Paul Manafort and Richard Gates Indictment [pdf]

This HN submission was flagkilled; I vouched for it due to this reason.

Even though there is a political backdrop behind the investigation, there is still a newsworthy process to the law-and-order of a special investigation.

Money laundering, Income tax evasion, Unregistered Foreign Agent Lobbying, and that catchall favorite, False Statements to the government.

Now, this is an indictment, and it's essentially un-rebutted statements from the prosecutor. They could probably indict a ham sandwich if they tried hard enough. OTOH, there are a lot of specific wires listed there, so I'm not sure I'd be calling the prosecutor's bluff.

Speculation:

* This is in no way the end of the investigation. It may be all for Manafort/Gates, but there are more targets out there.

* Most of this is (potentially) pretty clear cut and supported by documentary evidence. There's probably tens of millions in forfeiture and fines, and potentially jail time there.

* This is the opening salvo in negotiations with Manafort/Gates. They probably know things that would be useful to the investigation. They can either help the investigation or face this indictment.

No, when he was hired he was not constrained to only Russian interference. He was specifically instructed to prosecute any wrongdoing encountered while looking into election influencing and possible collusion with the trump campaign.

Probes are given wide latitude, and they are allowed to report on any illegal activity they encounter, which is how the real estate fraud whitewater probe got into perjury over blowjobs.

It might lead to more indictments, but even on its own the immediate indictments are justified. Also, for all you USA expats our there, remember to file your FBARs.

Foreign agents/lobbyists need to be registered, and participating in a political campaign or contributing to a foreign campaign with foreign money to a big no-no.

The fact that he did this and was in a campaign leadership role implies more to come. These are amateur hour mistakes -- the counsel for that campaign was incredibly bad or ignored by the candidate.

Is this the only time they can file indictments? If not, they may have additional charges in the works. I imagine they would have told the judge "this is all we're planning to file" if they didn't have any other investigative work going on, right?

> one would imagine somebody running for president of the US would have been more careful picking his team.

This guy had his fingers in a lot of pies. Ukraine, Angolan rebels, Somalia. He was also advising Reagan, GW Bush and Bob Dole's campaigns.

Good thing they got him. Less corruption the better.

Trump has shown time and time again that he isn’t the smartest cookie on the block, nor is he very willing to take advise from his advisors. All of this could have been avoided with a bit of caution. Collusion wouldn’t surprise me, but neither would this just being a set of very dumb choices.

I imagine it's because of the handwritten signatures at the end of the pdf.

May or may not be the actual reason: It helps guarantee that there is no data leakage via "track changes."

The simple reason is that enough HN members flagged it to trigger the "[flagged]" tag. The deeper reason as to why HN members flagged it is tougher to answer as it involves speculation. I think it's likely because (a) it's off-topic per the guidelines given that it's pretty much pure politics and using the guidelines' heuristic of "if they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic", this meets it; and (b) topics of this nature, regardless of their importance are very rarely constructively discussed on HN. That's not to say it's not worth discussing; some forums (virtual and otherwise) are better suited for productive discussion of a particular topic than others. HN members often flag such submissions even if they believe the topic is important for just this reason.

Unsubstantiated claims like this pull the entire discussion down.

This isn't an accurate assertion, IMHO. Trump didn't set out to collude with Russia. He just has no morals or ethics and is wanted to win at any cost. Manafort promised him good things and he didn't care where it came from.

How did Trump collude with Russia again? I never quite see clear evidence for that even though it has been repeated multiple times.

And besides, wouldn't Trump collude with Ukraine since a lot of what the indictment is about?

As to why Trump hired him, it's not clear. He besides supporting and being lobbyist for various shady rules and governments he was also an adviser for Bush's and Dole's campaigns.

Yup campaign managers don't go meet with foreign officials before the election.

he didn't take a salary. he's not a man to do things for free

As a conspiracy theorist, I actually believe it is much larger. Hillary colluded with Manafort and Muller to try to prove Trump colluded with Russia.