LITTLE FINGER'S SHORT DRIVE:

The whole point of the incessant lying by Donald Trump and Manafort -- and the apparent lying of Stone and Corsi as well -- is exactly that: to muddy as many waters as possible so any Mueller report will be drowned out by what Kellyanne Conway once labeled "alternative facts." Right now we only know bits and pieces of Mueller's findings. (Nor do we know whether he is close to issuing a report or not.) But the thing about stories built on actual facts, as Mueller's will be, is that they tend to be powerful and command attention because they add up. People like solid crime stories. And so even now, even amid all the current racket, at least one such story is emerging loud and clear: the bridge that connects the Trump campaign to the trove of Democratic emails stolen by the Russians and publicized by WikiLeaks to sabotage the Clinton campaign. Two of the biggest sources for this story are Stone and Corsi themselves. The more they try to portray their WikiLeaks ties as innocent -- Corsi even gave a blabby interview to the less-than-friendly outlet of MSNBC on Wednesday -- the more they poke holes in their own flimsy cover stories and incriminate the president. Not for nothing did Trump promote WikiLeaks' email cache at least 164 times in the last month of the 2016 campaign, in the calculation of the journalist Judd Legum. Everything adds up.

It also adds up that Trump remains in the panic that has consumed him since he returned from his calamitous trip to rainy Paris nearly three weeks ago. He just keeps tweeting maniacally about his innocence and Mueller's "witch hunt" even as heads to the G20 meeting in Buenos Aires. Meanwhile, Mueller's tale of his collusion with Russia gains traction by the moment. A Washington Post scoop overnight detailing profuse late-night phone calls between Stone and Trump at crucial junctures in 2016 suggests that it was Trump himself, not merely "the Trump campaign," who had direct knowledge of Russia's conspiracy to tip the election in his favor. Today has brought Michael Cohen's surprise guilty plea in a Manhattan court, where he conceded he was lying to Congress when he claimed that Trump had stopped pursuing business deals in Russia in early 2016. Given that Trump has vehemently denied such dealings, Cohen's revelation is another big chapter of the story. Who knows what additional plot twists will arrive tomorrow when Mueller's prosecutors face off against Manafort's lawyers in a federal courtroom -- as ordered by a judge this week after Manafort broke his plea deal.

Mueller likely has many other stories to tell.

The first was that Cohen walked into a Manhattan federal courtroom unannounced. He did it by surprise. We live in a political environment characterized by constant leaks, each choreographed more carefully than a public announcement. The drama of learning what's going to happen at an event, rather than before the event, has mostly disappeared. But Cohen's plea, a momentous development in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, happened with no warning. That reflects admirable discipline in Mueller's office.

The second remarkable thing was that the plea happened at all. [...]

Normally, federal prosecutors don't waste time with this sort of rubble-bouncing. So why would Mueller spend the time and resources on it? Because it tells a story about Trump and his campaign. Because it lays a marker. [...]

The third remarkable thing about Cohen's plea was its substance. The president of the United States' personal lawyer admitted to lying to Congress about the president's business activities with a hostile foreign power, in order to support the president's story.

The admission by President Trump's longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen that he lied to Congress about the Trump Organization's plans to build a Trump-branded skyscraper in Moscow has brought new scrutiny upon the sworn testimony of other Trump associates - including his oldest son.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has called on the committee's Republican leadership to accelerate the release of transcripts from interviews they conducted behind closed doors to the special counsel and the public so they could be analyzed for any misleading statements.

"We believe other witnesses were untruthful before our committee," Schiff told ABC News on Thursday. "We want to share those transcripts with Mr. Mueller."

That rumbling in the distance you hear is the avalanche of bad news about the Russia investigation heading towards Donald Trump. The first ton of dirt came from the President's former bagman and fixer, Michael Cohen, who admitted in court today that he'd lied to Congress in statements about Russia. The really devastating aspect of this for President Trump is that Cohen seems to be telling Mueller's team exactly what these lies were meant to conceal. In recent days, Cohen had been privately talking about moving from 'fixer to flipper'. He even sent a video on the subject to friends. In turning on his old boss, cleaning up his Congressional testimony would be a necessary step. [...]

There are two ways to look at Cohen's secret play for a Trump Tower in the Russian capital. One is to view this as a member of Trump's inner circle trying to make money for himself from his connection to the surprise front-runner in the Republican race. The other interpretation is that Cohen's approaches were authorized by Trump, back-channel negotiations with the Russian President with who-knows-what on the table - part of Russian efforts to buy Trump's loyalty, 'Individual 1' only too willing to make a deal. At the very least, it appears Trump was not telling the truth when he said at a news conference in January of 2017, just after taking office, that he had 'stayed away' from business deals in Russia.

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