Paul Manafort In The Crosshairs As Mueller Breathes Down His Neck With Russia Probe (VIDEOS)



If you’ve followed the progress of the investigation into the Kremlin’s attempt to hack the presidential election, you’ve figured out that former Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has a lot of reasons to be very afraid.

After all, we know that he was on hand for the now-infamous meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Russians delivering “opposition research” on Hillary Clinton, even though he was the one person in the room who should have known the meeting was improper at best. We also know that he was caught asking Kremlin operatives for dirt on Hillary. And long before then, he had a long history of, shall we say, shady deals on behalf of the Kremlin.

Well, it turns out that Manafort is further in the soup than anyone could have imagined. The New York Times reported on Monday night that special counsel Robert Mueller has been turning the screws on Manafort for some time.

When federal agents raided Manafort’s Virginia home in July, they didn’t just knock on his door. They picked the lock and marched in. In order to get such a sweeping warrant, Mueller would not only have had to convince a judge that there was probable cause that Manafort had engaged in criminal activity, but that he was likely to destroy any evidence linking him to said activity. This sounds more like something you’d expect from an organized-crime investigation, not a public corruption investigation.

They then hauled out several binders full of documents and copied his hard drive, which is standard operating procedure for white-collar investigations. However, according to two sources close to the investigation, federal prosecutors then took the step of warning Manafort that he was about to be indicted.

This is but one example of what The Times describes as the “shock-and-awe” approach Mueller has taken to the investigation. While conventional wisdom suggests that good federal investigations take the form of slow-motion strangulations, Mueller has long been known to discard that approach in his years as a federal prosecutor and as FBI director. This investigation is no different. Rather than simply invite people close to Manafort to his office, Mueller has slapped them with grand jury subpoenas–forcing them to either testify or plead the Fifth. Associates of former national security adviser Michael Flynn are getting similar treatment.


According to Solomon Wisenberg, the deputy independent counsel in the Whitewater investigation, Mueller knows that you have to “strike terror in the hearts of Washington, or else you will be rolled.” Wisenberg believes that Mueller wants Manafort and those around him to think, “Man, I had better tell these guys the truth.”

If that wasn’t enough, CNN reports that Manafort was wiretapped under Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants issued both before and after the election. Watch CNN’s Evan Perez, Shimon Prokupecz and Pamela Brown discuss the story on “Erin Burnett OutFront” here.

CNN reports that Manafort was first investigated starting in 2014, with a focus on work Manafort did for Ukraine’s former pro-Russian government. That probe ended sometime in 2016 for lack of evidence. However, the FBI opened a new probe shortly after Manafort was turfed from the Trump campaign in August. By then, the FBI had discovered some rather unusual links between Trump operatives and the Kremlin. They’d also discovered that Russian president Vladimir Putin personally ordered his intelligence services to hack the election.

On the strength of this information, the FBI obtained a new warrant that lasted into early this year. Perez said in the course of that investigation, intelligence intercepts suggested that Manafort may have been encouraging Russians to meddle with the campaign, though that evidence is not conclusive. Mueller’s team has details of these and other communications.

Incredibly, elements of Trumpland are trying to put a positive spin on this. Soon after CNN’s story broke, Infowars’ Owen Shroyer took to YouTube to say “I told you so” on behalf of his boss, Alex Jones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgnQYqiL57g

Shroyer claimed that this story came after numerous denials that Manafort had been wiretapped. He claimed that it was an attempt to cover up for numerous “fake news” stories by claiming it was part of the Russian hacking probe, and thus make everyone forget it was a massive waste of money. If Jones and friends see any good news in reports that the FBI was concerned enough about Manafort that they were investigating him at all, they’re even more delusional than we thought.


Throw this on top of the manner in which the August raid was conducted–a sign that Mueller believes there definitely was a there there–and you have to think that it’s time to start auditions for the fat lady. That may not be the only singing going on at this point, though. If this is even half accurate, Manafort and his lawyers are spilling everything they know about the hacking campaign–or at least, they’d better be starting to do so.

(featured image courtesy ABC News, available under a Creative Commons BY-ND license)

Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello.