Robert Mueller’s new court filings in Paul Manafort case give away something huge about Donald Trump Jr
Yesterday Palmer Report pointed out that because Paul Manafort has opted to go to trial instead of cutting a plea deal against Donald Trump, the resulting court filings are providing a series of huge clues about the overall Trump-Russia investigation. Sure enough, like clockwork, today’s new court filings in the Manafort case reveal that Robert Mueller’s real target all along has been Donald Trump Jr.
Manafort is challenging the legality of last year’s FBI raid of his home, arguing that Mueller didn’t have the authority to investigate Manafort’s financial dealings prior to joining the Trump campaign. Mueller and his team have fired back with a court filing which reveals that the Manafort raid was actually an attempt at gathering additional information about the Trump Tower meeting with Russian government representatives during the election. That meeting, of course, was attended by Manafort, along with Jared Kushner, but it was spearheaded from the start by Donald Trump Jr.
So now we know that Mueller does view the Trump Tower meeting as a criminal act. This is a crucial distinction. It long ago became clear that Mueller viewed Donald Trump’s subsequent attempt at covering up the meeting as an act of obstruction of justice. But this means Mueller is targeting Donald Trump Jr for having held the meeting to begin with. There are legal arguments to be made that the meeting itself was a conspiracy against the United States, and that when he went into the meeting seeking dirt on Hillary Clinton, he was attempting to receive stolen goods and/or accept an illegal foreign contribution of value to the campaign.
Perhaps more importantly, we now know that Robert Mueller has been targeting Donald Trump Jr dating all the way back to the raid of Paul Manafort’s home, which was the better part of a year ago. It takes time to build criminal cases this complex, but it’s now clear that Mueller has been after Trump Jr all along.
