The giveaway that Donald Trump knew Paul Manafort was coordinating the campaign with the Russians
Proof has now surfaced that Donald Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort was actively coordinating campaign efforts with the Kremlin. All that’s left to do is to prove that Trump knew about it at the time, and was therefore criminally complicit in it. Even as Special Counsel Robert Mueller seeks to pressure Manafort to flip on Trump, a dead giveaway has emerged which makes clear that Trump was well aware.
Manafort was communicating with a Kremlin-connected Russian oligarch during the election, and offering to give him personal briefings on the status of the campaign, according to a Washington Post report (link). This was an apparent attempt on Manafort’s part at clearing his multimillion dollar personal debt to the oligarch. But it’s Manafort’s method of communication that stands out.
Paul Manafort used email to communicate with the Russian oligarch in question. In so doing, he created a digital record of his traitorous communications. This suggests that he never expected there would be this kind external scrutiny or Special Counsel investigation into the campaign’s actions, which is understandable, as no one – including Trump’s own campaign advisers – thought he would actually win. But it also reveals that Manafort wasn’t worried about someone else finding out: Donald Trump.
Manafort used his Trump campaign email address to communicate with the Kremlin oligarch. He’s been working for political campaigns for decades, and he knows full well that anything sent or received via official campaign email can be easily monitored by others within the campaign. Donald Trump could easily have found out about Manafort’s communications with Russia. Manafort could have simply used his personal email address to protect himself. Instead, his decision to use his campaign email address means that he wasn’t worried about Trump finding out. Logically speaking, that means Trump already knew, because he’d already discussed it with him.
