{"id":179766,"date":"2017-11-01T18:22:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-01T23:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/11\/01\/ok-so-bob-mueller-has-just-busted-paul-manafort\/"},"modified":"2017-11-01T18:22:00","modified_gmt":"2017-11-01T23:22:00","slug":"ok-so-bob-mueller-has-just-busted-paul-manafort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/11\/01\/ok-so-bob-mueller-has-just-busted-paul-manafort\/","title":{"rendered":"OK, So Bob Mueller has Just Busted Paul Manafort\u2026\u2026\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is not particularly surprising.<\/p>\n<p>Manafort was clearly on the hit list (I was hoping that he would take down Roger Stone).<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s more, Manafort is a longtime professional lobbyist, and therefore dirty.<\/p>\n<p>It just comes with the business.<\/p>\n<p>I think that Mueller is hoping to flip him, or his side kick Rick Gates, to flip.<\/p>\n<p>What I should note here is that the charges have to do with his lobbying practices, and not any alleged coordination with Russia.<\/p>\n<p>Still, it appears that there is some real good over this, because it has put a bipartisan fear of God in lobbyists across the political spectrum, as evidenced by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2017\/10\/30\/tony-podesta-stepping-down-from-lobbying-giant-amid-mueller-probe-244314\">Tony Podesta, John&#8217;s uber-lobbyist brother, stepping down from his lobbying firm amid because he was acting as a foreign representative without properer registration<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It appears that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/johnhudson\/washingtons-legions-of-lobbyists-see-danger-in-special\">DC lobbyists are freaking out<\/a>, because ignoring foreign registration rules has been the rule for many years, and they are now worried that the worm has turned.<\/p>\n<p>Good.&nbsp; Turning over the rocks in DC influence peddling is a good thing.<\/p>\n<p>Ironically, Trump&#8217;s nemesis might be draining that swamp he kept talking about on the campaign trail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is not particularly surprising. Manafort was clearly on the hit list (I was hoping that he would take down Roger Stone). What&#8217;s more, Manafort is a longtime professional lobbyist, and therefore dirty. It just comes with the business. I think that Mueller is hoping to flip him, or his side kick Rick Gates, to &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,407,374,486],"class_list":["post-179766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-justice","tag-politics","tag-schadenfreude"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179766"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}