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Impeachable Offenses?

~ Examining the Case for Removal of the 45th President of the United States

Impeachable Offenses?

Tag Archives: Papadopoulos

Brief reflections about the Papadopoulos guilty plea

31 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by impeachableoffenses in Uncategorized

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Manafort, Manafort indictment, Mueller, Papadopoulos

In addition to the indictment of Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates, yesterday brought news of the guilty plea of George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign.  Some commentators have suggested that the Papadopoulos plea presents a bigger potential risk to Mr. Trump than the Manafort indictment.  I’m not sure that will ultimately prove to be true, partly because I suspect the real risk to Mr. Trump and his coterie of retainers and hangers-on lies in inquiries Mr. Mueller is, or may yet be, making into their finances.

Nonetheless, the Papadopoulos plea does suggest several points:

First, the Statement of the Offense accompanying the plea is chock full of assertions which, if true, give the lie (yet again) to the initial claims of Mr. Trump and associates that there were no contacts between the campaign and Russian interests.  It is undoubtedly correct that Papadopoulos himself was an insignificant figure in the Trump campaign universe and a complete nobody in the real world of foreign affaits.  (Indeed, the fact that the Trump campaign brought on such an utter neophyte as one of five foreign policy advisors is a shocking testament to the unwillingness of anyone of substance to associate with the campaign.)

BUT, it appears Papadopoulos was in contact with people who had genuine, if slightly attenuated, Russian government connections, people who were expressing interest not only in making general connections with Trump and his campaign, but were offering “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.  And the dangled dirt allegedly included emails which any reasonable person would have to have inferred had been obtained clandestinely and probably illegally.  Critically, Papadopoulos apparently passed all this along to very significant people in the Trump campaign – people such as Sam Clovis, the campaign national co-chair, and Corey Lewandowski, the one-time campaign manager.  If the Statement of Offense is accurate, these higher-ups encouraged Papadopoulos’s efforts, even those that obviously involved very questionable dealings with a traditionally hostile foreign power.

Second, even if everything in the Statement of the Offense is true, none of the Trump campaign’s senior officials may have committed any crime.  It is not a crime for senior members of a presidential campaign to talk with representatives of foreign governments. Indeed, if the point of the talks is to introduce the candidate and those around him to significant foreign actors and to learn about international issues relevant to the campaign and to American foreign policy, they can be laudable.  Even seeking opposition research that would appear to emanate from Russian intelligence services might not itself be criminal, even if (at least in a rational world) it would be politically poisonous if the Russian intelligence connection were revealed.  If it should ever be shown that such material was delivered, and used, more difficult legal questions would arise.  But nothing so far revealed suggests that the Papadopoulos overtures produced anything concrete.

Third, nonetheless, Mr. Papadopoulos’s fate illustrates the risk facing all the current and former Trump insiders.  They are under immense pressure from Mr. Trump and others around him to deny or minimize the extent of Russian contacts. The pressure may stem purely from Mr. Trump’s aversion to political embarrassment, rather than any fear of overt criminal liability.  But with the Papadopoulos case, Mueller’s team has served notice that it will not be lied to.  They want the whole truth, with no fudging, or felony charges will be forthcoming.

If those who haven’t yet talked to Mueller are getting, and taking to heart, competent legal advice, they will tell absolutely everything they know.  If they don’t, we can confidently expect more indictments akin to that of Mr. Papadopoulos.  The result should be that Mueller will get to the bottom of the Russian connection story.  If he does, I wouldn’t necessarily bet that the bottom line will be exposure of treasonous collusion.  The more likely outcome will be a continued slow exposure, bit by bit, of farcical bungling by unprincipled foreign policy naifs who would have committed crimes if they could, but were baulked by either their own incompetence or Russian unwillingness to deal directly with such boobs.

That said, I would not be surprised to see a significant number of Trump World inhabitants unwilling to come clean, even in the face of the Papadopoulos example. In which case more of them will go down.  And, as has so often proven the case over the years, it won’t be the underlying criminality of their flirtations with Moscow that gets them, but the cover-up.

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The Manafort Indictment & Impeachment

30 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by impeachableoffenses in Uncategorized

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Gates, Manafort, Manafort indictment, money laundering, Mueller, Papadopoulos, Robert Mueller

The internet is buzzing with the news that former Trump campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and his associate, Rick Gates, have been indicted for conspiracy to defraud the United States, money laundering, and a variety of other federal crimes. Of perhaps equal significance, former Trump campaign foreign policy advisor, George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI in denying contacts with Russian agents.

It is natural to wonder what effect these developments might have on a potential impeachment case against Mr. Trump.  Nonetheless, perhaps the main point to keep firmly in mind is that it is far too early even to make informed speculations on that ultimate point.  For the moment, I’d offer only these tentative observations:

First, as a former federal fraud prosecutor, I am impressed with the speed at which the Mueller investigation is moving.  The Manafort / Gates indictment describes a very complex set of international and domestic transactions.  Cases like this commonly take years to put together.  Mueller’s team sewed up this first indictment in five months.

Second, I’m also impressed with the apparent solidity of the case against Manafort and Gates.  Defense counsel will have their say, but on the face of it, this is a stout case.  It is very hard to see how Manafort and Gates beat this.

Third, the charges are very serious.  Manafort in particular is facing serious prison time.  It is, of course, a fool’s game to predict what sentence a white collar defendant will ultimately receive, but the Federal Sentencing Guidelines provide at least a yardstick for the kind of sentence a judge would consider upon conviction.

A reasonable guesstimate of the guidelines calculation for Manafort would put him at over ten years in prison.  A glance at the indictment suggests that the money laundering guideline would probably drive the calculation.  That guideline, 2S1.1, is notoriously tricky, but one could reasonably, if not certainly, assume a base offense level of 8  + 20 levels from 2B1.1 for $18 million laundered.  If you add 2 for 3C1.1 obstruction (false statements) and 4 for aggravating role under 3B1.1, that yields an offense level of 34.  Which equates to a guideline range of 151-188 months, or 12 ½ to 15 ½ years.  There are a variety of other factors that could push this number up or down considerably, and judges are not obliged to sentence within the guideline range, but as I say, Mr. Manafort and his attorneys will certainly have to take the guidelines as a serious benchmark of the kind of sentence an ill-disposed judge could impose.

Fourth, many commentators have observed that the point of indicting Manafort and Gates first is to pressure them into cooperation against others, potentially including Mr. Trump. Without presuming to read the minds of Mr. Mueller and his colleagues, this seems a reasonable hypothesis.  That said, it is interesting that Manafort and Gates let themselves be indicted rather than working out a pre-indictment plea agreement as Mr. Papadopoulos apparently did.  This is not to say that Manafort and Gates will never “flip,” but it does mean that they are resisting for now, and could persist in refusing cooperation no matter what happens.  At a minimum, Mueller may have to go to trial and convict one or the other or both before they agree to cooperate.  Which could take a long time.

Fifth, the subject matter of the Manafort / Gates indictment is not collusion of the Trump campaign with Russia. Rather, it is Mr. Manafort’s sleazy, but very lucrative, relationship with corrupt Ukranian politicians. Of course, Mr. Trump and his supporters have already been quick to note the absence of a “collusion” angle in this indictment.  But what I find interesting, and very suggestive, is that the indictment makes a point of describing the Ukranian group paying Manafort as pro-Russian.  Legally, that point is irrelevant.  Politically, it has two obvious points: It helps rebut any claim that, in indicting Manafort, Mr. Mueller’s team is going beyond the scope of its charge, which is to investigate Russian efforts to influence the American election and any collusion by the Trump campaign with those efforts.  If challenged, Mueller can point out that Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, had a long history of dodgy, and in some respects criminal, connections with a pro-Russian party in a former Soviet republic, a point plainly relevant to the larger investigation.

My second, and far more speculative, reaction to the indictment’s pointed insistence on the Russian connection is that it is a direct signal to those around Mr. Trump who have Russian connections, but have not yet faced indictment — don’t get comfortable, we’re coming for you.

Finally, the other message in this indictment that I suspect is sending chills down the spines of Mr. Trump and many of his associates and family members stems from the nature of the charges themselves.  This indictment demonstrates both the incredibly broad reach of the federal criminal law in the area of financial crime and the professional competence of Mueller’s team.  Mr. Trump, his family, and retainers may not have engaged in the precise forms of financial shenanigans revealed in this indictment, but given Mr. Trump’s long history of skating on or over the edge of legality, it would be surprising indeed if at least some had not infringed on federal criminal law in analogous ways.

With the Manafort indictment, Mueller and his team have sent a blunt warning.  If the Trumps have financial skeletons, they will be found.

Frank Bowman

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Frank O. Bowman, III


Floyd R. Gibson Missouri Endowed Professor of Law
University of Missouri School of Law

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