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At this point Manafort is looking like the G. Gordon Liddy of the Russia investigation-which is not a good thing as Liddy went to prison the longest among the Nixon flunkies. This was due to his willingness to be Nixon’s fall guy. Michael Cohen’s talk of taking a bullet for so-called ‘President Trump’ turned out to be just that-talk. But G. Gordon Liddy was serious: after the botched burglary Liddy told John Dean that if necessary they could shoot him.

Here’s a short part of the movie version of John Dean’s story where Dean first interviewed Liddy.

And he did fall on his sword-he refused to abandon Nixon and so he got the longest prison sentence-52 months. To be sure, this pales next to Manafort’s potential sentence; there’s enough on Manafort to send him to prison for 305 years. 

FN: Manafort ended up with 7 and a half years after two sentences on the low end of what he could have gotten, pending his state trial. Even before knowing what he gets with SDNY the 7 and a half years he already has does make him G. Gordon Liddy 2.0-as he already has the longest sentence-though we’ll see what his buddy Roger Stone gets.

As for Michael Cohen, he certainly seems to be flipping and you suspect that Manafort is a major cautionary tale for him in this decision-don’t end up like Manafort who faces up to 305 years in prison and is currently in solitary confinement 23 hours per day. 

UPDATE: Cohen did indeed flip-he stands alone among Trump’s co-conspirators-for having turned on Trump; even Michael Flynn who had-before getting rid of his excellent counsel for a Fox News lawyer-cooperated so extensively has revealed himself to still being a Trumpster at heart-he may now have blown up his deal with the government. 

It started even before he hired his Fox News lawyer, Sidney Powell. Apparently Flynn’s decision to stop cooperating with the government began after Mueller submitted his report-why that changed things for him is yet another interesting question.

Having said that, Flynn already started getting cute in his December appearance before Judge Emmet Sullivan that got him into hot water-I can’t hide my disgust and disdain.

Flynn claimed that he was ‘entrapped’ because no one told him it was bad to lie the FBI. This is the former DNI Director…

But it seems what’s really going on is Flynn presumed the FBI agents interviewing him would be Trump supporters-which really was a pretty fair assumption when you consider the FBI’s behavior in 2016 and it’s larger history.

For much more  on Trumpland see Part A.

After Flynn quit cooperating the government dropped him as a witness business partner against his former partner Bijan Kian, and EmptyWheel suggested this could save Kian from prison time but double Flynn’s own. 

As it turns out it may not have saved Kian from prison time-we’ll see if it does in fact double his own.

The reason I say ‘may not’ is apparently the judge in the case is considering throwing out the jury decision. 

If this happens it could be read as a boon to Flynn’s case-as if we need anymore boons to Trump and his co-conspirators.

End of UPDATE

On Friday Manafort made the rather sad argument that he deserves a change of venue as the current venue is too liberal. 

FN: He needn’t have worried as he ended up with a very friendly judge in Judge T.S. Ellis.

Now the Mueller team has weighed in regarding Manafort’s bank fraud charges. They argue that they are related to the Trump campaign. 

“Prosecutors for special counsel Robert Mueller intend to present evidence at the trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort that a banking executive allegedly helped Manafort obtain loans of approximately $16 million while the banker sought a role in the Trump campaign.”

But but but-Trump ran against pay for play.

This is an important development as it’s the first sign that his role in the Trump campaign will be part of the trial.

“Manafort faces trial on bank fraud and other financial charges in the Eastern District of Virginia beginning July 25. Until now, there had been no indication that his role in the Trump campaign would become part of the trial, and he had asked the judge to keep details about his ties to President Donald Trump out of the trial. Prosecutors say any alleged collusion with the Russian government won’t come up at the trial.”

“The allegation of a possible quid pro quo came amid several court filings Friday as both sides count down the remaining weeks until the trial. While prosecutors filled in the Trump campaign details, Manafort’s team was busy filing requests with the judge to move his trial location and date, to look into possible leaks from the prosecutors and to keep Manafort out of the public eye.”

Basically, Manafort’s application had some real problems and would have been turned down-if not for ‘Lender D’-who just happened to be seeking a position on Trump’s Manchurian campaign.

“The government intends to present evidence that although various Lender D employees identified serious issues with the defendant’s loan application, the senior executive at Lender D interceded in the process and approved the loan,” according to the filing from Mueller’s team.

The bank executive “expressed interest in working on the Trump campaign, told (Manafort) about his interest, and eventually secured a position advising the Trump campaign,” the filing said. The unnamed man “expressed an interest in serving in the administration of President Trump, but did not secure such a position.”

“While the senior executive is unnamed in this filing, in a previous court filing prosecutors identified Lender D as The Federal Savings Bank.”

“Here, it would be difficult for the jury to understand why the loans were approved without understanding that the lender approved the loans, in spite of the identified deficiencies, because the senior executive factored in his own personal ambition,” prosecutors wrote in the filing.

The question that still begs is why Manafort won’t take a deal. Michael Flynn took a deal and despite everything they have on him he only got one relatively minor charge. 

Michael Cohen is no doubt looking at Flynn vs. Manafort and not having a hard time deciding which road to take. But the question begs regarding Manafort-why is he evidently willing to take a bullet in fact for the Manchurian ‘President?’

Perhaps they have so much on him that he’s going away no matter what and he sees his only viable salvation an-outrageous-pardon? Is he holding out for an illegitimate pardon from an illegitimate ‘President?’

Presumably that’s another question Mueller would like to ask him.

UPDATE: In retrospect it’s clear Manafort never left #TeamTreasonTrump even during the time of his ostensible plea agreement with Mueller-at the same time he was lying to Mueller-which impeded the Special Counsel’s ability to uncover the full scope of Russian collusion-and continuing to feed the Trump lawyers information-even though any Joint Defense Agreement (JDA) should have been null and void after taking a plea.

The pundits claiming Mueller revealed nothing new at the hearing couldn’t be more wrong. One very interesting thing was he refused to rule out that Manafort spoke to Assange during the campaign-an idea the MSM long since considered to have cooties-Chapter A.