Welcome to Rabbit Hole, a breaking-news analysis that helps you get smart on the one story everyone’s obsessing over—for Beast Inside members only.
One of the central questions in the Russia investigation is whether the Trump campaign got a heads-up from Moscow about the release of hacked emails from the Clinton campaign. The past two days has yielded a handful of tantalizing suggestions about who the middleman—if he exists—could be. Was it Paul Manafort in the embassy with Julian Assange? Jerome Corsi with an email to Roger Stone? And what was it federal prosecutors say that Manafort lied to them about?
Stop snitching: The Wall Street Journal got the scoop that Special Counsel Robert Mueller yanked Manafort’s plea agreement because he allegedly lied about his business dealing with Konstantin Kilimnik, a former Russian army linguist and reportedly a former officer in Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU). Kilimnik worked for Manafort’s political consulting firm and showed up in a host of emails displayed at Manafort’s August 2018 trial on tax and bank fraud trial discussing strategies to help elect Ukraine’s since deposed pro-Russian prime minister.