Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

You can’t love your country only when you win.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Usually wrong but never in doubt

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

American History and Black History Cannot Be Separated

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

If you are in line to indict donald trump, stay in line.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

You are here: Home / Open Threads / New Indictments Against Manafort And Gates

New Indictments Against Manafort And Gates

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Here’s the red meat for you to chew on.

A summary – not sure if this is going to be readable, but worth a try.

And Gates fired his lawyer. Again.

So it looks like whatever plea deal was made with Gates is falling apart. Meanwhile, the judge rejected Manafort’s latest offer of bail.

 

And open thread!

 

Reader Interactions

106Comments

  2. 2.

    Jeffro

    Gates is gonna be upset when Orangemandias yanks those pardons on the advice of his lawyers…but by then, it’ll be too late. Poor Rick Gates!

  4. 4.

    Bobby Thomson

    If Tom Green wasn’t getting paid and the client was rejecting his advice, this may have been a case of the lawyer firing the client, or at least a mutual parting of ways – but other than noisy withdrawals (when the lawyer knows the client is continuing to break the law), lawyers are generally ethically prohibited from talking trash about former clients.

  5. 5.

    Corner Stone

    Matthew Miller
    ✔
    @matthewamiller

    Pretty curious decision by Gates not to take a deal with this on the way and little ability to pay his lawyers. Good time to ask the WH whether there have been any discussions of pardons with him or Manafort.

    Why wouldn’t Gates just say, “You got me, dog. Clear me of anything I confess to and I will give you bank account numbers and transaction dates.” ?
    They can’t possibly think Trump will pardon them and remove protection from being in contempt of court when they refuse to answer. Or maybe Vladdy sent them a dead canary in the mail?

  6. 6.

    MJS

    It is a little disconcerting that the Gates plea deal, and subsequent cooperation, hasn’t happened yet. But maybe Gates is pushing for too much, and Mueller’s all, “Nah, I got enough without you. See you in court.”

  10. 10.

    Stan

    @Corner Stone:

    Why wouldn’t Gates just say, “You got me, dog. Clear me of anything I confess to and I will give you bank account numbers and transaction dates.” ?

    Because he would find himself falling out of a tenth-floor Russian window….

  12. 12.

    LAO

    @Corner Stone: FWIW, there are simply people in this world who are incapable of admitting guilt and walking themselves into a jail cell. Who knows what Gates is thinking.

  13. 13.

    Corner Stone

    @MJS: ISTM that Mueller already has Manafort staked naked over a fireant hill. And is just about to start pouring honey all over him.
    I don’t know why Gates is delaying just giving it aaallll up and begging for mercy.

  17. 17.

    JPL

    So many questions and I guess it will be awhile before we know the outcome. Manafort wanted Pence as VP, and I can’t figure that one out. Is it because Putin hates the gays and his values aligned with Pence?

  23. 23.

    hedgehog the occasional commenter

    It’s not Jared, but I’ll take it. Margarita in the offing after work :)

  24. 24.

    MJS

    @JPL: Because Pence is stupid and doesn’t care who knows it. He happily claims ignorance of anything and everything.

  26. 26.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Friend of mine posits that the only way Manafort lives beyond the end of the year is to enter protective custody.

  27. 27.

    Corner Stone

    @Davebo: That was actually my point. Gates should have sweat flopped himself on the floor in front Mueller and sang his guts out. If he was ever going to, that seems long past now.

  28. 28.

    Mike J

    Scott Dworkin @funder 23m
    Today’s indictment of Manafort and Gates includes 32 new charges against them for hiding $75,000,000 in offshore accounts, laundering over $30,000,000, filing false tax returns, committing bank fraud & submitting doctored financial statements. Lock them up! #TrumpColluded

  31. 31.

    different-church-lady

    Cheese nothinburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger, cheese nothingburger!

  35. 35.

    Bobby Thomson

    Well, this indictment certainly alleges that Manafort and Gates were very naughty and fabricated a lot of profit & loss statements they gave to banks, but it’s unclear that any of this links to the Trump campaign or Trump White House.

    But this is why Trump doesn’t want Mueller in his finances. Odds are very good that even without looking at Russia, Trump has several federal felonies in there. Organized crime has always been a big part of the Trump brand. His grandfather earned the family fortune selling drugs and prostitution.

  36. 36.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    It didn’t matter. When I was broke
    I just went out and robbed some
    more. We ran everything. We paid
    off lawyers. We paid off cops.
    Everybody had their hands out. And
    now it’s all over.

  37. 37.

    Cheryl Rofer

    I’ve paged through the indictment. A few things stand out to IANAL me.

    1) Tax fraud and bank fraud. Time-tested ways to get people you can’t get in other ways.
    2) Mueller has the receipts. Down to $10,000 transactions. I’m glad some people are good at this accounting stuff. Also, where did they get all this?
    3) Like the indictments of the Russians, this document has a nice narrative section. Part of what Mueller is doing is telling us the story of what happened.

  38. 38.

    jl

    Since open thread, I’ll mention that I think the national GOP and their corrupt backers are now acting like the CA GOP did right before their crack-up. They’ve reached the point of bizarre, toxic, nasty, (edit: and infantile, I forgot infantile) acting out in public.

    I remember CA GOPers just acting like nasty obviously dishonest and bad faith raving loons in interviews, and in public meetings and public interactions with reporters and constituents. I don’t want to get my hopes up that they will keep it up to the point that they regularly get dismissed by reporters and interviewers on air, or that the voters will reject them like they were rejected in California. But, wow, to me, it is almost like a replay.

  46. 46.

    NotMax

    Once I ran a campaign, I made it hum
    Though ’twas knee-deep in slime
    Once I had a fortune, now it’s done
    Comrade, can you spare a dime?

  47. 47.

    Bobby Thomson

    @Cheryl Rofer: you can say that again. I don’t see a time stamp on Green’s appearance so it’s unclear when he made it, or if the right hand knows what the left one is doing.

  48. 48.

    Calouste

    @Cheryl Rofer: First you establish that these guys are fraudsters. Then you establish that these guys took money from the Russians. Lastly you establish what they gave the Russians in return.

    We want to see the third but we’re only still at the first.

  50. 50.

    Wapiti

    @Cheryl Rofer: I wonder if Manafort’s troubles could be expanded to conspiracy troubles for the son-in-law. January 2016 is probably within statute of limitations?

  52. 52.

    eric

    @eric: allow me to add, that if these guys wanted to protect their families’ lifestyles, they had better start singing. All of their assets are likely the fruit of ill-gotten gains.

  53. 53.

    No Drought No More

    If what the Americans are being forced into living through today* was an episode of Law & Order, this is the part of the show where Ben Stone or Jack McCoy would say to a colleague: “let’s see what he has to say after after a few days at Rikers”.

    *(According to Gerald Ford, Nixon put Americans through “a long national nightmare”. Trump, on the other hand, is date raping the entire country, while congressional republicans cheer)..

  58. 58.

    danielx

    @Corner Stone:

    Why wouldn’t Gates just say, “You got me, dog. Clear me of anything I confess to and I will give you bank account numbers and transaction dates.” ?

    If he was going to go to jail no matter what, he might have decided to bank on a pardon…

  59. 59.

    Schlemazel

    Stuck in Raleigh tonight. Interesting bit of news. A white guy was just convicted for shooting a black guy and claiming self defense. That is a rarity anywhere but in the South . . . Wow

  62. 62.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Bobby Thomson:

    Only way to see time stamps is by looking at the PACER history screen for the whole docketed I remember. Left my laptop at work, and I hate doing PACER on my phone.

  64. 64.

    Corner Stone

    @Davebo: Locking in Manafort may have been worth it, based on what Gates can nail down. The goal is obviously Manafort to get to Trump Org. I am not Mueller but I doubt he refuses new arrows when available.

  65. 65.

    PaulWartenberg

    So Gates’ deal fell through by the looks of it, so Mueller drops these indictments to remind Gates just how deep a freaking hole he’s fallen into.

    Sadly for us, this means it’ll take longer for more potent revelations of wrong-doing to see the light of day… unless Mueller’s next move is to drop the hammer on the trumpkins for their 2016 outreach efforts to get the Russians to deal with them…

  67. 67.

    Bobby Thomson

    @Cheryl Rofer: a reporter talked to Green, he confirmed he’s been retained, he says the Daily Beast report that he was fired is bullshit. Someone likely inferred that when the indictment came down instead of an information.

  68. 68.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Mike J:

    Hiding $75 million and laundering $30 million? If they’re doing those numbers, imagine the numbers for Trump and family.

  70. 70.

    Fair Economist

    @Mike J:

    A bunch of tax evasion charges, just like they got Capone on.

    It’s a lot more than that – also money laundering AND bank fraud. Plus the sums are enormous. I’m kind of wondering what Manafort did with all that money, since at the end he was committing bank fraud to pay bills.

  71. 71.

    Cheryl Rofer

    When it was believed Gates had flipped, some people were speculating that there were no more Prisoner’s Dilemma chits left for Manafort. His prospects may now have brightened.

  75. 75.

    Aleta

    Could it be that, for the new charges they are withholding a plea offer, in order to make Gates to give up better information?

    Or maybe the administration offered to pay legal fees for him, new lawyer is their choice, and Barry Pollack told Gates his chances are better than he’d been told previously. ‘So don’t cooperate any more. If we need to we can bargain with them later.’ Leaving him under admin. influence.

    @Bobby Thomson: ETA Or never mind.

  80. 80.

    Ruckus

    @MJS:
    It’s easy to say you don’t know something when really you know nothing. And it’s the truth in dense’s case, he is really, really dumb.

  82. 82.

    Fair Economist

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    1) Tax fraud and bank fraud. Time-tested ways to get people you can’t get in other ways.

    These charges are a huge financial fraud case for an individual/partnership. Even if there were no political implications and no other crimes this would be big news. The amounts, and ill will, far exceed those for famous cases like Leona Helmsley, Martha Stewart, Pete Rose, and Wesley Snipes.

  83. 83.

    Roger Moore

    @Fair Economist:

    I’m kind of wondering what Manafort did with all that money, since at the end he was committing bank fraud to pay bills.

    My guess is that a lot of that money was never his. The money laundering might well have been done on the behalf of others, and I would guess that a lot of the income was business income that paid for things like bribes that he couldn’t declare on his taxes. The only way to avoid being buried in taxes was to lie about the money.

  84. 84.

    AnneWith

    @Schlemazel:

    Not only that, the jury took less than two hours to convict.

    This case did make the national news: the guy who shot did so from inside his garage.

    Copley called 911 on Aug. 7 from his home on Singleleaf Lane and told a dispatcher that he was “locked and loaded” and on his way to “secure” his neighborhood from what he called a “bunch of hoodlums.” He can be heard saying “I’m going to kill ’em” before the dispatcher came on the line.

  86. 86.

    Fair Economist

    @Roger Moore:

    My guess is that a lot of that money was never his. The money laundering might well have been done on the behalf of others, and I would guess that a lot of the income was business income that paid for things like bribes that he couldn’t declare on his taxes.

    Seems very plausible, and in that case the strings go out to a lot of other underworld and/or political figures, with a lot of implications for a lot of important people.

    Manafort may be willing to go to jail to avoid a polonium cocktail, but if Mueller has his emails, and secret financial records seized in that raid, will Manafort’s silence protect his co-conspirators?

  87. 87.

    ByRookorbyCrook

    These indictments and the whole evolving case against Manafort and Gates is a giant message to Trump and his cronies. We have the receipts. We have the accounts. We will nail you and take all of your ill-gotten gains. Manafort is the shadow play to uncover the conscience of the king. Lord Smallgloves is going to crack under the constant barrage of financial revelations. Do they think J. Kush is going to have covered his tracks any better than Manafort? Don Jr.?
    In the end, these are telegraphed moves that are detached from the election fraud case. It is gripping drama, but the consequences of this conspiracy are being waged on the most desperate while we wait for the denouement.

  88. 88.

    Jay

    @Aleta:

    I would guess that the Plea Deal fell through from Gates not being willing to offer up “everything”, just “somethings” and the new indictment’s are Meuller’s putting the screws on harder and letting Gates know, that the Investigation knows a lot more than Gates was willing to offer.

  89. 89.

    Fair Economist

    This all backs up a common inference:

    Manafort has a lot of connections to Trump. Past business connections, office in Trump Tower, etc. It’s very likely Trump has been involved in some of this dirty stuff. But there’s nothing in *these* allegations even particularly pointing at Trump.

    The inference is that Mueller is going to establish an enormous case involving all kinds of fraud and malfeasance with no connection to Trump, giving Trump no good excuse for pardons. Only after he’s proven a huge and vile criminal conspiracy will he connect it to Trump.

  92. 92.

    Feebog

    @Jay:

    I think you are exactly right. Negotiations reached a certain point, broke down and this is Mueller’s response. Talk about putting the squeeze on.

  93. 93.

    WaterGirl

    @JPL: I loved that show. Haven’t seen either of the main characters in anything since, either, and I liked both of them.

  96. 96.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Schlemazel: Oh great Ghu. Is that what they were seating jurors for when I was called up for jury duty? No wonder they called up 280 jurors and had another 200 on standby.

  97. 97.

    Amir Khalid

    Ich wiederhole: Der Müller Gottes mahlt langsam, er mahlt aber außerordentlich fein.

    Resistance is futile. Manafort and Gates are being assimilated. Others will be too. When Mueller finally moves on Trump himself, there shall be no possibility of escape. This is good news.

  99. 99.

    Chet Murthy

    Today the penny finally dropped for me, as I was reading Cheryl’s post. Maybe I’m wrong — and would love to be enlightened.

    Mueller has all the receipts, but some of them are going to be inadmissible (b/c sources&methods, also maybe some of the sigint isn’t admissible?). So he’s using those to force co-operation. When he’s lied-to, he knows it (b/c he can check the receipts). And if Dampnut pardons people, it changes NOTHING b/c he can STILL ask these jokers the same questions, and AGAIN check the receipts.

    This is all a way of (heh) laundering the inadmissible back into admissibility.

    I’m not complaining. Just wondering if this is right. B/c geez, the leaks seem like far, far, far too much and too detailed info, to have been acquired via processes that are all admissible in court. I mean …. just too much detail. But heh, just fine for “the Internet vacuum cleaner” operated by the NSA.

  104. 104.

    jonas

    @ByRookorbyCrook: This sounds about right. Step 1. Show that Russia had set up a major program going to hack election and make Trump president. Indict people involved. Step 2. Show that Trump surrounded himself with a bunch of very shady, corrupt people with ties to Russia. Indict people involved. Step. 3. Connect more dots…

  105. 105.

    Bruce K

    I’d say it’s even odds or better that Mueller’s team has told at least one of those chowderheads: “If you get a presidential pardon from Mr. Trump, I’ll simply give my entire file on you to Mr. Schneiderman here – you remember him, he’s the New York State Attorney General – and you will die in Sing Sing.”

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