Search form

FBI to Trump: Happy Halloween

Virtually unheard of before Monday, when the FBI indicted two of President Trump's campaign staffers, George Papadopoulos is either the key to Russian collusion with the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election -- or a lying "low level volunteer," as the president tweeted early Tuesday morning.

But contrary to Trump's dismissive, never-heard-of-him shrug, Papadopoulos was also known within the campaign as Trump's foreign affairs adviser. It was within the latter capacity that Papadopoulos tried, unsuccessfully, to arrange meetings between the Trump campaign and Russians close to the Kremlin, ostensibly to learn dirt on Hillary Clinton.

He may be the key to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation that led to Monday's indictments of the president's former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his longtime business associateRick Gates on charges of money laundering, tax evasion and crimes against the United States. Papadopoulos himself was offered a pre-indictment plea bargain on charges that he had lied to the FBI during an earlier point in the investigation.

In response to the indictments, Trump has done everything but burn an effigy of Hillary Clinton -- as distraction or, well, what? In the swamp, one is never sure whether movements beneath the surface are gators or mere shadows. Trump's history has taught us, however, that when he's under attack, Clinton will feel it. Like the Ghost of Election Past, she haunts Trump's dreamscape.

Indeed, on Capitol Hill, some Republicans, who've been scurrying away from the indictment news as fast as their little mice feet can carry them, have moved to