Every time this stuff comes out it makes me think more and more that Stone must be cooperating with Mueller clandestinely. He's so obviously crooked. Mueller must have come to him more than a year ago to get the goods on everyone else. I wonder if these indictments were dropped because the manafort trial is starting soon, so they'll need to unmask some deep sources to call as witnesses.
Re: The Timing, perhaps, but I also think this announcement three days before the Prump/Tutin summit in Helsinki was quite intentional. And apparently there were inklings of this post's headline over a year ago: How Alleged Russian Hacker Teamed Up With Florida GOP Operative
This has been hinted at for months. When I heard it again today I wondered if this wasn't timed purposefully to provide plausible deniability for Trump. Make a public statement using a known grandstander on the day you plan to attack. It's just enough space to create doubt. I'm definitely not a fine legal mind so I have no doubt this raised suspicion with Mueller and his team. You have to look for the intent of the people handling Trump and they were by all accounts running a campaign based on the assumption of a loss. This creates a wide net that's going to take down plenty of people who are stupid enough to fight the investigation. Hopefully many top tier people still in government. I have a higher level of faith in some random dude I'd never heard of a year or two ago than I do in the brokenness of American democracy. What I'm really dreading is whatever backlash this causes
Do you think the Manafort trial is where we'll see the house of cards start to fall?
Depends on two key questions: (1) will manafort cut a last minute deal? (2) will Trump pardon him? Either could easily happen, and I sort of expect that (2) is more likely. If neither of those things happens we'll see some really weird shit though, because evidence at trial has to come through witnesses. There isn't any other way. The real shame would be if the judge let the trial proceed in secret because of national security or some bullshit.