Paul Manafort violated his plea deal as he continues to lie
Some quick thoughts about the Manafort news today (basically Mueller said he violated his plea deal and continued to lie to the FBI after the fact). It's worth noting that this opens up the possibility of another trial of Manafort, or just harsher sentencing by a judge. Either way, Mueller almost certainly doesn't make this accusation without lots of evidence - not just testimony, but documented evidence. You don't make these claims based on some other dude calling Manafort a liar. Further, the reductions in his sentence that Manafort got likely means he promised a LOT of cooperation with Mueller. Mueller got *convictions* of Manafort - there's no impetus for him to cut a deal unless Manafort offered really good stuff. He literally already had him on 8 counts of felonies.
So what I'm thinking is that since September Mueller has obtained - either via other witnesses, new evidence, or likely a combination of both - information that directly contradicts what Manafort told him (reminder that lying to the FBI is a felony whether or not you're sworn under oath or in front of a grand jury). Which begs a few questions: What did Manafort lie about?
If Corsi or Stone is contradicting Manafort's testimony - with evidence - then it would strongly suggest a direct link between the June meeting and the actual disclosures of the emails, which basically makes the whole thing one GIANT criminal conspiracy.
So far the pattern for these people has been to lie that the crime didn't happen, then lie about the size and scope of the crime, then admit under duress to the whole thing. We're seeing that play out with Jerome Corsi, who first said he'd NEVER talked to Stone about Assange, then said he FORGOT about that email, but definitely DIDN'T know Assange had Podesta's emails. So my guess is that Manafort said something like 'oh we met with the Russians but they never called us back so we didn't participate in the actual computer crimes.' If that's the case, and Mueller knows he lied about it, we come to point number two: Who contradicted Manafort's testimony and why?
All of the latest news has focused on Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi, but Corsi claims he won't take Mueller's offered plea deal because Mueller can't prove perjury. Either way it doesn't seem as though Corsi has been particularly forthcoming. And if he HAS, it establishes a link between Manafort and Stone that - in the facts of this case - hasn't yet been established. From a theory of the case standpoint, we know that the Russians offered a quid pro quo to Manafort, Kushner, and Junior. We separately know that they gave emails to Wikileaks and communicated with Roger Stone. But so far those have been - again, in terms of the case - separate incidents that we haven't seen connected. If Corsi or Stone is contradicting Manafort's testimony - with evidence - then it would strongly suggest a direct link between the June meeting and the actual disclosures of the emails, which basically makes the whole thing one GIANT criminal conspiracy.
The only other explanation that seems readily apparent is that either Junior or Kushner have been cooperating with the special counsel's office and are looking for a plea deal. Given the magnitude of the June 2016 meeting, I can't imagine that there are *other* witnesses that could be disputing Manafort's account (Sessions? McGahn? Flynn? All seem unlikely).
So basically I think Mueller found other ways of confirming the information he was hoping Manafort would provide, which makes Manafort's day immeasurably worse and also indicates that there are other people who know exactly what happened to the degree that Mueller feels comfortable telling a judge *very specific lies* that Manafort told. Again: evidentiary thresholds here are no joke.
And Paul Manafort is probably going to die in prison in exchange for helping elect Donald Trump President.