Liberal journalists “certainly can’t say” new charges against Paul Manafort and the guilty plea by his former business associate Rick Gates are “very important,” attorney Solomon Wisenberg said Monday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”
“There’s nothing unusual about this, these kinds of charges,” Wisenberg told host Laura Ingraham. “Now this is a big case against Manafort and Gates. But these kinds of charges — the conspiracy to defraud the U.S. — they’re brought every day by prosecutors, federal prosecutors throughout the country.”
Manafort and Gates were indicted last October in connection with their business dealings with Ukrainian officials connected with Russia. Manafort received a new set of charges Friday related to making false statements, being an unregistered foreign agent, conspiracy, and money-laundering. Gates struck a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller that was also announced Friday.
“It might be very important, but on the face of it you certainly can’t say that,” Wisenberg said of Mueller’s latest actions in his investigation of allegations that President Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian business and government interests to rig the outcome of the 2016 presidential election against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Wisenberg — the former deputy independent counsel in the Whitewater/Lewinsky investigation of former President Bill Clinton — noted Monday that many media outlets shamelessly speculated over what implications Friday’s news had for Mueller’s investigation into Russia and President Donald Trump’s campaign.
“I heard a lot of stuff over the weekend from some networks that are not Fox [News] where people were making this out to be enormously significant. And you just can’t say that on the record here,” Wisenberg said. “What this is, is a relatively garden-variety kind of charge. These are tax fraud charges, bank fraud charges.”
Wisenberg said the Manafort and Gates charges amounted together to a conspiracy to defraud the U.S.
“But it’s conspiracy to defraud the United States by interfering with the lawful governmental functions of primarily the IRS,” Wisenberg said. “So that’s a bunch of legal gobbledygook.”
Wisenberg said the “key takeaway” here is that Mueller’s team is investigating things “that have nothing to do with Mueller’s original reason for being in his original charter.”
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Ingraham pointed to the heightened media speculation over what these new charges and deals could mean for key Trump administration officials such as senior adviser Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law.
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“Well, it’s all utterly speculative,” Wisenberg said. “So here’s the real question: Does Manafort really have any dirt on people in the Trump campaign, on the president, on Don Jr., on Jared Kushner? Does he have it?”
“Is he going to fight, or is he gonna plead guilty? Because he, too, could get tremendous benefit by pleading guilty and cooperating,” Wisenberg continued. “But we have no idea if there was any criminal conspiracy collusion and, if so, if Manafort knew about it.”
Gates received a “great deal” that significantly pertains to Manafort, Wisenberg argued, because “even though [Mueller’s case] looked like a strong paper case, now we’ve got an insider who can say, ‘We did these things and I did these things with Paul.'”
“So it’s significant for Manafort,” Wisenberg said.
PoliZette writer Kathryn Blackhurst can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter.
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