You Will Anyway: Manafort Raid Revealed

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Manafort Raid Revealed

Federal agents appeared at Paul Manafort’s home without advance warning in the predawn hours of July 26, the day after he met voluntarily with the staff for the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The search warrant was wide-ranging and FBI agents working with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III departed the home with various records.

The raid came as Manafort has been voluntarily producing documents to congressional committees investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

[...]

The documents included materials Manafort had already provided to Congress, said people familiar with the search.

MSN

So why the need for the raid. We're missing some info, I think.

The search warrant indicates investigators may have argued to a federal judge they had reason to believe Manafort could not be trusted to turn over all records in response to a grand jury subpoena.

Not good, Mr. Manafort. Not good at all.

It could also have been intended to send a message to President Trump’s former campaign chairman that he should not expect gentle treatment or legal courtesies from Mueller’s team.

[...]

Manafort has provided documents to both the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate and House intelligence committees. The documents are said to include notes Manafort took while attending a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in June 2016.

The next best thing to tapes.

And I'm guessing Manafort will prove to have some dealings with the Trump Organization before the campaign which will connect to their money laundering and racketeering. After all, that's why he resigned from the campaign.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

I'd say that Manafort has been simultaneously thrown over the side and under the bus. There's a certain raw predatory glee in which this president* dispatches inconvenient people that is fascinating in a purely clinical sense. But it doesn't make for good government, and it sure as hell doesn't help you when there's a special prosecutor on your trail and when the person being dispatched probably has a paper trail that leads straight up your spinal column.

[...]

My guess is that, very soon, it will reach the point at which Manafort would roll on the Archangel Gabriel to keep from spending several centuries in jail. He will have to give the prosecutor something [...]. This bird can sing.

Charles P Pierce

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Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.