Is Papadopoulous Merely the First Domino to Fall?

As noted in the previous post, Der Trumpenführer is fully engaged in a lying campaign to distance himself from his campaign's foreign policy adviser who sought to collude with Russian operatives during the 2016 presidential election cycle.  As Talking Points Memo ("TPM") notes, the Washington Post and others have begun filling in the names of those who were linked via emails to George Papadopoulous' efforts to collude with Russia.  Indeed, TPM has a version of the Papadopoulous guilty plea documents with the redacted names filled in.  Here are article excerpts:

Former Trump adviser George Papadopolous’ newly-released plea agreement is littered with the redacted names of other campaign officials he allegedly informed about his efforts to hook them up with Russian nationals, making prosecutors’ claims rather hard to follow.

TPM’s design team has gone through the document and plugged in the missing names of those senior campaign staffers, as identified by the Washington Post, to make it easier to parse.

Per the Post’s reporting, the “high-ranking campaign official” was former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski; “another high-ranking campaign official” was campaign chairman Paul Manafort; “another campaign official” was chairman Manafort’s deputy Rick Gates. The “campaign supervisor” was campaign co-chair and policy adviser Sam Clovis, as his attorney confirmed to the newspaper. And one “senior policy advisor” referenced in the document has yet to be identified.

So where may all of this lead?  Another TPM piece looks at this question.  Here are excerpts:

It shows a Trump foreign policy advisor in active communication with what appear to be Russian government officials or spies trying to get dirt on Hillary Clinton, arrange meetings with Russian government officials (even Vladimir Putin, rather ludicrously) and solicit Russian support. That an active foreign policy advisor was taking these actions while in active communication with the campaign about those actions is quite damning. An unnamed campaign official sent back word that a meeting with Trump himself was not happening.

Papadopoulos was arrested in July and has apparently been cooperating since. I see no purely legal reason why the news of his arrest in July and guilty plea in early October had to be revealed today, other than keeping the news from Manafort. One other potential reason is that one of the ‘campaign officials’ referenced in the Papadopoulos plea appears to be Manafort. It sends two clear messages. First, we’re not at all done with collusion and we’re making progress. Second, we arrested Papadopoulos in July and he pled out in October and no one knew. So don’t think you have any idea what we have.

[I]n revealing the Manafort news early, giving time for the White House to respond as you’d expect (nothing to do with us or Russia or the campaign) and then following up by revealing this Papadopoulos indictment certainly has the feel of sucker punching the White House.

If Trump were as smart as he claims, he would keep his mouth shut and keep his tiny fingers off of Twitter.  Neither will likely happen and by running his mouth, Trump is setting the stage for perjury charges when he ultimately gets hauled in before Mueller's team and is confronted with inconsistent statements and/or documents.   If Bill Clinton came close to impeachment for lying about an affair with an intern, does Trump really think his lying about efforts to collude with a hostile foreign government won't be taken more seriously even by many in today's morally bankrupt GOP?  My one hope is that as the evidence is gathered by Mueller's team they find proof that Mike Pence is involved as well.   Falsely pious and sanctimonious "Christians" like Pence in my experience are often the biggest liars of all. Both he and Trump need to go..