What Rick Gates' Guilty Plea Means For Mueller’s Probe

Source: Wired | February 24, 2018 | Garrett M. Graff

…….

Indeed, Mueller’s probe is accelerating. Yesterday’s new indictment—together with Tuesday’s guilty plea by Alex van der Zwaan, a Dutch lawyer associated with Gates, Manafort, and Ukraine; last Friday’s bombshell indictment of 13 Russians and three Russian entities; and now the Gates plea—underscores that Mueller is applying the full strength of the US government’s resources to follow every thread of the investigation. His indictments have astounded Washington with their level of specificity and detail, delivering a litany of facts that he’s confident he can prove in court beyond a reasonable doubt. His hammering of the Dutch lawyer for lying to investigators—a charge that he also brought against Gates, who pleaded guilty to it—continues his consistent message that the special counsel’s office will treat seriously anyone who stands in their way.

…..

Mueller clearly knows where this investigation is going and is methodically building it brick by brick: His first wave of charges, against Manafort, Gates, and George Papadopoulos, established that the Trump campaign had been lying about its contacts with Russians; his second wave—the guilty plea by Michael Flynn—established that those lies extended to figures inside the White House; his third wave of charges, against the Internet Research Agency, establishes that there was a criminal conspiracy to help Trump and undermine Hillary Clinton. Any Americans who knowingly participated in that conspiracy will also, presumably, be vulnerable to prosecution.

None of the rest of us knows where this probe is heading, not even the targets of the investigation. Three times now Mueller—in the most watched investigation in history—has charged and gotten guilty pleas from people who weren’t even on our radar: Papadopoulos and Richard Pinedo, a Californian who pleaded guilty last Friday to unwittingly aiding the Russians with identity theft, as well as the aforementioned Dutch lawyer.

Last summer, I outlined 15 “known unknowns” in the Trump/Russia investigation, unanswered but knowable threads that Mueller’s team could be expected to pull on. The answers to many of those questions are still not public. Yes, we’ve received significant new information about how Dutch intelligence tipped off the US to Russia’s hacking efforts. But we’ve still not seen charges concerning active cyber intrusions—most notably, the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s computers and the stealing of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s emails—one of at least five related probes Mueller is leading right now.

Now, though, months of investigation—including five guilty pleas and the remaining open indictments of Paul Manafort and the 13 Russians involved in the Internet Research Agency—has provided a whole new set of “known unknowns” (a dozen of them, to be exact). Be on the lookout for some of these to become “known knowns” before long.

1. What can Paul Manafort offer Bob Mueller?

The former Trump campaign chairman is 68 years old, so even the two indictments he currently faces could result in a life sentence if he ends up heading to prison—and that’s before Gates’ testimony and any additional charges Mueller might bring. If he decides to cooperate, what can he offer Mueller, particularly on the Trump Tower meeting with Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., and Russian nationals, where Manafort evidently took copious notes? And then there’s another question, one of the most intriguing since Manafort took his unpaid role as the Trump campaign chair: Why did he get involved in the campaign in the first place? He appears to have had no shortage of reasons to stay off the radar of US authorities, so why did he put himself in such a high-profile position? Now that Gates has pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge, who else knew about the conspiracy? Mueller has broad latitude to bring charges against anyone else who knew or abetted that conspiracy.

2. What did George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn trade?

…..

3. How did George Papadopoulos know in May 2016 that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton?

…..

4. What was in the Trump transition documents that so worried witnesses?

…..

5. What happens to Tony Podesta and Vin Weber?

…..

6. Who is the third unnamed “traveler” in the last Friday’s Mueller indictment?

…..

7. Is it a coincidence that the IRA organized a “Down with Hillary” rally in New York for the same day that Wikileaks dumped the DNC emails?

…..

8. Which, if any, Americans cooperated with the Russian efforts?

…..

9. What was the ongoing evidence of Carter Page’s cooperation with Russian agents?

…..

10. How big is “Project Lakhta”?

…..

11. Who directed Michael Flynn’s conversations with Sergey Kislyak—and why did he lie about them?

…..

12. Why did the Russian embassy need $150,000 in cash?

…..

Tagged: , , , , ,

Viewing 1 post (of 1 total)
Viewing 1 post (of 1 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic.