This morning, after news broke that Paul Manafort had turned himself in to the FBI over charges filed in Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, the Sad Bagpipe-in-Chief couldn’t help but tweet:
By “Crooked Hillary & the Dems,” Trump seems to have at least partly been referring to “her emails,” the transparently deflective bleat of a declining nation, and very obviously not the most pressing news, given that Trump’s former campaign chief is accused of working with the Russian government to hijack the election and also laundering $18 million to buy a whole lot of shitty ties.
But you know what? There is news about emails, though it’s likely not the kind Trump and his supporters want. The New York Times reports that George Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about whether a professor he spoke to and tried to arrange a meeting with in April 2016 as a foreign adviser to the Trump campaign had ties to the Russian government. (For the record, the offender is not the same person as this George Papadopoulos.)
Here’s where the emails come in, via the Times:
A professor with close ties to the Russian government told an adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in April 2016 that Moscow had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails,” according to court documents unsealed Monday.
The adviser, George Papadopoulos, has pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about that conversation. The plea represents the most explicit evidence connecting the Trump campaign to the Russian government’s meddling in last year’s election.
The report essentially lays out how Papadopoulos tried to meet with the unnamed professor to procure the emails which had been obtained by the Russian government; the charge comes from his telling the FBI that the professor was “a nothing.”
Read the full report here.
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