Or someone made him realize that serving time in jail (where he could probably get preferential treatment, being a rich white man) would be not so bad, compared to the risk of having his tea spiced with some exotic ingredient like Polonium or VX agent
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Well, theirs and literally dozens of others that we know of. From all accounts I’ve read of Mueller, this isn’t the kind of thing that would take him by surprise. Even if he knows of specific instances of perjury, it doesn’t mean he has to prosecute them, let alone make them a part of the public record. This is a calculated move and one potentially engineered to avoid having to go through the Acting AG to release his findings. From the link below:
“The “detailed sentencing submission” promised by Mueller on Monday could also allow him to disclose any evidence of collusion he has uncovered without needing to go through a formal process of reporting to the attorney general.”
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countdown to Trump pardon.
Or Mueller had the information already, then asked Manafort the questions to see if he was actually committed to telling the truth.
Cops always ask questions they already have the answers to in order to find out what the suspect knows or wants to hide.
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Less worth than the paper it will be written on; federal pardons don’t do shit against state charges.
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This is what I suspect is going on here. It also sends a message to the other compulsive liars/potential stoolpigeons in the regime that he’s already way ahead of them in terms of what the investigation has uncovered and how it can ensure that, one way or another, they end up behind bars for a very long time.
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Never said it would be smart - just the level of operating that these jokers would whip up. Remember, Trump is totally convinced that he is smarter than Mueller.
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Yes, this. Everything Mueller has done has been methodical and conservative. He wouldn’t choose to undermine the momentum of his investigation(s) by making something discretionary public. He had Manafort against a wall and watched him breach his plea deal knowing what he was witnessing. And likely knowing that he would get exactly this outcome.
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Definitely the case that Mueller wasn’t born yesterday. I’m fascinated by this whole thing. Fingers crossed that we get a good result that doesn’t further increase the entropy in this country.
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I can’t see how that’s the take away. If they’re rescinding the deal with Manafort because he lied. That means they know he lied. And can prove it to the judge. Killing the deal doesn’t just mean he now goes up for the full potential sentence at the discretion of the judge (remember he plead after he was convicted all he got on that charge was consideration during sentencing). And of course he plead guilty to two federal charges to get the deal, he now faces the full potential penalty for those. It also means those re-trials that were pending on the hung charges can spool back up. And the 2nd federal trial for the more serious charges can go forward. Plus a new charge for lying to federal investigators.
Manafort is now in a worse spot than he started out. He faces well more than a decade in prison just on current convictions and guilty pleas. Any pardon from Trump is even more problematic. And State charges are still a possibility. A State prosecution is a likely lock given the guilty pleas, and a pardon does nothing for him there.
And again. To make this accusation and kill the deal Mueller has to be able to prove Manafort lied, and about what. Which means he has to already know the real details. There’s got to be evidence undermining Manafort’s statements. Other witnesses, documents etc.
If Manafort had “wrecked” Mueller’s investigation in some fashion, you wouldn’t see the pressure ramping up on him again, and you wouldn’t see an open accusation that he’d lied.
That’s not how you build a case. And for this exact reason. The case, as with the case against Manafort, will be built on documents and records. And we still have no clue what they were questioning Manafort on, and what he’s accused of lying about. All we’ve got is that he lied and they know he lied. Manafort was nowhere near the point of testimony, and they had no obligation to let him do so or use any statement he gave them. He was providing information to the investigation to line up those documents and records. To identify other witnesses. No solid, well put together legal case is built around a single uncorroborated “star” witness.
Given that they’re accusing him of lying “repeatedly” that’s a safe bet. In no way does this read like they just discovered it or ran to kill the deal on the first instance. Then there’s this:
“A breach relieves the government of any obligations it has under the agreement, including its agreement to a reduction in the Sentencing Guidelines for acceptance of responsibility, but leaves intact all the obligations of the defendant as well as his guilty pleas,”
They’re essentially arguing that Manafort is still obligated to cooperate. He stepped out of line and they’re enforcing the deal. This will likely at least double up the jail time he’s likely to get in the short term. In the long term they can continue to bring back the old charges, reschedule the old trials. Until he cops to every lie and cooperates fully.
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Yep, first rule of lawyering. Never ask a question that you don’t already know the answer to.
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The way a lot of folk with better knowledge of due diligence in general and Mueller’s record in particular put it, the obstruction case doesn’t hinge on any one testimony. Manafort getting slapped for lying has more to do with post-testimony review of it in reference to other verified facts. But I still, I’ll admit that I’m more afraid that you could be right; I’m certainly whistling past the graveyard at this point, rather than drawing on any particular knowledge of my own.
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It looks like that’s how Mueller gets his report out around Whitaker.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/11/26/manafort-tests-the-theory-of-an-unpardonable-plea/
-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 arguedshowed how what Manafort and Trump did to Hillary was the same thing that Manafort had done to Yulia Tymoshenko.)”
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Thanks, I was looking for some more in-depth analysis of this.
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Interesting analysis. Perhaps this is why Don McGahn resigned as White House counsel. He’s a clever enough lawyer that he might have suspected where Mueller was going back in August and gave himself a soft exit before the real fun began.
Now I’m bracing myself for an attempt by the “geniuses” in the White House to try to shut down the investigation or fire Mueller over the holidays, as if there’s any chance it could be buried like one of their Friday afternoon specials.
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To me, it seems like the reason was that they didn’t want to tip Trump off, and once they had him repeating Manafort’s lies, they decided to make him squirm. “Oh, thanks for corroborating Mr. Manafort’s testimony, which we knew was a lie all along. (beat) Are you sure that’s all you have to say, Mr. President?”
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That seems plausible and would be a hell of a trap for Mueller to lay, depending not at all on entrapment or trickery but just letting venal shits think they’re getting over on him.
BUT, any time we go down the road of X means Y, which of course means Z is all but certain it makes me nervous because if we have learned nothing from the last two years, it’s that conventional wisdom and institutions functioning normally are nothing we can or should count on. I think we’re in the middle stages of a constitutional crisis and nobody knows how this will shake out because we’re in genuinely uncharted waters.
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Some additional coverage:
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I wouldn’t assume it’s new information. The only “now” in any of this is that “now” they decided to call him on it prior to him getting any advantage out of the deal.
It’s completely possible (and probably expected) that some of the questions they asked him, they already knew all the answers to. Questions asked simply to see if he lied about them or was consistent with what they already knew.
Presumably, everything they get from him, they use as a way to then find and verify independently. Without depending on him as the only source of anything. It’s much easier to find stuff if you know what you are looking for. But, that also means, any falsehood will be discovered, which is equally as useful to them.
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There is so much information out there that I think that this being a Mueller trap is the most likely outcome. Mueller invited Manafort in and “Yes,and?”'ed him for 55 hours knowing that Manafort wasn’t going to give them any information that Mueller didn’t already know. Manafort telling Trump about Mueller’s questioning may have just been a bonus.
Trump has probably just been telling Manafort to hold on a little bit longer and the pardon will come through. He was so focused on the battle he didn’t realize that Mueller was putting him in Check. We will have to wait and see if it’s Mate.
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