Robert Mueller drops the hammer on Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn to get them to flip on Donald Trump

| 9:38 pm EDT August 25, 2017
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Earlier this month we learned that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was going so hard after Paul Manafort, in an attempt at getting him to flip on Donald Trump, he had the FBI bust down Manafort’s front door in the middle of the night. But in legal terms, that bombast is nothing compared to the moves that Mueller just put on both Manafort and Michael Flynn, with both stories having surfaced today.

First came word this evening from NBC News that Mueller has subpoenaed numerous people from six different Manafort-related companies to testify against him (link), in relation to the seventeen million dollars that Manafort took from a pro-Kremlin oligarch while he was getting Kremlin puppet Viktor Yanukovych elected in Ukraine. This is crucial because many if not most of these people, who have crucial information about Manafort’s crimes but were probably not involved in those crimes themselves, will be more than willing to give up what they know in order to avoid facing obstruction charges.

Then came word this evening from the Wall Street Journal that Mueller is indeed pursuing the late Peter W. Smith’s attempt at colluding with Russia on behalf of the Trump campaign (link). Specifically, Mueller is looking into Michael Flynn’s role in Smith’s scheme. Some assumed that this particular trail had hit a dead end when Smith committed suicide and then the story disappeared from the headlines. But now we’re learning that Mueller has been on it the entire time, and is trying to connect Flynn to Smith.

Taking down a kingpin in a criminal enterprise nearly always involves squeezing the underlings over their own crimes, in order to pressure them into flipping on the boss. If Robert Mueller can get Paul Manafort and/or Michael Flynn to crack, he may get everything he needs from them in order to fully expose Trump’s own crimes. And constitutionally, it’s not a given that Trump can pardon his own alleged co-conspirators, so Manafort and Flynn may have no way out of this but to sell Trump out.