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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
If that were his plan, he's going about it in a profoundly stupid way. He's double crossed everyone multiple times and worsened his situation each time.
"What was Manafort thinking?"
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/opinion/what-was-paul-manafort-thinking.html
Two months ago, he struck a plea deal with Robert Mueller, the special counsel — he pleaded guilty but agreed to provide full and truthful information in exchange for a more lenient sentence. But according to a filing by Mr. Mueller’s team on Monday, Mr. Manafort lied to them repeatedly, and after multiple warnings. He is now in a far worse position than if he had never elected to cooperate, or if he had followed through on his agreement.
What was he thinking? All of the available explanations for Mr. Manafort’s self-destructive path seem highly implausible, at best. So which hypothesis is the least implausible?
To briefly review the bidding, Mr. Manafort, who served as President Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016, spent months refusing to cooperate with Mr. Mueller in the face of what seemed an overwhelming set of fraud charges and the prospect of a financially ruinous pair of trials. His refusal, in the face of overwhelming evidence, was a reckless, long-shot gamble, and speculation therefore was rife that there was something we didn’t know, such as a secret promise of a pardon from the president if he kept quiet.
But when the time came for Mr. Manafort to turn over his cards at the first trial, he was out of aces and was convicted on multiple charges that most likely equated to a life sentence. Then, just before the second trial was set to start, he suddenly folded and agreed to terms with Mr. Mueller.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Feb 15th 2019 at 11:21:35 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.I mean, now that's he's ruined his value as a witness, Trump no longer has any incentive to pardon him- you don't to go out of your way to keep a man who is, from a legal standpoint, an untrustworthy liar, from testifying, because his testimony inherently won't prove anything.
Edited by Gilphon on Feb 15th 2019 at 2:30:45 PM
Trump has never gone out of his way to help any of his loyalists.
Look at Cohen, a man who was the Grima Wormtongue to his Saruman for decades.
The big difference between him and Manafort is Cohen was smart enough to stab Trump in Hobbiton.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Feb 15th 2019 at 11:29:40 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.![]()
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Don't be insulting Saruman by comparing him to Trump.
It's weird seeing people talk about TYT (The Young Turks) because my brain auto-corrects it to TY Tropes, and I'm always confused by the rest of the context of the statement, regardless of what it's about.
I figured this was an okay place to post this, considering TYT are a news and politics thing and an occasional topic of discussion.
Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Feb 16th 2019 at 3:36:27 AM
Manafort’s actions don’t even make sense if he was trying to protect himself from reprisal from Russia, why take the plea deal in that case?
It only makes sense if Manafort thinks he is smarter than Muller and thought he could get away with lying to him, thus covering for everyone while not getting done himself.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranI feel like it could retroactively taint Muller’s work, it would look like a favour being done for the guy who bought down/seriously harmed the democrat’s opponent.
Let Muller continue doing his thing, maybe ask him who he would recommend as AG.
Also the office of AG is a political one, Muller isn’t a political actor.
Now Rosenstein for AG, that I could get behind.
Edited by Silasw on Feb 16th 2019 at 2:10:08 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranAlso on the subject of Mueller, and because I can't remember if this has already come up:
Special counsel prosecutors say they have communications of Stone with Wiki Leaks
Prosecutors said for the first time that they have evidence of Roger Stone communicating with Wiki Leaks, according to a new court filing from special counsel prosecutors
https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/15/politics/roger-stone-wikileaks/index.html

I think he's just afraid of what will happen if he rats on Trump/Russia for realsies. Trump's basically a Mafia don and Russia is Russia. Neither of these are known for taking good care of stoolies.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 15th 2019 at 11:53:59 AM
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