“Manafort might be a bigger fish, but Papadopoulos is a bigger story,” said Steve Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor. “To me, this is the kind of plea deal that puts the c-word—collusion—back on the table.” He pointed to parts of the Papadopoulos indictment that indicated he knew about stolen Clinton campaign emails before Wikileaks began releasing them. Barrett said the indictment also sends a message to the unnamed campaign officials referenced within it. “This is a very strong signal of government interest, relevance, and consequences if they haven’t been forthcoming,” he said.”
Let’s repeat that: “the Papadopoulos indictment … indicated he knew about stolen Clinton campaign emails before Wikileaks began releasing them”.
Why is that a big deal? Because the only way to know about them is to have been in communication with whoever stole them. And if that person was an agent of a foreign government, and Papadopoulos (and/or others) knew that, you are inches away from proving collusion with foreign agents to interfere in a US election.
So what? you may ask. Everybody already knows this. Well, liberals may “know” all this in their chat groups. It is something else to prove it in court. And what is new is the proof is now piling up. That, and collusion is a serious enough crime that just about anyone tangled up in this mess would be smart to volunteer to testify against everyone else in exchange for immunity. Which has started with Papadopoulos. At this point, whatever happened will come out.
Right now Trump’s main defense is, “I didn’t know anything about what all my campaign peeps were doing”. But if that is not true, and several of them are willing to testify to that (in exchange for immunity, of course) then it is game over. And right now, events are marching in that direction. At best Trump comes out of it looking like an incompetent manager who won because his team was willing to break all the rules. At best.
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