Today’s the day: welcome to the prison phase of the Trump-Russia scandal

| 12:15 am EDT June 15, 2018
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It’s been a hot minute since any major players have been arrested, or even cut plea deals in Donald Trump’s Russia scandal. So when we declared at the start of the week that we were just days away from the “prison phase” of the scandal, it was understandable that we were met with some skepticism. But what a week it’s been. Now here we are today at the prison phase of the Trump-Russia scandal.

We made our prediction based on the fact that Paul Manafort’s arraignment on witness tampering charges had been scheduled for today. Judges tend to take these kinds of things very seriously. Legal experts have uniformly predicted that Manafort will be sent straight from his arraignment to a prison cell. He’ll remain there through his trial, and if he’s found guilty as expected, he’ll remain there for the rest of his life. This means yesterday was the last day of freedom that Manafort will ever have tasted. Even if he cuts a plea deal he’ll receive a multi-year sentence, and at his age the odds are against him ever getting out. But Manafort is just the beginning.

There’s a reason Michael Cohen is reportedly trying to hurry up and cut a plea deal: he’s facing an evidence deadline today which could result in his immediate arrest if he doesn’t comply. So if Cohen’s plea deal saga doesn’t work out today, we could be looking at Cohen’s arrest today, or perhaps Monday. Even if he does cut a deal, he’ll still have to surrender himself for arrest. On another front, Roger Stone has publicly acknowledged that he’s prepared to be arrested soon, and the publicly available details about the grand jury proceedings against him seem to confirm this.

So yeah, welcome to the prison phase of Donald Trump’s Russia scandal. No one will be fully satisfied until Donald Trump himself is ousted and sent to prison, of course. But we’ve now arrived at a place where Paul Manafort is probably going to prison forever today, and Michael Cohen and Roger Stone are about to see handcuffs. This is a reminder that everyone in this scandal will have to answer for their crimes, and Trump can’t stop it from happening.