On Monday, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort spent the day meeting with Special Counsel Robert Mueller and members of his investigative team according to Politico:
“The sit-down at the special counsel’s downtown Washington D.C. office stems from Manafort’s guilty plea last month, which requires the former Trump campaign chairman to cooperate fully, truthfully, completely, and forthrightly…in any and all matters as to which the government deems the cooperation relevant.'”
What might have been discussed? Well, as Nicolle Wallace noted on her show Monday afternoon, there are several things Manafort has first-hand information about that he can provide to Mueller:
“The Trump Tower meeting. The [Republican Party] platform change, where it became pro-Putin, for the first time in GOP platform change history. An offer to brief a Russian oligarch. He’s been convicted of — he was convicted of eight felonies.”
The Trump Tower meeting took place in June of 2016. Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump Jr. met with Russian nationals for “dirt” on Hillary. And that’s where the Russian “conspiracy” has its nexus point, as Bloomberg reporter and Trump biographer Tim O’Brien explained:
“There two things, the Trump Tower meeting, because that gets at whether or not in June of 2016 members of Trump’s campaign met with people who had compromising information on Hillary Clinton in an effort to tilt voters against her campaign. That gets to things like fraud against the United States, et cetera. There’s a real problem.”
It has long been suspected that the Trump who has the most to lose from Manafort’s cooperation with Mueller is Donald Trump Jr. He faces the prospect of being charged with conspiracy against the United States, colluding with a foreign government, and attempting to illegally influence an election.
O’Brien went on to explain that Don Jr. is clearly in Mueller’s crosshairs:
“Trump is going to be protective of his son. He was the architect of that meeting.”
And now the “architect” of the Trump Tower meeting is being handed to Mueller’s team of prosecutors on a silver platter by Paul Manafort. If that’s not the definition of perfect karma, then what is?
Breaking from @politico : Paul Manafort meets with Mueller prosecutors@NicolleDWallace w/ @TimOBrien pic.twitter.com/JQnqRyIiZu
— Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) October 1, 2018