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Manafort remains the enigma-he still stubbornly refuses to cooperate with Mueller despite facing about 300 years in prison. The question begs: did Trump promise him a pardon? On explanation is that there is no deal that can save Manafort from many years in prison his rap sheet is so long.

FN: Manafort would end up with 7 and a half years-thanks to a pretty Trump friendly judge in his Virginia trial; then even his second judge-Amy Berman Jackson-also gave a fairly lenient sentence-she certainly could have given him more. HE does however still face state charges in SDNY.

As if there weren’t enough charges against Trump’s former campaign manager-who despite what Herr Trump says was not the manager for about a week before things really got started but for 5 months-and 5 pretty important months at that, at the time he was wrapping up the GOP nomination and gathering up the delegates to win the nomination on the convention floor–Manafort is now accused of witness tampering and may well be headed back to prison.

By the way-can you imagine if this were Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager for one day let alone 5 months of the campaign let alone at the Dem convention? Just illustrates once again the Clinton Rules vs. the Trump Rules.

Meanwhile Manafort may be headed back to prison permanently-he would stay in jail throughout the trial and then get charged and serve out his-very long-term. Just like many have asked what he could be thinking in not taking a deal  the question again begs what Manafort could possibly be thinking in engaging in tampering with potential witnesses?

When the news broke that Paul Manafort, under indictment by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, repeatedly tried to contact witnesses in the case against him despite round-the-clock electronic surveillance, many asked the same question: What was he thinking?

“As counsel, you are repeatedly advising a client to steer clear of witness tampering,” says Jacob Frenkel, a white-collar-criminal-defense attorney. “But the client has to listen. This will be the poster-child case that lawyers will use to highlight the risk of communicating with witnesses pretrial.”

Did Manafort’s lawyer fail to warn him or did he just not listen? This is not the first time that Manafort has violated his bail agreement with Mueller and been sent back to prison.

“Manafort, who has been on house arrest since he was indicted last fall on charges including money laundering, bank fraud, and tax evasion, has played with fire before. In December, Mueller abruptly pulled out of a bail agreement he had reached with Manafort’s legal team when one of his special agents, Brock Domin, discovered that Manafort had been helping to write an op-ed in violation of a gag order. In a court filing released on Monday, Mueller again recommended that Manafort’s bail be revoked due to “witness tampering”—Manafort allegedly reached out to some of his former European associates in February to help them shape their stories. One witness flatly told the FBI that Manafort was trying to “suborn perjury,” prosecutors said. Legal experts say that any effort to contact potential witnesses was ill-advised on Manafort’s part—he must have known he was under electronic surveillance, especially in such a high-profile case, they say—making his actions even more puzzling.”

As to what accounts for Manafort’s reckless behavior-reckless for himself-one answer may be: arrogance. He-like Trump-still thinks he’s above the law.

FN: To be sure it’s now pretty clear what he was doing-he was on #TeamTreasonTrump all along and playing for a pardon-for more see Chapter A.

Despite the risk of being jailed until trial, “this kind of behavior is surprisingly typical when high-powered individuals have their first encounter with the federal criminal-justice system,” says Caroline Polisi, a criminal-defense attorney who handles federal and white-collar cases. “They can’t get it through their heads that they are not above the law and that the government is constantly monitoring them. They also can’t come to terms with the fact that they are no longer in control.” Manafort was indicted as part of a wide-reaching inquiry into whether Donald Trump’s campaign aided a Russian effort to swing the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor, and whether the president attempted to obstruct that investigation.

While there are a number of takeaways from Mueller’s new charges a very significant one is that Manafort has a Russian co-conspirator-Kilimnik Konstantin his famous ‘man in Kiev.’

Back to the Atlantic:

“One of the most significant takeaways from Mueller’s Monday-night bombshell was that Manafort had a co-conspirator, easily identified (though not explicitly named) in the filings as the Russian Ukrainian operative Konstantin Kilimnik. Mueller described Kilimnik, in two previous court documents, as “Person A,” Manafort’s “longtime Russian colleague … assessed to have ties to a Russian intelligence service.” Yet Manafort evidently stayed in touch with Kilimnik through April of this year, according to prosecutors.”

This was who Manafort sent the famous email regarding ‘how do we get whole?’ 

He was looking for a way to parlay his gig as Trump’s campaign manager to impress Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and pay him back the millions that he owed him. In July 2016 he met with Kilimnik in person where he admits they discussed the campaign. While Manafort tried to put an innocent spin on this, he does admit they discussed the hacking of the DNC but ‘just as citizens.’

After the Politico piece about Kilimnik aka Manafort’s Man in Kiev-that was instrumental in getting Manafort bounced out of the Trump campaign-you might have thought he’d have wanted to keep a low profile with Kilimnik. Instead, it’s just the opposite-he continued to speak to him even after being indicted by Mueller though to April of this year-2018.

One of the most significant takeaways from Mueller’s Monday-night bombshell was that Manafort had a co-conspirator, easily identified (though not explicitly named) in the filings as the Russian Ukrainian operative Konstantin Kilimnik. Mueller described Kilimnik, in two previous court documents, as “Person A,” Manafort’s “longtime Russian colleague … assessed to have ties to a Russian intelligence service.” Yet Manafort evidently stayed in touch with Kilimnik through April of this year, according to prosecutors.

What can explain it? Arrogance? Or to influence his testimony? Probably both, just like Manafort’s former candidate.

Speaking of Trumpian arrogance, Trump and Giuliani have lately been selling the narrative that:

1. Trump can pardon anyone he wants-according to Giuliani he can also pardon himself for any reason even if he assassinated James Comey.

2. But don’t worry over it-Trump won’t pardon himself because he doesn’t have to as he did nothing wrong.

Furthermore the so-called President has been making a lot of noise with all these recent pardons. And this may be what Manafort is playing for: the pardon. Why else would he tick off his own judge who will hand down any sentence?

“The No. 1 rule of lawyering is don’t piss off your judge before trial,” Ohlin says, “unless you’ve already resigned yourself to losing at trial and intend to concentrate on your appeal.”

There is another wild card, however, Frenkel notes: a potential presidential pardon.

Giuliani is right about one thing: if Trump tries to pardon himself or his hacks like Manafort-it will mean his impeachment.

FN: Or so it seemed at the time-before we had a Democratic Congress. Now that we do it still remains to be seen that the Dems will hold Trump accountable. A rallying cry among those House Dems who do favor impeachment is Mueller did his job now we must do ours. 

However, time will tell if Pelosi successfully runs out the clock-she indignantly  insisted yesterday that’s not what she’s doing. Nadler did just spearhead a court move to obtain  Mueller’s Grand Jury material that can be seen as the start of an impeachment inquiry.

However you want to construe the pardon power, if it effectively means that the President can simply pardon himself out of any crime then effectively there is no separation of powers-the judicial branch has no way to effectively check the executive-which is why he  clearly cannot simply pardon himself out of any crime.