A whole lot of people in Donald Trump’s White House are going to prison
Yesterday we brought you the story of how Donald Trump and Paul Manafort conspired to try to sabotage the FBI shortly after Trump took office in 2017, and we explained why this makes it a whole lot easier for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to prove his felony obstruction of justice case against Trump. But they’re not the only two people in Trump’s inner political circle who need to worry.
It turns out Manafort was conspiring against the FBI with Trump and multiple “senior White House officials,” according to Vox. Why does this matter? Anyone in the White House who participated in this plot is nailed to the wall on obstruction.
It’s one thing for a Trump White House official to sit there and listen to Donald Trump plotting these things, and to nod along; that would be a more complicated legal case to prove. But conspiring with Trump and Manafort to do it, at a time when every one of them knew Manafort was a criminal target? That’s the kind of obstruction you go down pretty hard for.
That leads us to the question of who was specifically involved. We can’t give you that, of course. But it is notable that this Trump-Manafort obstruction plot began in the earliest days of the administration. For reference, Donald Trump’s top White House officials at the time included Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Kellyanne Conway, Jared Kushner, and Ivanka Trump. Most of the people on this list have since reportedly been interviewed by Robert Mueller. Sounds like someone gave up the Manafort plot, and some of the others are going to prison.
