PARDON ME, DONALD!:

When the first Manafort indictment came down in 2017, the Wall Street Journal reassured its readers that Trump was guilty of nothing more than "poor judgement" in hiring a "notorious Beltway operator," as it called the man who had been directing Russian overseas political operations in Ukraine. "One popular theory is that Mr. Mueller is throwing the book at Mr. Manafort so he will cop a plea and tell what he knows about Russian-Trump campaign chicanery," reasoned an editorial. "But that assumes he knows something that to date no Congressional investigation has found."

The next year, a gimmick filing by Manafort's attorneys seized on the fact that prosecutors had not charged him with colluding with Russia yet to present him as innocent. Mollie Hemingway breathlessly wrote it up in the Federalist. Manafort's "legal team also reveals the government has provided no evidence of any contact between Manafort and Russian officials," she declared. Former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, impressed by this "evidence," declared, "If Manafort did not illegally collide [sic] with Russia, it's hard to imagine anyone who did."

Last summer, Byron York was still proclaiming, "There's no collusion in the case against Manafort."

This defense has been smashed to pieces. 

As Law&Crime previously reported, a birds-eye review of the hearing suggests that Manafort's lie not only had to do with exactly the Kilimnik allegation-but includes cinematic levels of intrigue as well. Enter: the Midtown Manhattan members-only club, the Grand Havana Room.

Kilimnik, in mid-2016, offered to meet with Manafort and the meeting that occurred was the one at the Grand Havana Room. Apparently, former Trump campaign deputy chair Rick Gates and Manafort printed something for the meeting, but Mueller's redactions ensure that we don't know what was printed. The operating theory is that the alleged poll data exchange happened at the Grand Havana Room on August 2, 2016 for a purpose Manafort would later "lie" about.

Manafort, by way of his attorneys, repeatedly argued that he did not intentionally lie. A last-ditch effort from the defense on Wednesday went so far as to accuse Mueller's attorneys of dishonesty and of failing to understand federal law regarding false statements. That filing didn't work out so well for them.

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