After Russia hearings, Donald Trump desperately tries to throw Paul Manafort under the bus
During the course of today’s House Intelligence Committee hearings on Donald Trump and Russia, not all that much was revealed about Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort that wasn’t already publicly known: Manafort has deep personal and financial ties to Russia and the Kremlin, and his role in election collusion is unclear. But immediately after the hearings, Trump’s White House offered a big (and unwitting) hint that Trump is scared to death of what Manafort is guilty of.
FBI Director James Comey used today’s hearings to confirm that the FBI is currently investigating Russia’s role in the election and the Donald Trump campaign’s potential role in coordinating with the Russians on it. But Comey consistently refused to discuss any of the individuals involved in the investigation by name, and refused to even confirm who is or is not being investigated. But then Trump’s Press Secretary Sean Spicer immediately took to the podium and bizarrely dismissed Paul Manafort as having “played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time.”
That, of course, is a lie. Manafort was the campaign manager of the Trump campaign for a relatively brief time, but he was the chairman of the Trump campaign for several key months. So this is not a lie that will stick. But it does offer an unwitting hint that Donald Trump now views Manafort as his achilles heel, perhaps even more so than Michael Flynn. But why?
The most logical presumption is that Paul Manafort did indeed collude with the Russian government to rig the election in Donald Trump’s favor, and Trump knew about it, and something said during today’s hearings caused Trump to realize that the FBI knows what Manafort did. And so as I sit down to re-watch all five hours of today’s hearings in an attempt to specifically glean what it was that was said about Manafort today that clued Trump into the fact that the FBI has Manafort nailed, I want to thank Trump’s White House for clueing me in on what to look for. Contribute to Palmer Report
Watch Sean Spicer bizarrely try to distance Donald Trump from Paul Manafort after the hearings:
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