gracchusdixit

In the waning hours of Friday evening, we learned that the office of special council Robert Mueller, who is investigating possible conspiracy between Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian government to sway the outcome of the 2016 election, would soon be issuing its first indictments.  Despite much speculation, we did not actually know who the targets of those indictments were going to be or precisely when they would be issued.

Early Monday morning, we found out.  Events have been unfolding rapidly ever since.

In the event, three persons were indicted:  Trump’s former campaign manager and long-time Washington lobbyist, Paul Manafort; his protégé and business partner, Rick Gates; and an obscure quasi-academic named George Papadopoulos, who rather mysteriously came out of nowhere to become one of Trump’s first “foreign policy advisers”.  Manafort and Gates pled “not guilty” to the charges leveled against them and are now under house arrest.  Papadopoulos, on the other hand, pled “guilty,” after agreeing to cooperate with the investigation.

Although I am neither a lawyer nor a legal scholar, I have read a number of indictments in my time, and I can tell you that the indictment Mueller filed against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates is a hum-dinger.

Thirty-one pages long, it contains 12 separate counts or charges, each a federal felony punishable by a prison sentence.  The charges range from conspiracy to defraud the United States, to money-laundering, tax evasion, violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and lying to various tax and law enforcement entities.

What’s more, the indictment lays out evidence substantiating these charges in what can only be described as extraordinary detail.  It enumerates 13 overseas shell companies set up by the defendants.  It itemizes dozens of transactions, by which money from unreported foreign bank accounts was funneled through those companies to pay for luxury cars, art, and real estate.  It even includes the text of email exchanges with their accountants, in which they blatantly lied, stating that they owned no foreign bank accounts or assets.  The shameless chutzpah of this behavior is staggering.

Reading this indictment, it is difficult to imagine how either defendant, and Paul Manafort in particular, can hope to escape conviction.   The final paragraphs are particularly intimidating.  They declare the government’s intention to seek the forfeiture of any and all personal assets that were in the slightest degree associated with the crimes alleged.  Which means that Paul Manafort, who is now 68 years old, may go to prison for a couple of dozen years and emerge, at the age of 90, penniless and bankrupt.

The other indictment we learned about yesterday, against George Papadopoulos, is starkly different.  It stipulates that Papadopoulos, by pleading “guilty” to the charge of lying to  the FBI, has agreed to cooperate with the investigation; accordingly, Mueller’s office will recommend leniency, with no prison time to speak of and a modest fine.

This indictment poses a more direct threat to the Trump campaign and the White House, because Papadopoulos affirms that he was contacted by the Russians, and contacted them in return, to obtain hacked emails that might damage Hillary Clinton.  He also confesses to discussing all this with several figures higher up in the campaign.  Those figures are identified in the indictment by their titles, not their names, but it is certain that Mueller already knows who they are.

The problem in all this for Trump and his entourage is two-fold:

First, Papadopoulos’ confession puts paid to any pretense that there was no collusion between Trump and the Russians.  Whether that collusion amounts to a criminal conspiracy is another matter, yet to be determined.

Second, and more importantly, we now know that the Trump campaign was informed that the Russians had hacked Democratic emails (a crime) and chose not to report it to law enforcement (another crime).  Whether or not Robert Mueller eventually indicts anyone for “conspiracy,” it is all but certain that he will indict one or more people in the Trump orbit for these crimes.

A number of legal experts have suggested that the simultaneous release of these two very different indictments is part of a deliberate strategy on Mueller’s part to send a warning to future targets of the investigation.  To wit:  if you cooperate, you will pay a negligible price; if you fail to cooperate, you will face the prospect of total ruin.  I have no idea whether what we learned yesterday is part of some grand strategy or the accidental result of  evidentiary chips falling where they may.

I do know this, however:  none of this is good for Donald Trump, and no amount of obfuscation can any longer alter that fact.

In the days to come, we should expect more denunciations and distractions from Trump and his minions, more calls for investigating Hillary Clinton for ancient transgressions that never occurred, more protestations that there was “no collusion” between Trump and the Russians, despite all evidence to the contrary.

By now, such transparently self-interested and obfuscatory tactics are par for the course. They will undoubtedly provide savory chum for the bottom-feeders that populate the Trump “base,” for the delusional audience that watches Fox News Channel, and for spineless Republicans who refuse to acknowledge the Trump presidency for what it actually is:  an ethical, legal, and Constitutional catastrophe.  None of that will do anything to alter the fact that criminal indictments are underway.

How all this will ultimately end is anyone’s guess.  We can be certain, however, that it will not end well.  To anyone who isn’t completely blinded by parti pris, it has been obvious for months that a criminal now occupies the White House.  One by one, those around him, those who conspired to elect him, those who have enabled his corruption, self-dealing and wrongdoing, will come tumbling down.  Whether the criminal-in-chief comes tumbling after them remains to be seen.

But the first shoe has dropped.  Many more are yet to come.