My thoughts on the Paul Manafort indictment.

Paul Manafort via Twitter.

As you may know, Donald Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort has been indicted for financial crimes in the Muller probe. He, along with his aide, Richard Gates, have surrendered to the FBI and have been charged with 12 counts regarding money laundering and fraud against the US government for his work with the Ukrainians. 

The left celebrated this as the "thing that will take down Trump and this time we mean it!" A quick perusal of the indictment, which can be seen below, makes that fairly obviously wrong. Trump wasn't mentioned once in the document and it's very clear that almost every crime Manafort has been charged with happened well before Manafort joined the campaign. The conspiracy charge has an end date in 2017, but that's how conspiracy charges work. And the only other crime he committed recently was lying to investigators, which happened after Manafort was fired in August 2016. 

A few more things. Much hay was made on Twitter and elsewhere that Manafort was charged with "Conspiracy Against the United States". Though that sounds very serious, a reading of the criminal code (18 USC 371) shows that it is a minor felony that has nothing to do with treason and everything to do with fraud. It's a felony charged when people conspire with each other to defraud the government and it has a sentence of five years.

Critically, the indictment has nothing to do with Donald Trump or election interference. These financial crimes were related to Ukraine, not Russia and nothing to do with our elections. They also happened years before and there was little chance of Donald Trump actually knowing about it. It shouldn't hurt Trump at all, other than the fact that he probably shouldn't have hired him even though there wasn't a way for Trump to know about this. To his credit as soon as Trump found out about Manafort's Ukraine links, he fired him.

I think that Democrats are going to be severely disappointed in the Muller investigation. Nobody on the right cares about Manafort going down, other than being annoyed that he got caught by Muller instead of the FBI or IRS. Manafort had nothing to do with Russian interference with the election so the special consul investigation has gone rather far away from its goals. Manafort was always just a tool used by Trump to get elected and not a critical player. He only used him to counter Ted Cruz's effort to flip election delegates. He's not important, especially since he has nothing to do with Russia collusion.

Further more, it looks like some Democrats are going to go down with Manafort. Specifically, I am talking about the Podesta brothers, including John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign manager. In the indictment, two companies were mentioned as "Company A" and "Company B". NBC has revealed that one of those companies was the Podesta Group. And Tony Podesta just stepped down from the company...

Sources: Podesta Group, Mercury are companies "A" and "B" in indictment https://t.co/wmJqADo5sQ pic.twitter.com/oa1s23G947

— NBC News (@NBCNews) October 30, 2017

I think it is very clear that Tony Podesta is probably going down for similar financial crimes. He, too, failed to register as a foreign agent and he might very well be caught up in Manafort's money laundering scheme. I can't think of another reason for him to step down other than that he suspects that an indictment is coming. I'm not so sure that John Podesta, Hillary's campaign manger, will go down as well but I bet he's scared. I consider both of the Podesta brothers to be creepy, gross and corrupt and I think that there is a decent chance that the investigation into the Podesta group could go far beyond Manafort's financial crimes. Though I never bought into the "Pizzagate" conspiracy theories it is very clear to me that both Podesta brothers have... odd taste in art, to say the least.

As far as the Muller probe, it seems like it is winding down after this. No actual collusion has been found and the only charges are for Manafort's financial crimes and former unpaid Trump advisory George Papadapoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. Now that the investigation seems to be heading to the Podestas, I think it will wrap up.