Only One Guy Is Indicting People, and His Name Is

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Only One Guy Is Indicting People, and His Name Is Robert Mueller

Whether or not Trump is winning the political war is irrelevant at this stage.

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Manafort’s turning on a spit right now, and what Sean Hannity thinks of that, or what Paul Ryan thinks of it, doesn’t matter either to Manafort or to the guy operating the rotisserie.

At the end of things, people will go to prison, and the country will have a detailed accounting of what it did to itself when it installed this low-rent crew in control of the government. We’ve all been under indictment for that for going on three years now.

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BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
Jun 8, 2018



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I keep hearing about how the president* is winning the “messaging” and/or the “political” battle against Robert Mueller and the forces investigating the president* and the bounders and thieves with whom he has conspired and colluded his entire adult life.

The problem with this, of course, is that the president* doesn’t have the guts to arrange for Mueller’s dismissal and, all messaging and politics aside, there’s only one of them who can indict people.

There’s only one of them who can indict people twice.

From CNN:

The indictment includes two new charges against both Manafort and Kilimnik: a count of obstruction of justice and a count of conspiracy to obstruct justice, meaning the two allegedly worked together to tamper with witnesses. Kilimnik, 48, of Moscow, is the 20th person to face charges in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

So far, 20 people and three companies have been charged. Earlier this week, Mueller's office accused Manafort of attempting to get witnesses to lie for him in court.

A witness told investigators recently that Manafort wanted them to commit perjury about a lobbying effort they worked on for him in the US, a filing in DC District Court said. Manafort is currently out on house arrest and a $10 million unsecured bail.

He awaits a trial in Virginia that is scheduled for late July and a trial in DC scheduled to begin in September. He has pleaded not guilty to charges related to his failure to disclose his US lobbying work for a foreign government and to bank fraud and other financial crimes.

I’m not sure how much all this talk about “messaging” and the political ramifications really matters. Certainly, Mueller doesn’t have any illusions about the president*’s supine supporters in the Congress.

He’s not waiting for any political institution to assert itself against the president*, because he must know by now how futile that would be.

Instead, he keeps doing what prosecutors do: shaking witnesses and building cases and getting indictments when he’s sure he can get them. Manafort’s turning on a spit right now, and what Sean Hannity thinks of that, or what Paul Ryan thinks of it, doesn’t matter either to Manafort or to the guy operating the rotisserie.

At the end of things, people will go to prison, and the country will have a detailed accounting of what it did to itself when it installed this low-rent crew in control of the government. We’ve all been under indictment for that for going on three years now.

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