Representatives have to start fundraising the day they are elected for the election only two years away. They have to promise favors to the donors. The US is peculiar among the industrialized democracies in allowing more or less open bribery.
Manafort was the fixer, the go-between.
His alleged role in setting Trump up with Putin and his hackers was not a departure or something unusual. It was what Manafort did. He took money for being an influencer, and for putting the courtesan with her john.
Manafort is not a criminal in the sense of a deviant. He is all too normal in the US political system. He is how the system works.
White collar criminals like Manafort and Trump are no longer even investigated or prosecuted. Manafort had been getting away with it for decades because he was so well connected. Surely the NSA, which tracks contacts with foreign governments and watches money transfers bigger than $10,000, knew about the Manafort problem, but they did nothing.
Trump and Manafort made one big mistake. They became principals in national politics. And principals in national politics are the one kind of figure whose white collar crime really can become an issue, because of adversarial political campaigns and because there are fairly explicit laws against things like bribery or being a Manchurian candidate. If they had stayed behind the scenes, making shadowy deals, they likely would have gone to their graves with their crimes unexamined.
But make no mistake about it. The indictment of Manafort is an indictment of America, a death knoll for US democracy. Manafort is who we have become.
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