Paul Manafort still hasn’t registered as a foreign agent, and now Jeff Sessions is being weird about it

| 9:50 pm EDT May 11, 2017
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If you’ve been following the saga of Paul Manafort, you’re aware that around a month ago he announced through his spokesman that he’d be registering as a foreign agent, but that he never did go ahead and register. Three weeks ago it led me to question if it meant something new was afoot with Manafort and the Feds (link). And now Rachel Maddow is adding a new piece of information which makes the entire thing all the more head scratching.

During her Thursday evening show on MSNBC, Maddow stated that she can’t get Attorney General Jeff Sessions or his Justice Department to confirm whether or not Sessions is recused from any investigation into Paul Manafort. This comes even after Sessions had publicly made a point of recusing himself from the Trump-Russia investigation, but then seemed to interfere this week when he played a role in the firing of FBI Director James Comey, who was leading that investigation.

So now we’ve got Manafort still holding off on registering as a foreign agent, even though he’s well past the point of being able to deny that he acted as one. And we’ve got Sessions not even willing to give an answer as to whether he has a role in the decision making when it comes to the investigation of Manafort. Those two facts can go together in a couple of ways.

One is that Manafort has been cooperating with the FBI all along, and that he’s still trying to use his registration as a bargaining chip to get the best deal possible; this is a scenario I laid out two weeks ago (link). In this scenario, Sessions wouldn’t necessarily be able to comment yet on whether he’s recused himself on Manafort, because the terms aren’t yet in place with Manafort.

Another more sinister scenario is that Manafort has been dragging his feet on registering because he and Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions have something in place that could get Manafort off the hook without having to give up anything on Trump. Take your pick as to how you think these odd developments fit together, but a I said awhile back, something is certainly afoot with Manafort. Help fund Palmer Report