Will Manafort Sing?

If Manafort pursues his self-interest, my bet is that he’ll sing. That then can become a cascade: He testifies against others, who in turn are pressured to testify against still others. And all this makes it more difficult to protect the man at the center if indeed he has violated the law.

.. The Papadopoulos revelation is particularly interesting because it goes precisely to the issue of collusion, and it’s not just an allegation—it’s a guilty plea.

.. So if Trump pardoned Manafort, my bet is that he would be prosecuted for state crimes; from Manafort’s point of view, the essential difference is that he would end up in a state prison rather than a federal prison. And the same is true of others in Trump’s circle.

Another point worth pondering is how it is that President Trump chose as his campaign chair someone like Manafort whose reputation in the political world was less about his political brilliance than about his ties to Russia and Ukraine (including some of the most corrupt people there) and his general shadiness. It’s said that Jared Kushner was among those advocating to hire Manafort, so the obvious question is: Why?

Maybe there simply wasn’t adequate vetting, even though news organizations quickly found problems that led to Manafort’s firing. But the inclination to hire someone so close to Moscow does raise questions about the Trump inner circle’s predilection to hire someone linked to Russia and Ukraine.

.. Look, it was The Times that in 2015 helped uncover and publicize the uranium arrangement, but it has been flagrantly taken out of context by Fox News and its ilk.

.. this was a non-controversial deal that an interagency committee approved, apparently unanimously, at a level far below Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Every bit of evidence says that Clinton never even weighed in on it. So the notion that this is somehow a serious scandal parallel to Moscow’s work to overturn an American presidential election is just comical.

.. One peril ahead is that President Trump may engage in riskier or more aggressive behavior vis-à-vis North Korea so that people will rally around the flag.

.. Any firing of Mueller would lead many fair-minded people to assume that Trump is hiding criminal behavior, perhaps treason. There would be a push for impeachment, a boost to Congressional investigations, and the presidency would be hobbled—along with the United States itself—for years to come.