Paul Manafort gets surprise subpoena: either he’s flipped on Donald Trump, or he’s decided to go down in flames
When working with limited information, figuring out what’s really going on usually comes down to eliminating possibilities until only one is left. But in the case of Paul Manafort, today’s events have narrowed his situation down to two possible scenarios. In an unfortunate development in the clarity department, based on today’s developments there are now only two specific scenarios remaining for Paul Manafort – and they’re precise opposites.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has officially subpoenaed Paul Manafort this morning, according to an official statement on the committee’s website. The reasoning: Manafort was only willing to produce one transcribed interview to all of Congress, which the committee says would not have ended up in its hands. So its previous offer to let Manafort come in and testify in private is now off the table, and right now U.S. Marshals are presumably hunting down Manafort in order to serve him that subpoena. So what the heck is going on? Two opposite scenarios: either he’s decided to go down in flames, or he’s already flipped on Donald Trump.
Think about it. There are only two reasons why Paul Manafort would refuse to play ball with even the relative softball that the Senate Judiciary Committee had just tossed him. The first is that he’s already concluded he’s going to prison one way or the other, and he’s not willing to take his co-conspirator friends down with him, so he spitefully sees no point in cooperating. The second is that he’s already secretly cut a deal with the Special Counsel to flip on his co-conspirator friends, and he’s been told not to show up and testify, and he’s not worried about the subpoena because it can’t hurt him anyway.
So this now comes down to a sort of choose-your-own-adventure book. Which of the above two scenarios do you think applies to Paul Manafort’s refusal to cooperate? And will Donald Trump Jr. now be subpoenaed as well? Stay tuned.
