Lawfare: Mueller's Show of Strength: A Quick and Dirty Analysis.

[pnwmom]

https://lawfareblog.com/robert-muellers-show-strength-quick-and-dirty-analysis

The first big takeaway from Monday morning’s flurry of charging and plea documents with respect to Paul Manafort Jr., Richard Gates III and George Papadopoulos is this: The president of the United States had as his campaign chairman a man who had allegedly served for years as an unregistered foreign agent for a puppet government of Vladimir Putin, a man who was allegedly laundering remarkable sums of money even while running the now-president’s campaign, a man who allegedly lied about all of this to the FBI and the Justice Department.

The second big takeaway is even starker: A member of President Trump’s campaign team admits that he was working with people he knew to be tied to the Russian government to “arrange a meeting between the Campaign and the Russian government officials” and to obtain “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of hacked emails—and that he lied about these activities to the FBI. He briefed President Trump on at least some of them.

Before we dive any deeper into the Manafort-Gates indictment—charges to which both pled not guilty to Monday—or the Papadopoulos plea and stipulation, let’s pause a moment over these two remarkable claims, one of which still must be considered as allegation and the other of which can now be considered as admitted fact. President Trump, in short, had on his campaign at least one person, and allegedly two people, who actively worked with adversarial foreign governments in a fashion they sought to criminally conceal from investigators. One of them ran the campaign. The other, meanwhile, was interfacing with people he “understood to have substantial connections to Russian government officials” and with a person introduced to him as “a relative of Russian President Vladimir Putin with connections to senior Russian government officials.” All of this while President Trump was assuring the American people that he and his campaign had "nothing to do with Russia."

The release of these documents should, though it probably won’t, put to rest the suggestion that there are no serious questions of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government in the latter’s interference on the former’s behalf during the 2016 election. It also raises a profound set of questions about the truthfulness of a larger set of representations Trump campaign officials and operatives have made both in public and, presumably, under oath and to investigators.

And here’s the rub: This is only Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s opening salvo.

As opening salvos go, it’s a doozy.

SNIP

[guillaumeb]

1. The Trump people are probably frantically deleting all photos and emails

linking Trump with anyone and everyone.

[bench scientist]

3. the internet is forever and they are very stupid.

[WhiteTara]

2. Followed up with a volley of indictments

still under seal.