How Donald Trump knew about Paul Manafort’s witness tampering
This morning Palmer Report told you that major news about Paul Manafort was likely to break by the end of the day. It turns out we were correct, as Robert Mueller has just revealed that he’s busted Manafort for witness tampering. We weren’t working with inside information; we were simply able to deduce this from Donald Trump’s sudden and frantic attempt at distancing himself from Manafort over the weekend. It turns out Trump must have been working with some kind of inside information, because he clearly knew this was coming – but how could he have known?
Donald Trump often tips off that he knows about media bombshells in advance, when he begins trying to run counterprogramming against them. It’s easy to figure out how Trump knows those are coming; the media outlet in question calls and asks him if he wants to provide a comment for the story. But this is entirely different. This bombshell surfaced when Robert Mueller made a filing about it in court. The media didn’t know in advance that it was coming. Obviously, Mueller didn’t tip Trump off about it.
There are a few explanations as to how Trump could have known. One is that Mueller gave Manafort a heads up that he’d been caught, in an attempt st motivating him to flip, and Manafort then told Trump. Another possibility is that Trump was in on Manafort’s witness tampering from the start, and that’s how he knew they’d been caught.
But the bottom line is this: Donald Trump is so knee deep into this Manafort witness tampering mess, he knew this was coming more than a full day before the court filings took place. No wonder he’s been so desperate to create a distraction; this is as big of a problem for him as it is for Manafort, whose life is over.
