Commentary: Rick Gates Just Did In Paul Manafort, Although Paul Manafort Ultimately Did In Himself & Helped To Do In Others

As I'm writing this, it's only seconds after I got the news alert that Rick Gates admitted to doing criminal activity at Paul Manafort's behest. So, Rick Gates essentially proved Special Counselor's case: that D****d ***** used Putin as his puppet to get himself illegally into the White House. This isn't to account for *****'s tweets in which he ultimately trapped himself and because of which Special Counselor Mueller ultimately had to do nothing to pull the Jenga® block out of his tower.

Try to build a ***** Tower in Moscow if Putin is willing to be used as your puppet, meet at ***** Tower HQ with your puppet's puppets to conspire to steal data and change others' votes, and commit a whole litany of other crimes, catch yourself right in your own trap in which Special Counselor Mueller and others knew that you would catch yourself.

Moral of the story: always follow the real rule of law and act ethically and morally, and you won't find yourself in legal, ethical, and moral conundrums.

PS The real rule of law always includes ethical and civil disobedience, and "civil disobedience" includes taking actions such as recording conversations about paying someone to silence her about your affair with her—so what Michael Cohen did was civilly disobedient even if it was illegal per se.