Paul Manafort's last tango

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s lies caught up with him in federal court on Wednesday. The result was a decision that likely means, absent either a deal or a presidential pardon, he’ll spend the rest of his life in jail.

  WaPo

And I don't think it's absolutely certain that he'll get a pardon.

The judge’s finding that Manafort, 69, breached his cooperation deal with prosecutors by lying after his guilty plea could add years to his prison sentence and came after a set of sealed court hearings.

Manafort had denied intentionally lying after his plea deal, but U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the District found he lied in three of five areas alleged by prosecutors.

[...]

The subject matter of Manafort’s lies goes to the core of possible cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russians linked to Russian intelligence — in this case, Konstantin Kilimnik, who met with Manafort during the 2016 presidential campaign.

In particular, the court found that Manafort lied about his contacts with Kilimnik both during and after the election. Manafort was also found to have lied about “a payment that was routed through a pro-Trump political action committee to cover his legal bills, and about information relevant to another undisclosed investigation underway at the Justice Department.”

[...]

The Post previously reported that, at a hush-hush August 2, 2016 meeting at the Grand Havana Room, a private cigar room in New York, Manafort, deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates and Kilimnik discussed “a proposed resolution to the conflict over Ukraine, an issue of great interest to the Russian government, according to a partially redacted transcript of the Feb. 4 hearing.” It was there that there may have been “a handoff by Manafort of internal polling data from Trump’s presidential campaign to his Russian associate.”

Manafort finds himself in a much worse position than he was as a cooperating witness trying to whittle down his potential sentence for eight felony convictions handed down last year in Virginia. “Manafort is either the most self-destructive, irrational liar in history, or he is still protecting a secret so dark that exposing it would kill his chance for a pardon,” former Justice Department spokesman Matt Miller tells me.

Or his Russian mob buddies know Manafort's family's address.

This, in short, was collusion — Trump’s top campaign official giving material to a suspected agent of a hostile foreign government that the campaign had already been warned was attempting to interfere with our election. Whatever you call it — direct or indirect evidence — this now is one link proven in court between the campaign and the Russians.

Which is probably why Republican Senator Richard Burr came out with his announcement a couple of days ago that the Senate Intel Committee has found "no direct evidence" of collusion.

We know of others, of course, including the Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 designed to get dirt on Hillary Clinton, Trump’s public call for Russia to go after Clinton’s emails, and more than 100 contacts between Russian figures and members of the Trump circle.

[...]

The only question is which of these contacts Trump was aware of and/or authorized, and what the nature of any quid pro quo may have been.

[...]

“There is no non-nefarious explanation for the chairman of a presidential campaign secretly meeting with a suspected Russian agent in the midst of an election that the Russians are actively trying to influence and then lying about it to the prosecutor after agreeing to cooperate.,” says Max Bergmann of the Moscow Project. “The only reason for Manafort to lie at this point is to cover up something truly devastating.”

[...]

[Former prosecutor Mimi Rocah] notes that "Manafort chose to lie about his dealings with a Russian intelligence officer and spend years more in prison than he would have if he had told the truth. So the looming question that remains in my mind is — why? "

Could be he wants to stay alive (and keep his family alive) even if it means he spends the rest of his life in jail. Could be he does believe he'll get a pardon.

With Manafort now under extreme pressure, he could for the first time tell us what exactly is the deep dark secret about Russia and the Trump operation that so many people have lied to cover up.

I'm not holding my breath.

Manafort's sentencing is scheduled for March 13.