WASHINGTON — The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, announced charges on Monday against three advisers to President Trump’s campaign and laid out the most explicit evidence to date that his campaign was eager to coordinate with the Russian government to damage his rival, Hillary Clinton.
The former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, surrendered to the F.B.I. and pleaded not guilty to charges that he laundered millions of dollars through overseas shell companies — using the money to buy luxury cars, real estate, antique rugs and expensive clothes. Rick Gates, Mr. Manafort’s longtime associate as well as a campaign adviser, was also charged and turned himself in.
But information that could prove most politically damaging to Mr. Trump came an hour later, when Mr. Mueller announced that George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, had pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. and was cooperating with investigators. In court documents released on Monday, federal investigators said they suspected that Russian intelligence services had used intermediaries to contact Mr. Papadopoulos to gain influence with the campaign, offering “dirt” on Mrs. Clinton in April 2016 in the form of “thousands of emails.”
Investigation Takes On Gravity In Dangerous Phase for Trump
Trump Team Got Early Word Of Russian ‘Dirt’ on Clinton
WASHINGTON — The guilty plea of a 30-year-old campaign aide — so green that he listed Model United Nations in his qualifications — shifted the narrative on Monday of the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russia: Court documents revealed that Russian officials alerted the campaign, through an intermediary in April 2016, that they possessed thousands of Democratic emails and other “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.
That was two months before the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee was publicly revealed and the stolen emails began to appear online. The new court filings provided the first clear evidence that Trump campaign aides had early knowledge that Russia had stolen confidential documents on Mrs. Clinton and the committee, a tempting trove in a close presidential contest.
By the time of a crucial meeting in June of last year, when Donald Trump Jr. and other senior Trump campaign officials met with a Russian lawyer offering damaging information on Mrs. Clinton, some may have known for weeks that Russia had material likely obtained by illegal hacking, the new documents suggested. The disclosures added to the evidence pointing to attempts at collaboration between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, but they appeared to fall short of proof that they conspired in the hacking or other illegal acts.
The Events, Stretched Over Two Years, That Led to Charges
An Opportunity With Trump Set the Stage for Manafort’s Undoing
Aide Lauded By President Forged Ties To Russians
Trump’s Power to Pardon Doesn’t Extend to New York Inquiries
Is the White House Scared Yet?
The Plot Against America
Trump Won’t Bring Joy to Moolaville
Mueller Won’t Shake Trump’s Base
COLUMBIA, Tenn. — On Monday, nothing changed. If you live, as I do, in the heart of Trump country, you know there is no chance that the indictment of Donald Trump’s ex-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, or the guilty plea of a former foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, will alter our political dynamics. Mr. Trump’s supporters will stand by their man. After all, they’ve stood by him through worse, through events and allegations that implicate Mr. Trump himself.
It’s an unfortunate truth that the Republican base not only accepts but also often angrily defends conduct from Mr. Trump that they would never, ever accept in a Democratic president. Forget this week’s news for a moment and take a look at the recent past. Would Republicans have stood idly by if Barack Obama fired an F.B.I. director during an investigation of the president’s top aides and then misled Americans about the reason? Would conservatives tolerate a President Hillary Clinton demanding that praying football players keep their religion to themselves, then calling for firings and boycotts if they didn’t comply?
Russia Probe Marked by Contrasting Styles of Trump and Mueller
Mueller Got Manafort’s Attorney to Speak Against Him Once. He May Try the Tactic Again
‘This Is a Nothing Burger’: How Conservative Media Reacted to the Mueller Indictments
Legal Pit Bull Who Fought Mob Is Unleashed in Mueller Inquiry
WASHINGTON — The target was a New York City titan — plain-spoken but Teflon, irresistible to the tabloids and insistent upon loyalty from his associates.
The defendant, Vincent “the Chin” Gigante, had accumulated power as the head of the Genovese crime family, feigning insanity to conceal his guilt. A prosecutor in Brooklyn was at last prepared to cut him down, using witnesses the government had flipped.
“He couldn’t stop people from talking about him,” the prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, said of Mr. Gigante, addressing jurors at the end of a career-making federal court case in 1997. “When there’s a large organization to run, you cannot erase yourself from the minds, and more important the tongues, of your conspirators.”
Two decades later, Mr. Weissmann has turned his attention to a more prominent set of prospective conspirators: He is a top lieutenant to Robert S. Mueller III on the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible links to the Trump campaign. Significantly, Mr. Weissmann is an expert in converting defendants into collaborators — with either tactical brilliance or overzealousness, depending on one’s perspective.
It is not clear if President Trump and his charges fear Mr. Weissmann as they gird for the slog ahead. It is quite clear, former colleagues and opponents say, that they should.
“I’m no fan of Donald Trump,” said Dan Cogdell, a Houston defense lawyer who tangled with Mr. Weissmann when Mr. Weissmann helped lead the federal task force investigating Enron in the early 2000s. “Frankly, I can’t think of two people who deserve each other more than Andrew Weissmann and Donald Trump.”
If Mr. Mueller is the stern-eyed public face of the investigation, Mr. Weissmann, 59, is its pounding heart, a bookish, legal pit bull with two Ivy League degrees, a weakness for gin martinis and classical music and a list of past enemies that includes professional killers and white-collar criminals.
