Brushing aside the indictment of three former campaign aides as totally inconsequential for President Donald Trump, the White House has asserted that the charges have “nothing to do with the President, nothing to do with President’s campaign or campaign activity”.
If anything, the indictment proves there is “no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion”, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters, alleging that “the real collusion scandal, as we’ve said several times before, has everything to do with the Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS and Russia”.
“We’ve been saying from day one there has been no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, and nothing in the indictment today changes that at all,” Sanders commented and went on to say: “There’s clear evidence of the Clinton campaign colluding with Russian intelligence to spread disinformation and smear the President to influence the election.”
President Trump for his part took to Twitter on Tuesday morning to slam the mainstream liberal media and renew his assertion that the “events” connected with arraigned former campaign chief Paul Manafort took place long before he joined his campaign in March 2016.
“The Fake News is working overtime,” Trump remarked and dismissed the guilty plea entered by another former aide George Papadopoulos about lying on his Russian link with the comment: “Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar.”
While liberal pundits viewed Monday’s indictments as the “beginning of the end” for Trump, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly expressed the view that the Mueller probe was more or less over. Expressing the view that the investigation was nearing its end, he told Fox News: “It should wrap up soon…I don’t know how much longer it can possibly go on.”
Records unsealed on Monday said Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, lied to FBI agents “about the timing, extent and nature of his relationships and interactions with certain foreign nationals whom he understood to have close connections with senior Russian government officials”.
Papadopoulos, according to the FBI, had falsely described his interactions with a certain foreign contact who discussed ‘dirt’ related to emails concerning Hillary Clinton.
Sanders, however, dubbed Papadopoulos a “volunteer”, asserting his role in the Trump campaign was “extremely limited” with “no activity ever done in an official capacity on behalf of the campaign in that regard”. As for his plea deal with FBI, Sanders said it had everything to do with his failure to tell the truth, and nothing to do with the campaign or campaign’s activities.
Analysts on TV shows, however, argued that Papadopoulos’ guilty plea had exposed the Trump campaign’s assertions that there was no collusion ever between it and the Russians to discredit Clinton and influence the presidential race in Trump’s favour.
But Jay Sekulow, a private attorney for Trump, said the president and his legal team were not worried about Monday’s indictments. “I’m completely convinced as I was from the outset that not only was there no Russian collusion, there was no obstruction,” Sekulow told CNN, adding: “I’m not concerned about this at all and no one else is either.”
Sanders, quizzed on the looming speculation that President Trump may fire Mueller, said there is “no intention or plan to make any changes in regards to the special counsel”.
A Washington federal court, meanwhile, ordered Manafort and his former business associate Rick Gates to home confinement after both pleaded “not guilty” to the charges brought up by the Justice Department. Both were ordered to surrender their passports. The court set the bond for Manafort at $10 million and for Gates at $5 million. If found guilty, Manafort could face 151 to 181 months in prison, and Gates 121 to 151 months.