Trump regime met with Ecuador just hours before news broke of Paul Manafort’s embassy meetings with Julian Assange
Yesterday, Special Counsel Robert Mueller revealed that Paul Manafort had lied to him so egregiously, he was ripping up their plea deal. This morning The Guardian reported that Manafort visited Julian Assange three times at the Ecuadorian embassy, including once during the 2016 election. This afternoon CNN reported that Manafort met with the President of Ecuador in 2017. Now it turns out Trump’s team met with Ecuador just yesterday.
The U.S. State Department posted a blurb today on its official website which would have gone unnoticed if not for everything else that’s unfolding. The headline is “Secretary Pompeo’s Meeting With Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Jose Valencia and Finance Minister Richard Martinez” and the press release goes on to reveal that the meeting took place yesterday.
This means that, just hours before Mueller announced that Manafort had lied to him, and Manafort’s secret Ecuador-related meetings became public, the Trump regime met with Ecuador. Could this have been a coincidence? Absolutely. But when it comes to Donald Trump trying to cover up his scandals, we’ve seen that these kinds of things very rarely are a coincidence.
So what could Team Trump have been trying to get from the government of Ecuador yesterday? The most obvious possibility: a last ditch effort to convince Ecuador not to turn Julian Assange over to Robert Mueller. Again, this meeting could simply have been about the “U.S.-Ecuador Trade and Investment Council” as the State Department has claimed. But it would be one heck of a coincidence.
