What Paul Manafort’s Boneheaded Mistakes Reveal About Trump’s Legal Vulnerabilities

“Not too bright!”

Mother Jones Illustration

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

“Boneheaded!”

That’s how Mother Jones Washington Bureau Chief David Corn describes Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, who is now facing allegations that he tried to tamper with witnesses as he awaits trial on federal money-laundering and tax-evasion charges.

“We’ve seen a series of boneheaded moves throughout the scandal from the very beginning” of the Russia scandal, David told Mother Jones Senior Editor Aaron Wiener on this week’s episode of the Mother Jones Podcast.

“He has two GPS ankle bracelets—not one, but two!—and his travel is highly, highly restricted,” David said. And yet Manafort has managed, yet again, to put himself in the special counsel’s cross-hairs. “Not too bright.”

As David explains this week for Mother Jones in more detail:

To recap this curious episode: Just two months after Mueller slammed Manafort for scheming with Kilimnick, a former Russian operative, to get around the gag order, Manafort—who was under close watch by Mueller’s crew—again allegedly recruited Kilimnick for a criminal plot to encourage perjury…  it’s hard to imagine that when Mueller and his team of prosecutors discovered Manafort’s latest scheme with Kilimnik, they weren’t shaking their heads in wonder and disbelief.  

Listen to the episode, and subscribe on iTunes:

Also on this week’s show, extraordinary stories of living in limbo: You’ll hear from Mother Jones readers who have had their lives upended by Trump’s travel ban and are now awaiting a fateful Supreme Court decision on the policy—coming any day now.

In January, Mother Jones asked readers to share their stories about how the ban has affected them. That’s how Anthony found us and shared the Kafkaesque nightmare of being separated from his boyfriend, Reza, an Iranian refugee who fled his home because the police found out he was gay. Podcast producer Ashley Dejean published Anthony’s story in March, and it was so powerful, we wanted you to hear from him directly on the podcast.

“We just try to have faith that love will find a way and then eventually we’ll be together,” Anthony told podcast host Jamilah King. “But we’re still hanging in there, and we’re still trying to find a way.” (We’re withholding his last name to protect his privacy.)

“I’m scared really scared,” he said. “I just can’t even believe that in America, we’re in this situation where somebody who had to flee their country because they were going to be killed is now being left out of our country because the country that he had to flee because they were going to kill him.”

You can read more stories from readers caught in Trump’s travel ban turmoil here.

And of course, as always, you’ll also hear from reporter David Beard with his weekly dose of uplifting news from the Recharge newsletter. Sign up for more here.

 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate