White House: Confident, but concerned about the unknown after legal action
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After the grand jury issued indictments related to the Russia investigation, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders quickly pointed at the Clinton campaign when asked by reporters about collusion with Russia.
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — President Trump and aides remain confident the White House will not be implicated in the Russia investigation, but Monday’s legal action on multiple fronts gives them a new concern.
The unknown.
Officials more or less expected former campaign chairman Paul Manafort to be indicted, but seemed taken by surprise by news that an ex-foreign policy adviser named George Papadopoulos has already pleaded guilty — and has been cooperating with investigators.
Previewing a strategy moving forward, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders described Papadopoulos as a low-level volunteer and that the charge against him — lying to the FBI  — has nothing to do with the campaign. She took a similar approach with Manafort’s indictment.Â
“Look, today’s announcement has nothing to do with the president, has nothing to do with the president’s campaign or campaign activity,” Sanders told reporters.
But it did.
According to legal documents filed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Papadopoulos says he had contacts with Russians who promised dirt on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, and that a “campaign supervisor” encouraged his efforts.
And Manafort was hired, despite the past clientele that have now gotten him in hot water with the Justice Department, to run Trump’s presidential campaign.
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Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, has been a key figure in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Video provided by Newsy
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No one at the White House really knows what else Papadopoulos is telling investigators, what form his cooperation is taking, or if there are other unknown individuals linked to the campaign who are working with Mueller and his investigators.
In the meantime, White House officials indicated they would continue to distance themselves from Papadopoulos, Manafort and former Manafort deputy Rick Gates, also indicted Monday on charges stemming from allegations that pre-dated his work on the campaign.
The disclosure of an indictment and guilty plea rocked a White House that had planned to use this week to make other kinds of news. They still hope to regain control of the agenda by promoting other issues, including a Republican tax cut plan, a nominee to head the Federal Reserve, and Trump’s upcoming trip to Asia, where trade and North Korea’s nuclear weapons program will be on the agenda.
If the White House was concerned about the double-barreled developments from the grand jury investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, Sanders wasn’t letting on during her daily news briefing.
Instead, the White House press secretary’s response was taken straight from the president’s own well-worn playbook. Turn the attention to former campaign rival Hillary Clinton.Â
“The real collusion scandal, as we’ve said several times before, has everything to do with the Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS and Russia,” she continued. “There’s clear evidence of the Clinton campaign colluding with Russian intelligence to spread disinformation and smear the president to influence the election.”
The White House was careful Monday not to escalate any sense of crisis by suggesting that Trump could fire Mueller or pardoned those indicted. But she didn’t rule it out, either.
“I think we should let the process play through before we start looking at those steps,” Sanders said.Â
Sanders tried to project a business-as-usual tone at the White House, using the beginning of her daily briefing with reporters to sell the president’s tax reform proposal.
The president, she said, responded to the news of indictments “the same way the rest of us in the White House have, and that’s without a lot of reaction because it doesn’t have anything to do with us.”
Yet Trump did take to Twitter, where the president’s trademark name-calling, expansive punctuation and all-capital-letters denial suggested that the news had — at the very least — gotten Trump’s attention.
Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren’t Crooked Hillary the Dems the focus?????
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2017
….Also, there is NO COLLUSION!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2017
“Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign,” Trump said in a tweet. “But why aren’t Crooked Hillary the Dems the focus?????”
“Also,” he continued, “there is NO COLLUSION!”Â
Manafort’s indictment unsealed Monday focuses on his activities working for the Ukrainian government from 2006 through 2015. In it, Mueller alleges conspiracy, money laundering, failing to register as foreign agents, and making false statements to investigators.
Read more:
Paul Manafort and Rick Gates charged with conspiracy, money laundering
Manafort and Gates: A timeline of links between Trump’s campaign and Russia
Paul Manafort indictment: Read the full document
The indictment, which also charges Manafort associate Gates, makes no mention of the Trump campaign or of Trump himself.
Mueller, who was appointed special counsel in May, has a wide-ranging mandate to investigate “any links or coordination between the Russian government and the campaign of President Donald Trump,” but also other matters that arise from that investigation, including obstruction of justice.
Trump did not address the related guilty plea of campaign foreign policy adviser Papadopoulos, whose charges for lying to investigators were also unsealed Monday.Â
Papadopoulos admitted to lying to the FBI about his contacts with an unnamed male professor in London and a female Russian operative. Those contacts had suggested to Papadopoulos that they had emails belonging to Clinton during the campaign last year, and tried to arrange a meeting between Putin and Trump.
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