Michael Flynn pleads the Fifth, but Paul Manafort and Roger Stone may have just sold out Donald Trump

| 5:25 pm EDT May 22, 2017
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Donald Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has announced that he’s invoking the Fifth Amendment in order to avoid testifying about Trump’s Russia scandal before the Senate Intelligence Committee, and to avoid turning over the relevant documents that have been subpoena’d by the committee. What’s he doing? Is he aiming for a deal, or is he willfully taking the fall for Trump? Either way, it may not matter in light of what transpired immediately afterward.

Two of Donald Trump’s other campaign advisers, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, have both turned over their own relevant documents to the Senate Intel Committee, according to an NBC News flash this evening (link). It’s not yet clear what those documents consist of, or whether they satisfy the committee’s requests. But the most logical initial assessment of the situation is that they’ve decided to take advantage of Flynn’s hesitance.

Manafort and Stone are each facing their own legal troubles in Trump’s Russia scandal, with Manafort having taken tens of millions of dollars from a pro-Kremlin oligarch in Ukraine and having failed to register as a foreign agent at the time, and Stone having admitted to repeated communications with the “Guccifer 2.0” hacker who stole emails from the Democratic Party during the election.

Today’s development is not a guarantee that Paul Manafort and Roger Stone have decided to sell out Donald Trump. Palmer Report has spoken with a legal expert with trial experience, who pointed out the hypothetical possibility that they might have only turned over cursory documents in an attempt at creating the mere appearance of cooperation. So the Senate Intel Committee itself will have to confirm that the surrendered documents constitute real evidence. But it sure does feel like Manafort and Stone opportunistically decided to sell out Trump for their own benefit, right after Flynn’s obstinance handed them the golden opportunity.