S*******i 发帖数: 2018 | 1 现在主媒上思维还算正常的文章已经不多见了:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-manafort-indictment-1509402445
Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul
Manafort for tax fraud on Monday, and the main charge against Donald Trump
is poor judgment for hiring the notorious Beltway operator.
The indictment accuses Mr. Manafort (and business partner Richard Gates ) of
funneling money from a pro-Russia party in Ukraine into offshore shell
companies and bank accounts. They then allegedly used these accounts to fund
their spending habits, neglecting to declare the money to the IRS.
The indictment also accuses Mr. Manafort of failing to register as an agent
for a foreign government as required under the Foreign Agents Registration
Act (FARA). This is news mainly because violations of that law haven’t been
successfully prosecuted since 1966. The Russia probe has exposed the degree
to which lobbyists ignore this statute that the Justice Department has
failed to enforce. (Democrat Anthony Podesta announced Monday that he is
leaving his lobbying firm amid the Mueller probe. He is the brother of John
Podesta, who ran Hillary Clinton’s campaign.)
The most striking news is that none of this involves the 2016 election
campaign. The indictment makes clear that Mr. Manafort’s work for Ukraine
and his money transfers ended in 2014. The 2016 charges are related to false
statements Mr. Manafort made to the Justice Department.
In other words, Mr. Manafort stands accused of a financial and lobbying scam
, which is exactly what Mr. Trump risked in hiring a swamp denizen. Mr.
Manafort has lobbied for a rogues gallery of dictators, with the occasional
domestic scandal (HUD contracts).
Separately, Mr. Mueller released a guilty plea by Trump campaign policy
adviser George Papadopoulos for lying to the FBI in early 2017 about his
interaction with “foreign nationals whom he understood to have close
connections with senior Russian government officials.” The plea suggests
Russians might have been attempting to supply the Trump campaign with
opposition research on Hillary Clinton. But Mr. Mueller provides no evidence
this happened.
One popular theory is that Mr. Mueller is throwing the book at Mr. Manafort
so he will cop a plea and tell what he knows about Russian-Trump campaign
chicanery. But that assumes he knows something that to date no Congressional
investigation has found. Prosecutors typically try to turn witnesses before
they indict, and Messrs. Manafort and Gates pleaded not guilty on Monday.
Meanwhile, we’ve learned in recent days that Fusion GPS, the oppo research
firm hired by Democrats to dig up dirt on Mr. Trump, was hired initially by
the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website largely funded by GOP
donor Paul Singer. This is embarrassing for the Free Beacon, which has been
caught jumping in bed with sleazy operators like Fusion.
But none of this absolves Democrats from their role in financing Fusion to
hire Christopher Steele, the former British spook, to collect information
about Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia. The Free Beacon says it had nothing to do
with Mr. Steele or his dossier.
The Democrat-Fusion-Russia story requires as full an investigation as the
question of Trump-Russia collusion. All the more so given that the FBI may
have used the Steele dossier, much of which has been discredited, to begin
investigating the Trump campaign and to seek a warrant from the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Some readers were offended that we suggested last week that Mr. Mueller is
too close to the FBI after running it for a dozen years to investigate the
agency’s role with the dossier. But no one has explained why such a
relationship isn’t a conflict of interest. The probe can continue with
someone else in charge, but most of the press corps is so invested in the
Russia-Trump collusion narrative that they refuse even to acknowledge
uncomfortable facts they’d usually be shouting about.
Americans deserve to know how Russia interfered in the 2016 campaign, but
one problem with special prosecutors is that they exist to prosecute—
someone, somewhere for something—more than they shed light. The latter
should be Congress’s job, and the Members should keep pressing to tell the
complete story. | i**********k 发帖数: 5274 | |
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