#TrumpRussia: Ex-Trump campaign officials charged. Papadopoulos cooperating with government

Like I've written before on this blog, I don't really like to talk about the #TrumpRussia investigation (that much), because journalists (much less the public) don't really know what's going on with it. Unlike Trump's administration, Mueller's investigation appears to be leak-proof. So it's all been speculation.

All that changed today, when former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump associate Rick gates were charged with conspiracy, thus giving us an idea of what Mueller is doing:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/us/politics/paul-manafort-indicted.html"The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, was assigned in May to investigate whether anyone close to Mr. Trump participated in a Russian government effort to influence last year’s presidential election. Monday’s indictments indicate that Mr. Mueller has taken an expansive view of his mandate."

"The indictment of Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates makes no mention of Mr. Trump or election meddling. Instead, it describes in granular detail Mr. Manafort’s lobbying work in Ukraine and what prosecutors said was a scheme to hide that money from tax collectors and the public. The authorities said Mr. Manafort laundered more than $18 million."

No mention of Trump in the indictment of Manafort & Gates. However, we do for the first time see the words "Donald J. Trump" in the federal plea bargain of George Papadopoulos:
"A guilty plea from a former Trump campaign aide"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/10/30/a-guilty-plea-from-a-junior-campaign-staffer/?utm_term=.1fe48a92ed54
"We see for the first time the words “Donald J. Trump” in a federal criminal plea bargain. As detailed in the plea, Papadopoulos was a junior foreign policy adviser to the campaign. According to the plea, he lied to the FBI when he said he knowingly communicated with a Russian “professor” with “substantial connections” to the Kremlin before Papadopoulos joined the campaign. In fact, he did so during his employment by the campaign. The Russian told Papadopoulos that he had “thousands” of Hillary Clinton’s emails and later that he had “dirt” on Clinton."

This is an important ongoing story. Therefore, cable news channels will have a lot of information to dissect this evening (& the ratings will prob soar), except for probably 'FoxNews' who will somehow find a way to blame Hillary Clinton. If you think I'm joking, check out this morning's Trump tweet blaming Hillary:

The Donald's ever-shrinking base may buy it. However, the rest of the public (which is the majority) is not fooled by Trump trying to distract with his own public (or more like Twitter) trial of Hillary. & it's irrelevant, because let's remember, Hillary Clinton (despite winning the election by 3 million votes) is now just a private citizen with no governing power.