Another Bad Day For Donald

There's big news in Donald's world today, notwithstanding his staff's efforts to insist that Paul Manafort's guilty plea has nothing to do with him. There's a tidal wave of info and commentary about this, of course, here's what has caught my eye so far:

First, someone in my Twitter feed dug up this, from NBC News and dated January 30, 2018, just before Donald gave his first State of the Union address:

He's decided that a key witness in the Russia probe, Paul Manafort, isn't going to "flip" and sell him out, friends and aides say. He believes Robert Mueller, who heads the investigation, can be crushed if necessary without being fired. (Read the entire article here.)

From Caitlin MacNeal at Talking Points Memo:

The plea agreement reached between Paul Manafort and the special counsel’s office requires Manafort to cooperate “fully, truthfully, completely, and forthrightly” with the government on “any and all matters” identified by the government.

Though early reports on plea deal negotiations indicated Manafort was hesitant to agree to a deal that required his full cooperation, the agreement reached is broad and sweeping in outlining the former Trump campaign chairman’s obligation to cooperate, with zero exceptions.

The plea agreement filed Friday afternoon requires Manafort to attend all meetings requested by investigators regarding his participation in or knowledge of criminal activities. He must also give the government all documents and materials related to the investigation and participate in directed "undercover activities." Manafort is also required to testify in legal proceedings and must always give "complete, truthful, and accurate information.

From Josh Marshall, also at TPM:

Paul Manafort’s team has been putting out disinformation about this deal for a couple weeks now. I don’t put this out as a criticism or not. It just is what it is. And frankly, in a purely pragmatic light, it made a lot of sense to do that. This had to be secret until the last possible moment, especially from the President. He needed the element of surprise. And he got it.

If you’re a regular reader you know that I’ve been wrestling for like a week with what was going on here. Was Robert Mueller really going to make a plea deal that didn’t include cooperation? When securing cooperation seemed certainly to be the point of the entire exercise? How could that be? There were a slew of news reports and all of them either clearly said that Manafort’s cooperating was not part of the investigation or that it was not clear whether cooperation was part of the investigation.

The first axiom of the Trump/Russia scandal is that the Mueller office does not leak. It’s really that open and shut. So by definition, all the reporting came from Manafort and/or his legal team. As someone who fell for the ruse, it is almost beyond belief that they could pull this off: have reporting come out about plea negotiations but plausible claim that, and make people think that, it was a plea without any agreement to cooperate. And yet, there you have it. Pretty much they pulled it off.

The really relevant point wasn't news media coverage per se. It was what the President and his lawyers knew. It seems pretty clear they were duped too. They did not see it coming. There were many bad things that could have happened if this were telegraphed far in advance, as Michael Cohen - with a very different set of facts - was doing. In the end, Trump was like Tony in the final episode of The Sopranos. he never saw it coming. 

From Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post, referring to the news that Manafort has flipped:

That’s the news Trump never wanted to hear. The prospect of just such a deal is why his lawyers reportedly dangled the promise of a pardon in front of Manafort’s lawyers. A plea deal that could put the Russians inside Trump’s campaign blows to smithereens the notion that only low-level, non-players or those distantly related to the campaign had Russian connections. Trump, who was praising Manafort to the heavens just weeks ago, will find it hard (but not impossible) to now smear him as a liar. (Read the rest of the article here.)

An intriguing tweet from Lawrence Tribe:

Anyone recall who hand-picked Pence as Trump’s VP? Paul Manafort. And recall who led the squirrely transition? Mike Pence. Watch what unfolds as Manafort tells Mueller all he knows!

— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) September 14, 2018

And a response from Jennifer Rubin:

Who carried fake cover story on Comey firing? Pence. Who carried misinformation about Flynn's convers with Russians? Same.

— Jennifer Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) September 14, 2018