“Watch for the defense to become the thing they’ve denied, because the truth is worse,” said Wallace, noting that originally, the Trump team tried to flat-out deny there was any collusion with Russia. “They’re not even denying, because they’ve pleaded guilty to these contacts with Russians … this is a campaign whose defense to collusion is, ‘we couldn’t collude with our press office.’ That’s what Brad Pascale and Jared Kushner say.”
.. “They could collude, they were colluding, and all of this is so nefarious,” said Kirschner. “It’s not reckless, it’s not happenstance, it’s not careless … what I found remarkable in what [special counsel prosecutor] Andrew Weissman was saying to the court, when they were trying to decide whether Paul Manafort’s plea agreement should basically be torn up because he lied. As a cooperating witness, he kept lying to the special counsel.”
.. What I find remarkable is that Manafort gets charged, right, federally indicted. What does he do after that? He starts tampering with witnesses. And he was charged for tampering with witnesses. After that we have now learned through this litigation, albeit in highly redacted form, that he continued to conspire with [suspected Russian agent Konstantin] Kilimnik.”
“What is it that they so desperately want to cover up?” said Kirschner. The answer, he said, was in the fact that Weissman told the judge that the Kilimnik interactions go “right to the heart of what the special counsel is investigating.”