2016 ELECTION/CAMPAIGN/ROBERT MUELLER/RUSSIA/TRUMP PEOPLE: “The indictment Monday [10-30-17] of Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, and his associate, Rick Gates, begins a new phase in special counsel Robert Mueller’s sprawling investigation whose ultimate outcome remains unknown but that will consume the White House for months to come.
True, Mueller’s 12-count indictment of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates involves charges of money laundering, failure to disclose foreign bank accounts and making false statements to federal authorities – none directly related to the Trump presidential campaign that Manafort once led. But the simultaneous revelation that George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to the campaign, pleaded guilty to lying to FBI officials about his contacts with Russian nationals close to the Kremlin, raises sharp new questions about whether the campaign colluded with Moscow’s documented efforts to skew the election…
An indictment is not proof of guilt, of course. The longtime Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes liked to say that an indictment is merely ‘the accusatory instrument’ by which criminal proceedings are commenced. But it is a clear sign that a prosecutor – and a majority of 23 citizens on a grand jury – have probable cause to believe that a serious crime has been committed, and it opens the door to a potentially long and twisted legal path whose political ramifications can often be even more complicated.”
-Todd S. Purdum, “Manafort indictment marks end of the beginning of Mueller probe,” Politico, Oct. 30, 2017 09:30pm