He didn’t read the email. Seriously. That’s his excuse.

A source close to Manafort told POLITICO on Tuesday that the campaign manager hadn’t read all the way to the bottom of the email exchanges on his phone and that he didn’t even know who he was meeting with when he attended the 20 to 30-minute session. Kushner’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

Paul Manafort, then the Trump campaign chair, skipped the start of a meeting with Trump’s biggest donors going on at the same time in the same building, to attend another meeting without bothering to note who he was meeting with or what the meeting was about. Sure. That’s absolutely believable. In other words ...

x Mr. Manafort's attorney has indicated that is client is illiterate and an amnesiac and resides on an alternative plane of existence — Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) July 11, 2017

Because a guy who spent years working for the Kremlin and actually staged the mock revolt that gave Vladimir Putin an excuse to invade Crimea is certainly not going to notice the words “Russian government” in the middle of an email. And it’s not as if Manafort knows any lawyers that specialize in money laundering or Cyprus-based holding companies or shady real estate loans.

Odds that Paul Manafort and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya had already crossed paths? Really, really high.