Is Paul Manafort Stupidly Desperate Or Desperately Stupid? OR IS IT BOTH?
Paul Manafort had ONE JOB when the nice judge very graciously allowed him to be released into the warm embrace of ankle bracelet jail, instead of keeping him in maximum security because he's a giant flight risk, and it was DON'T DO CRIMES. Did he listen? Hahahahahahaha, the fuck you say!
Special Counsel Robert Mueller dropped a new filing Monday night, asking the judge to please revoke Manafort's bail, because Manafort couldn't stop himself from doing a bunch of witness tampering literally the second the new superseding indictment came down back in February. And this is what leads us to believe Manafort falls into one of the three following categories:
HOLYSHITDESPERATE. Like, he thinks trying to get witnesses to lie for him is his only play, otherwise he is going to prison forever, or somebody will murder him first, therefore he is terrified .
HOLYSHITDUMB. Self-explanatory.
HOLYSHITBOTH!
Paul Manafort is facing many indictments, on money laundering, conspiracy against the United States, and so forth. The superseding indictment also included charges related to Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) violations, involving a group of former European politicians known as the "Hapsburg Group," we guess because "The Medicis" was already taken, who lobbied for Ukrainian shit in Europe and in the United States. Manafort allegedly laundered more than TWO MILLION EUROS at these guys' faces. Now, real quick, read this cast of characters, so we can 'splain you what Manafort did:
Manafort.
Rick Gates, his indicted partner in literal crime, who is now a cooperating witness for Mueller.
The "Hapsburg" boys, AKA that group of former European politicians. You've met them on the pages of Wonkette before!
"Person A," who is Konstantin Kilimnik, Paul Manafort's RUSSIAN SPY BUDDY and former business partner. We know this because Mueller is clear that "Person A" is the same "Person A" who showed up in previous filings, and that person was Kilimnik.
Persons "D1" and "D2," whom Mueller describes as "principals of a public-relations company" who "acted as intermediaries" for all the bumblefucks listed above. Manafort, Gates and Kilimnik "managed the work" of Persons D1 and D2 "on behalf of Ukraine," according to the filing, and -- this is important -- their work was "directed at both the United States and Europe." In fact, ALL these fuckers were doing illegal lobbying work in the United States.
So Manafort be-bopped out of court back in February and went to ankle-bracelet jail at his house, whereupon he and "Person A" (Kilimnik, the Russian spy) got their Obamaphones out and proceeded to call everybody on that list above, to tell them to please lie when Robert Mueller comes a-knockin'. Note the conversations with Person D1 in these excerpts from the filing:
Wow, that last part! Person D1 and Person D2 have already been talking to the Mueller team, and Person D1 is like, "Yeah, they were trying to SUBORN PERJURY at me," and Manafort was stupid enough to get caught doing this. And while Manafort was up Person D1's ass, Kilimnik (THE RUSSIAN SPY) was having the same WhatsApp chats with Person D2, you know, to make sure everybody is telling the same lies, specifically that these Hapsburg dudes need to say they only worked in Europe, and not the US. (LIE!)
Mueller notes later in the filing that the "content and context" of Kilimnik's communications "indicate that [Kilimnik] was reaching out to Person D2 at Manafort's request." Which kinda sounds like colluding with a Russian spy to us, but what do we know? By the way, this isn't the first time Manafort and Kilimnik have conspired together and gotten caught while Manafort has been under indictment.
So basically, those are the crimes. Manafort was texting half his buddies and Kilimnik was texting the other half of Manafort's buddies, all with the same message of "HEY, SAY SOME LIES."
Back to our original question, is he stupidly desperate, or desperately stupid? We're gonna guess the answer is BOTH. For one thing:
Who among us doesn't use super-secret encrypted apps, then back it all up to our iCloud for safekeeping?
As Elie Mystal emphasizes in a great piece at Above The Law, dude was MAKING PHONE CALLS AND USING WHATSAPP TO TRY TO GET PEOPLE TO PERJURE THEMSELVES," and this information got right back to Robert Mueller because Manafort didn't just leave a trail of bread crumbs, he left a trail of FULL FRESH-BAKED LOAVES for Mueller to follow.
So Paul Manafort is a fucking idiot who is 69 years old and doesn't know how to do technology like Kids These Days do it. Remember, this is the same guy who left a whole different criminal paper trail because he couldn't figure out how to convert evidence of his crimes from PDF to Word.
But he's also fucking freaked.
Oh well, guess Mueller will have to put him in jail for the rest of his natural life, unless he finally wants to flip on Donald Trump and maybe save himself, unless he's terrified that in so doing, scary people might come find him and make him dead.
Oh well, guess the moral of the story is that you shouldn't do international crime with shady-ass motherfuckers if you don't want to end up like a common Paul Manafort.
NO PITY.
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[ Mueller filing ]