Ford floats Thursday testimony, other conditions in talks with Senate

A discussion Thursday night between Christine Blasey Ford's attorneys and Senate staffers capped a chaotic day of back-and-forth.

POLITICO

Christine Blasey Ford's attorneys held a high-stakes call with Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday night that ended with no decision on when or if Ford will testify about allegations that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

One source described the call as “positive,” though there is no ironclad agreement to have Ford appear. Ford’s attorneys also have made some requests that the committee won’t accommodate — such as subpoenaing Mark Judge, whom Ford alleges was in the room when Kavanaugh groped and forced himself on her when both were in high school. Senate Republicans had planned a Monday hearing and sought an agreement by Friday morning to appear, though those are no longer viewed as hard deadlines.

 Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)

Ford lawyers Debra Katz and Lisa Banks spoke to staff from Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) about possible scenarios for an appearance next week. And Ford seems amenable to a public hearing after being offered a private one, though with some stipulations.

The lawyers requested a Thursday hearing in which Kavanaugh would appear first, said Ford is opposed to be being questioned by outside counsel and mentioned having just one camera in the hearing room, a second source said. Republicans are not going to agree to make Kavanaugh testify first.

Ford's attorneys also have said she's facing death threats and asked for help mitigating security concerns; she'd likely receive U.S. Capitol Police detail.

Democrats and Republicans are arguing over how to handle a hearing that would consider testimony from Christine Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh about an alleged sexual assault.
Photograph by Mark Peterson / Redux for The New Yorker

What Would a Serious Investigation of Brett Kavanaugh Look Like?

NEW YORKER

Considering what would constitute due process for Kavanaugh, then, involves reflection on whether Kavanaugh is best compared to a defendant who has been accused of a crime and stands to lose his liberty, or to a student who has been accused of misconduct and stands to lose an educational opportunity. If the answer is the former, that would suggest that Kavanaugh should be afforded many of the protective trappings of the criminal process, such as the right to cross-examine a witness, and that a heavy burden of proof lies on the side of the accuser. If it’s the latter, though, then perhaps a hearing can be dispensed with, and the standard of proof can be the lower threshold of preponderance of the evidence. Neither analogy is appropriate, though, because Kavanaugh does not stand to lose something that he already has. He is petitioning the public for the privilege of holding one of the highest public offices in the country, and he should have to persuade us that he didn’t do what he is accused of doing. But, of course, this doesn’t entirely capture the mix of reputational losses and gains at stake, for the individuals and institutions involved and for the country as a whole.

Kavanaugh faces significant risks. He has called Ford’s allegation “completely false,” saying, in a statement, “I have never done anything like what the accuser describes—to her or to anyone.” If we believe her account over Judge Kavanaugh’s flat-out denial, then it appears that he has lied about the incident and seems prepared to lie under oath at next week’s hearing. (During the earlier hearings, Senator Hirono asked Kavanaugh whether he had committed sexual assault as “a legal adult,” which he was not quite at the age of seventeen.) If he does lie in defending himself, the risk of perjury looms. And while criminal defendants who deny their guilt and are convicted do not then normally face prosecution for perjury, untruthful testimony by someone who is seeking to be confirmed for the Supreme Court would be less forgivable.

Further complicating Kavanaugh’s testimony is the fact that Maryland, where Ford says the party was held, does not have a statute of limitations for felonies. In theory, Kavanaugh could be criminally prosecuted now or in the future, and the risk to him at the hearing includes potential criminal jeopardy. Although he was a juvenile at the time of the alleged assault, attempted rape is a crime for which a juvenile defendant in Maryland may be tried as an adult. This country routinely levies harsh and life-changing penalties on teen-agers, especially boys of color, who are overrepresented in our jails and prisons. It would be ironic if this nomination became an occasion for meaningful reflection on the need for leniency toward young people who have made grave mistakes. Meanwhile, Kavanaugh doesn’t appear to be taking chances with his potential liability. He has hired Beth Wilkinson, one of the best trial lawyers in the country.

When Senator Hirono questioned Kavanaugh about sexual misconduct, she noted that he was a former law clerk and longtime friend of the retired judge Alex Kozinski, formerly of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Last year, Kozinski resigned amid multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, before a federal judicial council could investigate the allegations. (Kavanaugh said that he had no knowledge of Kozinski’s inappropriate behavior before it became public.) If any sexual-misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh from the time since he became a judge were to surface, he too, could be investigated by a judicial council. The person who would have to call for such an investigation would be the chief judge of the District of Columbia Circuit, Merrick Garland.

Chief judge of the District of Columbia Circuit, Merrick Garland.

Republican Senators Have 70% Chance of Keeping Control o/t Senate.

NATE SILVER, FIVE THIRTY EIGHT

Our congressional forecasts reflect a blend of several different methods of prediction. But for the most part, those methods tell a fairly consistent story. In the House, for instance, district-by-district polls, the generic congressional ballot and historical trends in midterm elections all point toward Democrats winning the national popular vote by somewhere in the range of 8 to 10 percentage points, which would very probably be enough for them to take control of the chamber.¹ So do what we call the “fundamentals,” non-polling indicators that have empirically been useful predictors of races for Congress, such as fundraising totals, past margins of victory and several factors related to incumbency.²

Likewise in the Senate, the different versions of our model, which blend these methods together in different ways, tell a similar overall story to one another. It’s a reasonably happy story for Republicans because the Senate map, which consists overwhelmingly of Democratic-held seats, is highly favorable for the GOP this cycle. The polling-driven Lite version of our Senate forecast has the GOP finishing with 51.3 Senate seats and having about a 5 in 7 chance (more precisely, 71 percent) of keeping control of the chamber.³ The Classic version, which incorporates fundamentals, has them with 50.8 seats and about a 2 in 3 chance (68 percent) of maintaining control instead.⁴ If you go down to the decimal point, the Classic forecast is ever-so-slightly better for Democrats than the Lite forecast — which implies that the fundamentals are ever-so-slightly better for them than polls — but it isn’t a big overall difference.

The word “overall” is doing a lot of work in the previous sentence, however, because while the top-line prognosis on who might control the Senate is similar in all three versions of our model, the forecasts differ quite a bit from race to race. In particular:

• The fundamentals are more bullish than polls for Democrats in several states with Democratic incumbents — most importantly, in Florida, Missouri and North Dakota.
• But fundamentals are more bearish for Democrats in two important open-seat races: Tennessee and the Mississippi special election.
• Polls and fundamentals are fairly consistent with one another in states with Republican incumbents — including in Texas, where fundamentals support the notion of a competitive race between Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Beto O’Rourke.

In this article, I’m going to focus on the first category only: races featuring Democratic incumbents. We’ll cover the other two categories in an upcoming piece.

NATE SILVER, FIVE THIRTYEIGHT

After Hurricane Florence, North & South Carolina grapple with floods, outages and endless water. At Least 33 Deaths.

A drone captures the widespread flooding from tropical storm Florence in New Bern, N.C., on Saturday. (Zoeann Murphy/The Washington Post)

WASHINGTON POST

WILMINGTON, N.C. — The water is everywhere — flooding interstates, swamping homes and swelling rivers that keep climbing. The rain stopped falling, but the water remains, endless water clogging up the highway, overwhelming gauges meant to measure rivers, stretching out in every direction.

“Even though there’s no substantial rain now in the forecast and the sun may be shining, rivers continue to rise, and we will see more flooding,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) said at a briefing Tuesday.

The storm has pummeled North Carolina, leaving people here stranded at home, blocked from traveling, sweltering as they wait for the power to come on and the water to recede.

Florence, the storm that brought the misery, has gone from a hurricane to a tropical depression to a meandering system that dropped rain over the Mid-Atlantic and southern New England on Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service. It left behind deaths in at least three states and carved an arc of destruction that had not fully become clear, though one preliminary analysis said could cost up to $20 billion in property losses.

Florence was another 1,000-year rain event. Is this the new normal as the planet warms?

Four states have set tropical storm rainfall records in the past year.

WASHINGTON POST

Over a massive region of southeast North Carolina and northeast South Carolina, Florence produced an extraordinary rainstorm that statistically has a 1-in-100 chance of occurring each year. Over substantial areas, the deluge had a 0.1 percent chance of happening, what is known as a 1,000-year event.

These exceptional rainfall events keep happening and appear to be part of a trend toward more extreme tropical rainmakers, probably connected to climate change.

Trump claim that FBI can't probe Kavanaugh allegations is wrong, ex-officials say

Former government officials from both parties questioned the GOP's argument against FBI involvement in the high-profile controversy, which Kavanaugh's accuser has requested.

POLITICO
The worst is yet to come for Kavanaugh’s accuser. Take it from this sexual assault attorney.


WASHINGTON POST

When 11 men interrogate: GOP tries to head off Kavanaugh debacle

The specter of Anita Hill looms over next week's hearing on Christine Blasey Ford's sexual assault allegation.

POLITICO

Hirono: Kavanaugh Is Fudging the Truth

The Hawaii senator believes Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser. And she thinks the court nominee was misleading in sworn testimony.

POLITICO

Christine Blasey Ford wants an FBI investigation before she’ll testify about Kavanaugh

VOX


A former sex-crimes prosecutor analyzed Ford’s allegations against Kavanaugh. She finds it credible..


WASHINGTON POST

Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a public hearing on the Kavanaugh sexual assault accusation

A committee vote on his nomination has also been delayed.

VOX

When Christine Blasey Ford, a professor at Palo Alto University in California, came forward with a sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh over the weekend, all eyes turned to the Senate: Would this stop the confirmation proceedings in their tracks?

By Monday evening, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s scheduled vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation had been delayed. Both Ford and Kavanaugh are scheduled to testify publicly in at a Senate hearing on Monday, September 24.

• A committee vote on Kavanaugh’s hearing has not been rescheduled — yet. This would be the first vote in the process of confirming Kavanaugh to the Court and serves as a recommendation to the Senate as a whole. The full Senate can still vote — and confirm — Kavanaugh even without the Judiciary Committee’s approval.
• Statements from both Republican and Democratic senators suggest an interest in investigating these allegations. But there is a big question about what that investigation would look like.
• Democrats want the FBI to spearhead the investigation into sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh, not Congress. They argue that these allegations require a formal investigation and note that the partisan handling of Kavanaugh’s nomination thus far suggests that Congress is not up to the task. 

The likelihood of a protracted and ugly political fight over a crucial Supreme Court seat now hangs heavily over Washington, D.C.

Why Brett Kavanaugh Might Lose Supreme Court Seat After Sexual Assault Allegation [Updated]

By Jonathan Chait

Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who wrote the letter accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, is going public with her story, saying she thought he might kill her. 'I thought he might inadvertently kill me,' said Ford to The Washington Post.  According to the Washington Post, Mrs. Ford is now a 51-year-old professor at Palo Alto University who teaches in a consortium with Stanford University, training graduate students in clinical psychology. Her work has been widely published in academic journals.. 'He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.' Ford said she was able to escape when Kavanaugh's classmate at Georgetown Preparatory School, Mark Judge, jumped on top of them and sent them tumbling. She said both classmates were heavily inebriated. "Now I feel like my civic responsibility is outweighing my anguish and terror about retaliation."Mrs. Ford took a polygraph test in August on the advice of her lawyer. The test showed that her account was truthful.
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Republican Sen. Jeff Flake (top), whose vote could make or break Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination, is saying he would vote no on the nominee unless he hears from Christine Blasey Ford. Flake, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, would be the key on a committee split between 11 Republicans and ten Democrats. 'If they push forward without any attempt with hearing what she's had to say, I'm not comfortable voting yes,' he told Politico. Sen. Bob Corker, Republican from Tennessee, also said the Senate Judiciary Committee should not vote on Kavanaugh's nomination until they talk to his accuser, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski said the committee might have to consider delaying the vote, according to reporting by CNN and other news organizations. 
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[NY Times:] Ms. Ford’s account comes as Democrats are already raising questionsabout Judge Kavanaugh’s truthfulness during his confirmation hearings this month. They have accused him of dissembling on a range of issues from his time in the George W. Bush White House, including a breach of secret Democratic files on judicial nominations and discussions about detainee policy and torture.



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[Washington Post:] Ford said she told no one of the incident in any detail until 2012, when she was in couples therapy with her husband. The therapist’s notes, portions of which were provided by Ford and reviewed by The Washington Post, do not mention Kavanaugh’s name but say she reported that she was attacked by students “from an elitist boys’ school” who went on to become “highly respected and high-ranking members of society in Washington.” The notes say four boys were involved, a discrepancy Ford says was an error on the therapist’s part. Ford said there were four boys at the party but only two in the room.  

Notes from an individual therapy session the following year, when she was being treated for what she says have been long-term effects of the incident, show Ford described a “rape attempt” in her late teens. 

In an interview, her husband, Russell Ford, said that in the 2012 sessions, she recounted being trapped in a room with two drunken boys, one of whom pinned her to a bed, molested her and prevented her from screaming. He said he recalled that his wife used Kavanaugh’s last name and voiced concern that Kavanaugh — then a federal judge — might one day be nominated to the Supreme Court.

                                    ----------------------------------------

In his senior-class yearbook entry at Georgetown Prep, Kavanaugh made several references to drinking, claiming membership to the “Beach Week Ralph Club” and “Keg City Club.” He and Mark Judge are pictured together at the beach in a photo in the yearbook.

Judge (above) is a filmmaker and author who has written for the Daily Caller, the Weekly Standard and The Post. He chronicled his recovery from alcoholism in “Wasted: Tales of a Gen-X Drunk,” which described his own blackout drinking and a culture of partying among students at his high school.  Kavanaugh is not mentioned in the book, but a passage about partying at the beach one summer makes glancing reference to a “Bart O’Kavanaugh,” who “puked in someone’s car the other night” and “passed out on his way back from a party.”

Through the White House, Kavanaugh did not respond to a question about whether the name was a pseudonym for him.

Ford said she has not spoken with Kavanaugh since that night. And she told no one at the time what had happened to her. She was terrified, she said, that she would be in trouble if her parents realized she had been at a party where teenagers were drinking, and she worried they might figure it out even if she did not tell them.

“My biggest fear was, do I look like someone just attacked me?” she said. She said she recalled thinking: “I’m not ever telling anyone this. This is nothing, it didn’t happen, and he didn’t rape me.”

Years later, after going through psychotherapy, Ford said, she came to understand the incident as a trauma with lasting impact on her life. 

“I think it derailed me substantially for four or five years,” she said. She struggled academically and socially, she said, and was unable to have healthy relationships with men. “I was very ill-equipped to forge those kinds of relationships.”

She also said that in the longer term, it contributed to anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms with which she has struggled.

She married her husband in 2002. Early in their relationship, she told him she had been a victim of physical abuse, he said. A decade later, he learned the details of that alleged abuse when the therapist asked her to tell the story, he said.

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New York Daily Intelligencer:

Perhaps more promisingly, Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski (above) require some moderate and Democratic support for their reelections. The pressure to vote against Kavanaugh from female voters, who are already highly mobilized against Trump, might ramp up. They might also be unwilling to stomach the appointment of a credibly accused attempted rapist by a confessed sexual assault perpetrator, especially given that it may well lead to a historic constriction of women’s sexual autonomy.

The White House’s response to the allegation raises the cultural stakes of the fight. “A lawyer close to the White House” tells Politico not only that Kavanaugh will not be withdrawn, but that his confirmation represents a higher cause: “No way, not even a hint of it. If anything, it’s the opposite. If somebody can be brought down by accusations like this, then you, me, every man certainly should be worried.” It’s perfectly obvious why Donald Trump would be eager to defend the principle that men must not have their careers derailed by accusations of sexual assault. It’s less clear that 50 Republican senators will be eager to join him.

At minimum, it seems likely that additional hearings will need to be scheduled to explore the truth of the allegation. More evidence could come to light. And Republicans may not want spend the run-up to an election litigating an allegation that further defines their Trump-era identity as the party of unbridled male sexual entitlement. But at the moment, a question that appeared closed is suddenly very much open.

Manafort Agrees to Cooperate With Special Counsel; Pleads Guilty to Reduced Charges. His Flip is a Major Turning Point in the Mueller Investigation.

Mueller has been seeking this for nearly a year.

VOX

• Manafort could be sentenced to up to 10 years in jail and $500,000 in fines. If he fulfills the requirements of the plea bargain, prosecutors will dismiss five other charges against Manafort. [NBC / Tom Winter, Adam Edelman, Ken Dilanian, and Dartunorro Clark]
• Manafort is the first attendee of the Trump Tower meeting to flip — and he could answer some crucial questions about it. [Vox / Zack Beauchamp and Andrew Prokop]
• Many had previously speculated that Trump would pardon Manafort. In the wake of the plea deal, "that ship has really sailed." [CNBC / Michelle Fox]. If Trump were to pardon Manafort now, the special prosecutor already knows what Manafort said and can still compel him to testify,with a grand jury subpoena. He can compel him to testify at trial,".according to former Justice Department official Matt Miller. If Manafort gave answers that contradicted what he already told prosecutors under oath, he could be charged with perjury, Miller says.
• Famed defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, author of "The Case Against Impeaching Trump," told MSNBC on Friday, "There will be no pardon. It would backfire at this point because, number one, if he's given a pardon, then he can't take the Fifth Amendment," he said. "He would have to testify anyway. He could be called in front of a grand jury. So the pardon is off the table."

• Jed Shugerman, law professor, Fordham University:

  It’s important that Mueller has continued to make sure that a presidential pardon won’t save Manafort. Manafort is pleading guilty to only two charges — conspiracy and witness tampering — but he is conceding to the other facts in the “criminal information,” which establish money laundering and mention the money laundering statute. So Manafort would still face slam-dunk state charges for money laundering, bank fraud, state tax fraud, and other crimes if he were to receive a presidential pardon (which affects only federal crimes).

  Ric Simmons, law professor, Ohio State University: "And the fact that Manafort is now cooperating with Mueller will make any pardon seem like a cover-up."

• Andy Wright, senior fellow and founding editor of the legal blog Just Security:

• Manafort has deep and longstanding ties to Russian oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin and represented the interests of Russian-backed Ukrainian political entities. He was there for many of the central events under scrutiny by the special counsel, including the June 2016 meeting at Trump tower with Russian emissaries offering dirt on Hillary Clinton and the platform change at the Republican National Convention that benefitted Russia. He will likely know what Trump personally knew about those events.
  It is clear that President Trump is concerned about what Manafort might say. The president has reportedly told associates Manafort could incriminate him. (and his relatives). Manafort’s plea will cap his imprisonment for these charges at 10 years, and he will get the benefit of a significant reduction if he provides robust and truthful cooperation.

  
  

  Christopher Slobogin, law professor, Vanderbilt University:

  Everything depends on the content of the “cooperation agreement.” If, as reported, Manafort has agreed to testify in “other proceedings” and provide documents to the special counsel, there is high likelihood that, given Mueller’s mandate, Manafort will provide information relevant to the investigation of Trump’s presidential campaign. But, of course, we still have no information about the precise content of that testimony or evidence.

The Mueller charges so far, explained.

In May 2017, Mueller was appointed to investigate Russian interference with the 2016 election, including potential connections to the Trump campaign.

What’s happened since has been rather complex — indictments of or guilty pleas from 32 people and three companies.

In retrospect, though, we can break down the charges so far into two major categories.

Pressuring former Trump aides to cooperate: Mueller seems to have started off by trying to “flip” key Trump associates, getting them to agree to plea deals in which they’d cooperate.

Four people fall into this category. George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn both struck plea deals after admitting lying to the FBI about their contacts with Russians. Then Paul Manafort and Rick Gates both struck plea deals after being charged in relation to their Ukrainian lobbying work (though it took a while, and a conviction on eight counts, until Manafort did).

The results varied a bit. Mueller’s team recently washed their hands of Papadopoulos, claiming he didn’t end up providing any information of use. Flynn and Gates, however, have been cooperating for months now.

Now there’s Manafort, whose cooperation has only just begun. This resolves the final loose end from those initial charges Mueller’s team brought last year. And given the amount of resources and hours Mueller’s team poured into the Manafort prosecutions, it certainly seems that they believe he’s quite important to their investigation overall.

Charges of overseas Russians for election interference: The second big batch of Mueller charges so far are in his two high-profile of indictments of Russians for allegedly interfering with the campaign.

There are two big cases in this category — the “Russian troll farm” indictment (alleging a social media propaganda effort aimed at influencing the election) and the email hacking indictment (alleging that 12 Russian intelligence officers were involved in hacking and leaking Democrats’ emails).

Mueller’s strategy here seemed to be to document certain facts about Russian interference in public charging documents.

He likely didn’t expect either of these cases to go to trial, since the indicted Russians wouldn’t come to the US to face charges. However, one company involved in the troll farm case has been fighting the charges and could force a trial.

In any case, Mueller has handed off both of these Russian cases to others in the Justice Department. He has, it seems, cleared his plate for what comes next.

So what comes next?

As serious as the above charges are, none of them directly allege that Trump associates criminally conspired with Russians to interfere with the 2016 election.

However, many believe that Mueller is using these indictments essentially as building blocks for his larger case on that central matter. He’s lined up his cooperating former Trump aides, and he’s indicted some Russians. It would seem natural for the next step to be connecting those two threads.

Indeed, reports sourced to people interviewed by Mueller’s team (and government officials the team has contacted) have made clear the special counsel has been delving deep into Trump and his associates’ ties to Russia.

The apparent goal has been to understand whether a conspiracy to interfere with the 2016 election did take place, and if so, what it entailed. The topics they’ve dug into include:

• The Trump Tower meeting: In June 2016, Donald Trump Jr. eagerly accepted an invitation to meet with a Russian delegation at Trump Tower to get dirt on Hillary Clinton, which was said to be part of the Russian government’s support for Trump. Paul Manafort attended too. So far, all parties have denied that it resulted in much of anything.
• The Trump Organization: Earlier this year, Mueller’s team subpoenaed Trump’s business for documents, including some related to Russia, the New York Times reported.
• Russian oligarchs: Mueller’s team surprised two Russian oligarchs at US airports this year, and questioned them about their ties to people in Trump’s orbit. He seized electronic devices from one oligarch. Manafort, too, was trying to get in touch with a Russian oligarch during the campaign.
• The Trump campaign’s digital operation: Mueller’s team interviewed people involved with Trump’s digital team with an eye toward understanding whether they’d coordinated with Russian online efforts, Yahoo News and ABC News have reported.
• Trump’s inauguration: The special counsel has also investigated Russia-tied donations to Trump’s inaugural committee, and the “unusual access” that certain Russians got to inaugural events, per ABC News.
• The Seychelles meeting and Gulf money: Shortly before Trump’s inauguration, a donor of his (Erik Prince) held a mysterious meeting in Seychelles with a Russian fund manager. The meeting was facilitated by the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates and his adviser, George Nader. It has also emerged that after Don Jr.’s Russian meeting at Trump Tower, he held another meeting about election assistance — with Prince and Nader. Mueller’s team served Nader with a subpoena in the US and has brought him before the grand jury. Keep an eye on this one.

• Roger Stone’s associates: Particularly in the past few months, Mueller has sought to question many people in the orbit of longtime on-and-off Trump adviser Roger Stone. Stone was in contact with WikiLeaks and the Guccifer 2.0 persona (which was run by Russian intelligence) during the campaign, making him a figure of interest in the question of whether Trump associates were involved in the release of those stolen Democratic emails.
• Obstruction of justice: On top of that, there is Mueller’s investigation into whether President Trump obstructed justice while in office — in pressuring then-FBI Director James Comey to drop an investigation into Michael Flynn, later firing Comey, pressuring Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and a plethora of other actions. The special counsel’s team interviewed many current and former White House and administration officials about these topics last year.

Which of these, if any, will result in further charges remain unclear. It’s also not known for sure whether Mueller is preparing some sort of lengthy report on President Trump and Russian interference — perhaps to be sent to Congress for potential impeachment — or whether the next step is more indictments.

But Manafort could know a whole lot about any of these avenues of investigation. He chaired the Trump campaign, attended the Trump Tower meeting, was a longtime business partner of Roger Stone, and had worked for a Russian oligarch. Manafort could be very helpful for whatever Mueller has in mind.

So now we wait for the special counsel’s next move.

Days of Fear, Years of Obstruction

Why did the slump last so long? Cynical, bad-faith Republican politics.

PAUL KRUGMAN, NY TIMES