Fun speculating

Everybody and his brother is speculating about Mueller's charges against and deal with "the coffee boy" George Papadopoulos. Of course, any weight given should obviously go to attorneys' and investigative reporters' speculations, but I like to play, anyway. In fact, I don't have a brother, so I have to speculate for two.

First off, we can automatically discount any of the Trump folks who want to make it seem like Papadopoulos is a nobody who has no information to give. Mueller would not have arrested and flipped him if that were true. So, immediately, this is a big deal, and that's not speculation.

Former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos made a significant claim in an email: Top Trump campaign officials agreed to a pre-election meeting with representatives of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

[...]

Writing to the Russian contact a week before the Republican National Convention, Papadopoulos proposed a meeting for August or September in the U.K. that would include “my national chairman and maybe one other foreign policy adviser” and members of Putin’s office and Russia’s foreign ministry.

“It has been approved by our side,” Papadopoulos wrote.

[...]

The email is cited in an FBI agent’s affidavit supporting criminal charges against Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy volunteer on Trump’s campaign. But it’s not included in court documents that detailed his secret guilty plea and his cooperation with Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

  Bloomberg

OK. Why not? This strikes me as a very important detail. I assume it's because that email has other information or identifies persons Mueller is planning to reel in. So, everybody who's saying that the email only means GP was bragging or trying to impress the Russians, when in fact nobody in the campaign agreed to any such thing, is either fooling himself or trying desperately to fool others.

Trump tweeted on Tuesday that Papadopoulos, a low-level adviser that few people on the campaign knew, “has already proven to be a liar.”

Fooling whom?

Prosecutors didn’t explain why the email wasn’t included in the detailed admissions of Papadopoulos’s wrongdoing, and it’s possible they concluded the assertions weren’t true.

Is that possible? I don't think so. Would they include something they knew was a lie in a legal affadavit meant to back up their charges against someone? Hell, no. You think they want to have their case dismissed? They're going make this and any case attached to the investigation as tight as the GOP offering relief to poor brown people.

Jason Maloni, a spokesman for Manafort, said that his client had rebuffed overtures to meet with Russians, and noted an email from May in which Manafort shot down a different attempt to have Trump meet with Putin or his representatives.

“Mr. Manafort’s swift action reflects the attitude of the campaign -- any invitation by Russia, directly or indirectly, would be rejected outright,” Maloni said in a written statement. “His request that the response come from a low-level staffer sent a clear signal that the invitation did not merit consideration. This is concrete evidence the Russia collusion narrative is fake news.”

Actually, it's concrete evidence of just the opposite. And it absolutely sent a clear signal that the invitation did merit consideration, and discretion. A clear signal that it did not merit consideration would be: "George, you know that's not going to happen. Butt out and quit contacting the Russians." I would like to see that May email from Manafort to perhaps assess why (and if) he "shot down" a separate particular attempt.

Clovis, in a statement, said Papadopoulos was acting on his own and that the campaign had a strict rule against traveling abroad and claiming to speak on behalf of the campaign.

Still, Clovis supervised Papadopolous and was questioned last week by Mueller’s team and testified before a grand jury, NBC reported, citing a person with knowledge of the matter. Whether he corroborated Papadopolous’s version of events is unknown.

Clovis would indeed say GP acted on his own. Every single other person on that campaign team would say the same. But now they know that Mueller has other information given to him by GP, and they have to wonder what that is.

As for not knowing whether Clovis corroborated GP's version in front of the Grand Jury, I think we can be damn near certain he did. Mueller wouldn't send him up to testify to the Grand Jury if he weren't going to corroborate the prosecution's version of events. This wasn't a trial. This was all the prosecution's evidence showing that a trial is winnable.

One of those people, identified in court documents as Foreign Contact 2, is Ivan Timofeev, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Tuesday. He works for the Moscow-based Russian International Affairs Council, a Kremlin-linked research group, and isn’t a foreign ministry employee, despite Papadopoulos’s assertion, she said.

Doesn't mean he didn't let GP believe he was. 

Timofeev declined to comment by email but posted on his group’s site that he believed Papadopoulos was working on his own initiative. “Apparently, he was an enthusiast with little experience,” he said.

So why did he think Timofeev was a foreign ministry employee? He was led to believe that by somebody.

In a private Facebook message to Timofeev during the Republican National Convention, Papadopoulos wrote, “Keep an eye on the speech tonight. Should be good.”

Keep an eye on Mueller's activity going forward. Should be good.

Died in the wool Democrat and blog journalist Josh Marshall believes Manafort is angling for a pardon. But let's remember, if he is pardoned he can't plead the fifth, which he is definitely going to want to do. And what Trump - if he has any shred of sense at all - surely wants him to do.

Not to mention, the State of New York is also investigating Manafort's money laundering gigs. Whatever he says in the federal trial can be used in a state trial later.  The boy's between a rock and a hard place. I would expect him to take the 5th and spend some time in jail or make a deal with Mueller that protects him from New York criminal charges and the Russian mob. I'm not even sure jail could do the latter.

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