Am I the only one who thinks Mueller wasn't the least bit surprised that Manafort leaked to Trump?

[EffieBlack]

Mueller wasn't born yesterday and he's no babe in the woods. He and his team knew exactly who they were dealing with.

I don't believe this came as any surprise to Mueller. In fact, I think it's likely that Mueller set Manafort and Trump up

[FSogol]

1. He was counting on it.

That's how criminal conspiracies work.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. No doubt he knew it would happen,

and he also anticipated that Manafort would lie as part of his plea agreement and that he'd leak stuff to Trump's lawyers. It was all a setup, I think, to see whether Trump would lie in his written answers and that those lies corresponded to Manafort's lies.

[Eliot Rosewater]

3. Imagine if a President Obama or Clinton was doing this.

Country would be shut down until impeached. Or worse.

[Raven123]

4. I wonder if Mueller was surprised that Manafort's attorneys were complicit.

Since now we are are hearing that attorney-client privilege no longer applies, the Manafort legal team seems either incompetent or they will protect themselves and let Manafort to fend for himself.

[guillaumeb]

5. Crooks lie.

Mueller knows this.

We all know this.


It is only a matter of time, and Trump knows it.

[underthematrix]

6. They used the Trump/Manafort agreement to ensnare

both of them

[FakeNoose]

20. And I hope they get Rudy G too

No doubt it was his idea, Mueller may have a 6-pack here!

[Vinca]

7. I agree with you. Chances are pretty good that Don's written answers to questions are

based on the untruthful information provided by Manafort and Corsi and later fed back to Trump and the tremendous legal mind of Rudy 9/11 Giuliani. Mueller knows the answers to questions before he asks them and the whole lot of them are in big trouble.

[EffieBlack]

8. Exactly!

Like the teacher knows exactly which students cheated because they copied the wrong answers from the guy who stole the test - the test the teacher planted to catch who was cheating.

[vlyons]

9. How crooked do you have to be to hire Paul Manafort to do anything?

Damn crooked I suppose. Let me remind you that Paul Manafort worked for President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych, a Russian puppet leader so corrupt that his own people rose up and chased him out of the country. What normal person running to be POTUS would hire such a person? Well we all know that Trump is not normal. He and his cronies are all cons and criminals that are attracted to and by one another in the quest for easy money by hook or by crook.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

14. As crooked as Trump. Manafort is exactly the kind of scumbag Trump would hire

because he's a crooked scumbag himself.

[RT Atlanta]

17. Pretty sure Manafort wasnt even paid

IIRC he (manafort) volunteered his time.

[GopherGal]

23. Manafort worked on the campaign for no salary

Supposedly.

It's not as if he has such a simple, off-the-grid lifestyle that we're going to believe there was no self-interest at all attached to his employment as Trump's campaign manager. Some special interest paid him that ostrich jacket money.

[triron]

10. Now that you ask and I think about it, no.

[0rganism]

11. i wonder if Mueller's team didn't inject flagged (false?) info into dealings with Manafort...

... to see if any of it shows up in Trump's "open book test" written answers

[EffieBlack]

13. Precisely what I think happened. Nt

[ProudLib72]

12. Not surprised by Paulie leaking to Donnie

Am surprised by how sneaky Mueller was in maneuvering the two of them to fall into his trap.

This is why Mueller is the expert and I am not.

[monmouth4]

15. Mueller got Gotti, he's used to this scum so no surprises for him. Great job IMO..

[oldtime dfl_er]

16. seems to me

at this point Mueller needs to move very fast. Trump wants him out and the whole thing shut down BEFORE the new Congress and new investigations in January.

[pnwmom]

18. I agree. He's familiar with the criminal mind, and he knows by now

that he's dealing with a gang of criminals.

[Skraxx]

19. LOL! It Was a Given, Everyone Knew it Would Happen, They Broadcasted the Fact that They Would

Trumpco are the keystone cops of corruption. It's unbelievable. Amateur hour.

[McCamy Taylor]

21. If the Pentagon/CIA/NSA/FBI know it, then Mueller knows it.

And given the way Trump loves to kiss ass around military guys, the Pentagon probably has a bunch of moles in the White House.

[Botany]

22. It is called give 'em enough rope and they will...

... hang themselves.

[DallasNE]

24. Completely

The day before the NYT reported on this I speculated exactly this on DU. Mueller set the perjury trap by waiting until after Trump submitted his written answers counting on Trump to echo the Manafort lies. Trap springs.

[GoCubsGo]

25. Nope. He's seen it all.

He took out the Gambino crime family, and they were A LOT smarter than Manafort and the rest of the Trump crime syndicate. It is being said he has even found a workaround to get information out without needing Whitaker's approval.

[SayItLoud]

26. I was surprised but I'm not Mueller :) my hope is that

State charges against all the tRUMP grifters amount to something and that the USSC doesn't go along with the double jeopardy bullshit in the case coming before them. But, with Kavanough there who knows how it will go....

[Kingofalldems]

27. If I knew it would happen then Mueller surely knew.

[spooky3]

28. I can't wait for the whole story to come out. Nt

[Jarqui]

29. It could get rather amusing (beyond the horror of Trump's presidency)

Most of you will recall Rudy's absurd 'Truth isn't truth' spin. Rudy went on to outline his version of the 'perjury trap'

Giuliani warns of perjury trap: 'Truth isn't truth'
https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/402527-giuliani-truth-isnt-truth

"I’m not going to be rushed into having him testify so he gets trapped into perjury," Giuliani said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"And when you tell me that he should testify because he’s going to tell the truth and he shouldn’t worry, well that’s so silly because that’s somebody’s version of the truth, not the truth," Giuliani said.

"Truth is truth,” anchor Chuck Todd responded.

"No it isn’t," Giuliani said. "Truth isn’t truth."
....
Giuliani went on to say he is skeptical of having Trump speak with Mueller because the special counsel may believe former FBI Director James Comey or another witness's account of events if it contradicts the president.

"We have a credibility gap between the two of them," Giuliani said. "You’ve got to select one or the other."

Here's the potential amusing part:

What if Trump told the same lie to Mueller that Manafort told to Mueller?
There's no credibility gap between Manafort & Trump.
Mueller already has evidence to expose the Manafort lies beyond reasonable doubt. He's about to present it in criminal court.

A summation of the potentially amusing part is there is no "credibility gap" between the verbose testimony because Manafort and Trump colluded to lie to Mueller. The credibility gap is between what both men said and the evidence. That is not going to play well even with Trump's deadheads. It will go down even worse with a judge.

It would be poetic if that is how it played out.

[Apollyonus]

30. I'm just concerned

The big indictments that were going to be dropped post election have not materialized.

I'm keeping the faith in Mueller though and hope Whitaker is not stopping Mueller's indictments.

[brush]

31. Can't play the player. Mueller let Manafort think he was being fooled.

He waited until trump submitted his take-home questions with some of the same info Mueller had knowlingly feed Manafort with to drop the hammer.

Now Manafort and trump both know Mueller caught them in lies.

[Princess Turandot]

32. Given that Manafort attempted to tamper with witnesses whilst under house arrest...

..by having a known shady associate of his send permanent-record text messages to the other parties (who, unlike this pompous criminal, weren't going to try to commit crimes for someone else (!) while the SP was actively involved with them)...did this surprise Mueller? NO!!