What does the Paul Manafort divided verdict — guilty on 8 fraud charges with a mistrial declared on the remaining 10 charges — mean for the question of whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to fix the 2016 election?
Nothing.
Of course, everyone knew that going into the trial.
Special counsel Robert Mueller was assigned to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.” Mueller’s authority also covered “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation,” plus any issues that might involve obstruction of the investigation. Prosecutors said before the trial that they would not mention the word “Russia” at all during the proceedings, and that was pretty much the case. They also barely mentioned the name Trump, although it came up briefly in the charges that Manafort gave a Chicago banker a spot on a Trump campaign advisory board in exchange for approving an iffy loan.
Mueller did not allege any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign, and none were revealed at the trial.
That’s not to say the public did not learn anything from the Manafort trial. Indeed, if nothing else, outsiders got a glimpse into what Washington influence peddlers have gotten away with for decades. Manafort was convicted of shady dealing going back a long way. His behavior had been examined by the Obama Justice Department, which took no action against him. It was only because Manafort hooked up with Trump, and Trump then won the White House, and Democrats then pushed a Trump-Russia narrative to hobble the new president, and Trump then fired the director of the FBI — only through all of those circumstances — that Manafort got caught and his foreign money schemes exposed.
The importance of the financial crimes case against Manafort was never the financial crimes themselves. It was the prosecutors’ hope that, by charging the hell out of the offenses alleged, by playing hardball with the defendant with a guns-drawn-at-dawn search-warrant raid, by jailing him over a debatable obstruction of justice charge that Manafort could be pressured into spilling what prosecutors apparently thought were a lot of beans about the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election.
The big question about that strategy, of course, was whether the beans really existed. Was there a deep, dark secret about Russia collusion, evidence to proved that it occurred, and did Manafort, and only Manafort, know it? If so, then Manafort could be the key to the case. If not, then Mueller could succeed in nailing Manafort’s hide to the wall — and sending a warning to Washington operators who accept huge foreign payments — but not accomplish the actual goal of the Trump-Russia investigation.
There were reasons to be suspicious of the investigators from the start. First, as Manafort’s lawyers argued over and over, some key the evidence in the case was simply “pulled off the shelf” by Mueller’s prosecutors — that is, it was already known years ago by Justice Department lawyers who chose not to pursue it. That alone means it had nothing to do with the 2016 campaign. Second, other key figures in the Trump campaign, most notably national security adviser Michael Flynn and deputy campaign manager and Manafort aide Rick Gates, have also been investigated, and also charged with crimes, and none of those crimes included a Trump-Russia conspiracy. Could such a conspiracy exist, and Flynn and Gates be totally out of it?
The bottom line is, more than two years into the Trump-Russia investigation (first by the FBI, and since May 2017 by Mueller), investigators have not alleged, much less proved, the existence of a Trump-Russia 2016 election conspiracy. Even when he caught the big fish — Flynn, Manafort, Gates — Mueller did not accuse any of them of being part of a Trump-Russia 2016 election conspiracy.
Manafort could face a new trial on the ten charges that resulted in a hung jury. He also faces another trial scheduled for next month in the District of Columbia. He’ll face an unfriendly judge and, probably, a less sympathetic jury. But even if Mueller wins another conviction, he will not have shown a Trump-Russia 2016 election conspiracy.
None of this is to say that Manafort is innocent. In the Virginia case, he is guilty of real crimes. But it is still hard not to see the case as a political prosecution. Would it ever have been brought, had Manafort not made that fateful decision to join the Trump campaign? It seems unlikely.
Mueller’s cheerleaders in politics and the press will undoubtedly call the Manafort verdict a big win. But in the Trump-Russia 2016 election conspiracy investigation, a real big win would establish the existence of a Trump-Russia 2016 election conspiracy. And the Manafort verdict, like the earlier Mueller cases, doesn’t do that.
