Sunday, December 02, 2018

Herewith is the text of a letter I sent to the editor of the SB News-Press today. I'll update this post when/if it gets published.

Update: The letter was published in the News-Press on Sunday, December 9, 2018.


At last, the "witch hunt" is getting interesting. Straight out of a John le Carrė novel, we learn from the Special Counsel's recent court filing that "cooperating" defendant Paul Manafort was actually a "mole," lying to Robert Mueller's team about "a variety of subject  matters," while being a conduit to the President for information about the Russia/collusion/obstruction investigation.



But wait -- the le Carrė tale doesn't stop there. What if Mueller's team knew all the while that Manafort was Trump's mole and they were feeding Manafort false information for transmittal to Trump, which Trump then used in fashioning his answers to Mueller's questions? That would explain why the plea bargain with Manafort was voided immediately after Trump's answers were finally delivered to Mueller: Mueller set the trap and Trump strode into it.



But wait – le Carrė isn't finished. Because the President's written answers were doubtless lawyer-honed and contained weasel-words such as "to the best of my recollection," those answers wouldn't be a sound basis for proving anything much. Instead, it's likely that Mueller has independent evidence that Manafort lied. We'll likely learn details about the "subject matters" that Manafort allegedly lied about in court filings that Mueller will present shortly and in Manafort's lawyers' filing seeking to show he didn't lie. These presentations, whether or not they dovetail with Trump's ambiguously-crafted answers, will reveal only the next chapter in the story, including, obviously, the scope of Trump's pardon power. Turn the page.