Arresting Developments, Part Два

Manafort and Gates, who turned themselves into the FBI Monday morning, are the first people to be charged as part of Mueller’s probe. The men were indicted on 12 counts, according to a 31-page indictment, including money laundering, operating as unregistered foreign agents of the government of Ukraine, failing to disclose overseas bank accounts and making false statements to federal authorities.

The last charge is the leverage charge. It's probably the easiest to prove and it's the one that gets them to everything else.

You can read the indictment if you have the time. I don't, at least not this morning.

But it seems that what the Trumpanzees have been dismissing as "a nothingburger" does have some meat to it. And more may be added, as it's very likely that there will be charges against other people.

In the meantime, expect that Manafort will become a non-person to Trump and that Team Trump will all of a sudden develop severe memory problems about Manafort and what his role was during the campaign, relegating him to a bringer-of-pizza, a la Christie.

There's news of a little more meat to the Trump Nothingburger.

If Trump should pardon Manafort, that might open Trump to a charge of obstruction of justice. Both prosecutors for Watergate and Whitewater believed that they could indict a sitting president. Unless Trump's lawyers are idiots, they have to be aware of that risk. But Trump has shown that he doesn't tend to pay attention to his lawyers, so this could all blow up.

Right now, the only difference between "Baghdad Bob" and Sarah Huckabee Sanders is that Sanders is better-looking.