Robert Mueller’s checkmate
The biggest news of the night is that the judge in the Paul Manafort case agrees with Robert Mueller that Paul Manafort lied about his interactions with Russian spy Konstantin Kilimnik during the election, and therefore nullified his prior cooperation agreement. The specific wording reported by Chris Matthews of MSNBC was the judge said that Robert Mueller has established that Manafort lied.
The judge also agreed that Manafort lied about “another investigation.” We know from Robert Mueller’s filings that Manafort’s lies go to the the very “heart” of the investigation. We know that the heart of Mueller’s investigation is Trump and his campaign’s collusion and conspiracy with Russians to help him win the election.
Now we know that Mueller has enough hard evidence to convince a judge of what really happened between Kilimnik and Manafort to convince a judge that Manafort lied. There is only one question left: did Mueller prove Manafort’s lies beyond a reasonable doubt to this judge, or did he merely meet the preponderance burden that’s required in these matters?
If Robert Mueller has evidence beyond a reasonable doubt of what really happened and just successfully got a judge to side with him based on that evidence, then buckle up, because that means Mueller already has what he needs to win this whole thing, and we are not far away from some major indictments.
Cheryl Kelley lives in the DC area with her husband and young son. She is active in government and politics.