inauguration and fundraise during the transition. All in all, both men were active in the campaign for quite some time, and had considerable sway throughout.
It was certainly big news, then, when Manafort and Gates were indicted on 12 counts, including conspiracy against the United States, money laundering and a variety of false and misleading statements.
Besides the fact that 12 charges is a lot for anyone, let that first one sink in: conspiracy against the United States. Remember, Manafort headed an entire political campaign, a campaign that very unfortunately bred the 45th president of the United States, and he got charged with something like this.
Although it is a good thing that these bad men who pulled strings abroad to dodge taxes and launder money are being brought to justice, the real intrigue lies in just how deep this Russian collusion actually went. Was it just Manafort and his associate, a couple of bad apples amid a good and wholesome bushel? Or did the collusion extend to Pence, Kushner, Donald Trump Jr. or even the president himself? Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer to that.
I do know, however, that the disgraced former-national security advisor, Mike Flynn, is a person of interest in this investigation. And in terms of just the immediate family, Jared Kushner is being looked at and Donald Trump Jr.’s June 2016 meeting (the one he tweeted about, remember?) is under scrutiny.
Even further, though, I cannot stress enough that what has to do with Manafort has to do with Trump, and any narrative that supposes otherwise is either lying and just plain wrong. The FBI alleged that Manafort’s criminal activity spanned from about 2008 to 2017. Manafort managed the Trump campaign in 2016 — you do the math.
As I mentioned earlier, both Manafort and his associate remained in close contact with the Trumps and their circle well beyond his official departure as manager. For the campaign to all of a sudden allege that Manafort was a blip in time, completely irrelevant to the election, is ridiculous. It’s an attempt to get away from the meat of what’s going on — that Trump associated very, very closely with two criminal traitors, and that one of those criminal traitors even directed his campaign.
Over the coming weeks, there’s obviously going to be some drama. Mueller might bring Flynn in, he might bring Kushner and Jr. in, he might want to talk to Trump or Pence. What’s important, though, is that we keep our eyes on the prize.
Above the petty politics of this all is the fact that a hostile foreign power is considerably involved in our electoral process. It has considerable sway over the people in charge of our campaigns, and over our candidates themselves. We ought to get to the bottom of this for the sake of our country, not just at the expense of one administration (though, admittedly, that’s one of the perks).
