10 takeaways from Mueller's shock and awe gambit. It's only just the beginning. Full details of each takeaway at the link. I love the fact that Popadopolous has most likely been wearing a wire since or before reaching a plea deal:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...778d330fb0468e7653ee5/?utm_term=.5bd5d3d170eb
“[Mueller’s] opening bid is a remarkable show of strength,” Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes explain on their Lawfare blog. “He has a cooperating witness from inside the campaign’s interactions with the Russians. And he is alleging not mere technical infractions of law but astonishing criminality on the part of Trump’s campaign manager, a man who also attended the Trump Tower meeting. Any hope the White House may have had that the Mueller investigation might be fading away vanished . . . Things are only going to get worse from here.”
1. We now know that multiple members of the Trump campaign at least entertained the idea of getting help from the Russians.
2. Sam Clovis is about to be in the hot seat.
----He's up for the top scientific post in the Agriculture department, but is one of the officials encouraging Popadopolous to meet with the Russians....
3. Papadopoulos is helping the government, but we still don’t know how much.
----He's described in court documents as a "proactive cooperator", meaning: For Papadopoulos to get his October 5th plea, one of two things had to be true: (a) the feds had already got good sound from him; or... ..(b) he'd made a sufficient proffer establishing that he *could* get good sound for them — valuable evidence — shortly after October 5th.”
I.E. He's most likely been wearing a wire!!
4. The updated timeline raises a host of new questions about what Trump knew and when he knew it.
5. Mueller is playing hardball as he tries to flip Manafort and Gates.
----A former Watergate assistant special prosecutor, Nick Akerman, said the court filings “all spell bad news for Trump” because he cannot see any strong defense to the Manafort indictment. “The only defense that you’ve got is to go in there and start singing like a canary to avoid jail time,” he told our colleagues. “And once he starts singing, one of the tunes is bound to be Donald Trump.”
6. Mueller’s moves are designed to send a message to everyone else entangled in the probe that he's not messing around.
----“This is the way you kick off a big case,” said white-collar defense lawyer Patrick Cotter, who formerly worked alongside the man spearheading the prosecution of Manafort and Gates. “Oh, man, they couldn’t have sent a message any clearer if they’d rented a revolving neon sign in Times Square. And the message isn’t just about Manafort. It’s a message to the next five guys they talk to. And the message is: ‘We are coming, and we are not playing, and we are not bluffing.’”
7. Unsealing the guilty plea was an insurance policy that makes it politically untenable for Trump to fire Mueller.
8. Yesterday’s indictments will contribute to a climate of fear in the White House that makes it harder for Trump and his staff to be effective.
----"Away from the podium, Trump staffers fretted privately over whether Manafort or Gates might share with Mueller’s team damaging information about other colleagues,”
9. Mueller has proven that his investigation is not partisan.
----"Tony’s Podesta Group is one of two firms described in Monday’s indictment as having been recruited by Manafort and Gates to lobby on behalf of Viktor Yanukovych, the former president of Ukraine who fled to Moscow in 2014,”
10. The indictments cast fresh doubts on Trump’s judgment and his discernment in surrounding himself with good people.
