A lawyer for President Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort spoke with Trump’s legal team about Manafort’s discussions with special counsel Robert Mueller after Manafort agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s probe, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
According to one of Trump’s lawyers and two people familiar with the discussions who spoke to the Times, the briefings strained relations between Manafort’s team and the special counsel’s office. Legal experts told the Times that the arrangement was likely part of efforts to get Manafort a presidential pardon for his tax fraud crimes.
Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani confirmed to the Times that the discussions took place and said the briefings were valuable for Trump’s legal game plan.
Mueller’s team filed court documents earlier this week alleging that Manafort lied to the special counsel after he’d agreed to cooperate with the investigation. Manafort will now face repercussions for two conspiracy charges and eight counts of financial fraud, which, in addition to his current jail time for other tax fraud related crimes, could put him behind bars for the rest of his life.
How do you spell Obstruction of Justice?
Trump.
And Robert Mueller, the most respected prosecutor in the country and the most honorable FBI director ever for a decade, plus all those top ace legal stars in his OSC who are leaders in their special areas, many of whom were directly involved in gathering the evidence on Manafort going back years, decades even with some, just suddenly all went soft in the head and flat out failed to see this coming.
Sure they did.
Trump: Of course he did. I have to know if I should pardon him or not. Manafort can lie as much as he wants. I alone will decide his fate.
So, Mueller strings Manafort along for a couple of months, knowing that he’s lying and feeding his lies back to Trump, who is having an easy time answering written questions because he is smarter than everyone else and his “ace” is telling him what to write to make their stories match…
Mueller doesn’t give a shit about Manafort. He just used the guy to get Trump in certain, provable lies. In writing.
Unaccountably, Ms. Lafond left out this bit of the NYT article:
@nicole_lafond