Seth Abramson: Gates plea has more to do with Russia than we thought

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1/ When Gates pleaded guilty, the White House insisted his crimes had nothing to do with Trump or Russia. But it's increasingly clear the reason Mueller offered Gates a plea deal did in fact have to do with Russia-related information Gates had about not just Manafort but others.
9:58 AM - 23 Mar 2018


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Seth Abramson

2/ First, understand how significant Gates was to Trump's campaign: he was its Deputy Campaign Manager; he ran its operations at the RNC, where Trump campaign aides made contact with Russian nationals and subsequently changed the RNC platform to benefit Putin and lied about it...
5 replies 166 retweets 683 likes
Seth Abramson
?Verified account @SethAbramson
2h2 hours ago

3/ ...per media reports, he was effectively running Trump's campaign—more so than Manafort—for several months in the summer of 2016; when Manafort was fired, Trump stayed in contact with his former Campaign Manager and declined to fire Gates, instead giving him a critical role...
6 replies 124 retweets 575 likes
Seth Abramson
?Verified account @SethAbramson
2h2 hours ago

4/ ...as his campaign's liaison to the RNC, a move which at the time surprised political observers because (a) that was a critical campaign role, and (b) it was assumed that Gates, Manafort's deputy, would've been removed from the campaign at the same time Manafort was because...
4 replies 102 retweets 520 likes
Seth Abramson
?Verified account @SethAbramson
2h2 hours ago

5/ ...like Manafort, Gates had ties to the Ukraine and therefore should've been as big a liability as Manafort was—by then—thought to be, at least publicly; Trump then made him Deputy Chairman of his inaugural committee (a key role) during the transition, which we now know was...
6 replies 104 retweets 528 likes
Seth Abramson
?Verified account @SethAbramson
2h2 hours ago

6/ ...lousy with secret meetings and calls with Russian nationals—even as Trump (and, one presumes, let's be honest, Gates as well) stayed in touch with Manafort behind the scenes (and of course Trump and Manafort lived in the same building and could meet up whenever they liked).
5 replies 104 retweets 521 likes
Seth Abramson
?Verified account @SethAbramson
2h2 hours ago

7/ So Gates was at the top of Trump's campaign and transition; was at the top of the campaign and transition at all points at which suspicious Trump-Russia contact occurred; and was definitively tied to that contact, at least in terms of the lied-about platform change at the RNC.
7 replies 109 retweets 506 likes
Seth Abramson
?Verified account @SethAbramson
2h2 hours ago

8/ But Trump's decision not to fire Gates in mid-2016, but put him in a key position as the link between himself and the RNC, never sat right with me, or with many others in the media. Gates came in with Manafort and had all the same liabilities; so why didn't he go out with him?
3 replies 98 retweets 497 likes
Seth Abramson
?Verified account @SethAbramson
2h2 hours ago

9/ Indeed, Trump responded to the *loss* of Manafort (against Trump's wishes, and only in public, to be clear) by *promoting* Manafort's equally compromised deputy to a position of even *greater* prominence and power than he had before—which he stayed in through the inauguration.
2 replies 94 retweets 473 likes
Seth Abramson
?Verified account @SethAbramson
2h2 hours ago

10/ And now Rick Gates has pleaded guilty.

Immediately after that happened, sources in the White House successfully got the media to pass on (essentially without analysis) two lies: (a) Gates wasn't a particularly prominent Trump-campaign figure; (b) he'd no knowledge of Russia.
6 replies 119 retweets 513 likes
Seth Abramson
?Verified account @SethAbramson
2h2 hours ago

11/ But you know who Gates was linked up with as a result of Trump shocking the media and naming him his RNC liaison? The man pictured atop this thread,

Elliott Brody, who less than 90 days after Gates ceased to be Trump's RNC liaison became the deputy finance chair of the RNC.
10 replies 108 retweets 477 likes
Seth Abramson
?Verified account @SethAbramson
1h1 hour ago

12/ Days after Gates was indicted, McClatchy reported Mueller was looking into new charges against Gates involving a shady film-production scheme. As part of that scheme, two producers sent $100K in fraudulently-obtained funds to a nonprofit run by Broidy.
8 replies 122 retweets 470 likes


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