Just now wondering if the Manafort breach wasn't a set up by Mueller to get his report out

[allgood33]

to the public. If it was, it was a brilliant move. Somehow i believe that Mueller always knew these Trumpian scum bags would like because they knew they would be pardoned. But what if Trump doesn't pardon them? Why should he because once Mueller's report is out nothing will be hidden from the public. In a fit of terror he may not pardon any of them for not protecting him better.

[Kablooie]

1. Here's an interesting theory about that...

This is from the Palmer Report that often has over the top, exaggerated speculations but this one sounds plausible.

Trump’s only reason for submitting his answers, instead of trying to drag it out longer, would have been that Mueller had given him a hard deadline. Then Mueller delayed the Manafort revelation until after Trump had turned in his work. While Trump surely wasn’t honest in his answers overall, his lawyers probably at least made sure that his answers didn’t contradict anything that Manafort knew about. In other words, it looks like Mueller just bluffed Trump into confessing to the aspects of the Trump-Russia scandal that Manafort was present for.

Paul Manafort is a career criminal and serial fraudster. He got caught conspiring with a Russian spy to try to tamper with witnesses ahead of his trial. Robert Mueller probably knew from the start that Manafort would screw up the plea deal. But that didn’t prevent Mueller from using it to get Donald Trump to commit himself to written answers under the assumption that Mueller already knew what Manafort knew. Now that’s just brilliant.

https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/bluff-submission-mueller-manafort-trump/14269/

[enough]

2. emptywheel: Mueller Just Guaranteed He Can Issue a Public Report

https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/11/26/manafort-tests-the-theory-of-an-unpardonable-plea/?fbclid=IwAR1lC4Lr1YLD0UyKNXk-LvNMIgoS-68B_QTVET9Sul0PPyUKPkDjFL6Kr74

Snip>


But Mueller’s team appears to have no doubt that Manafort was lying to them. That means they didn’t really need his testimony, at all. It also means they had no need to keep secrets — they could keep giving Manafort the impression that he was pulling a fast one over the prosecutors, all while reporting misleading information to Trump that he could use to fill out his open book test. Which increases the likelihood that Trump just submitted sworn answers to those questions full of lies.

And that “detailed sentencing submission … sett[ing] forth the nature of the defendant’s crimes and lies” that Mueller mentions in the report?

There’s your Mueller report, which will be provided in a form that Matt Whitaker won’t be able to suppress. (Reminder: Mueller included 38 pages of evidence along with Manafort’s plea agreement, which I argued showed how what Manafort and Trump did to Hillary was the same thing that Manafort had done to Yulia Tymoshenko.)

Snip> More at link

[babylonsister]

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