A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame.

—The Hound Of The Baskervilles

So, on Friday, Rick Gates, without whom Paul Manafort could not have fluffed and folded a single dollar, copped a plea in federal court. This brings Robert Mueller’s investigation even closer to the king fixer, who absolutely has no place to go right now. He is on a spit over an open flame and it’s turning ever faster. The skin is starting to crackle and Paul Manafort is almost done and ready for serving. And Manafort, unless he’s an idiot, which nobody thinks he is, has to be pretty close to serving up the only person he can serve up.

Twice I have with my own ears heard the sound which resembled the distant baying of a hound.

Yeah, the spectral hound is circling the South Lawn as we speak.

Getty Images

Gates’s surrender undoubtedly is connected to the massive new 32-count indictment that Mueller dropped on him and Manafort a couple of days ago. The information submitted behind those charges was positively astonishing in its scope, and in the amount of money that had gone through the Manafort-Gates Launderama. Per CNN:



In total, more than $75,000,000 flowed through the offshore accounts. MANAFORT, with the assistance of GATES, laundered more than $30,000,000, income that he concealed…

I don’t know about Gates—or Manafort—but being charged with laundering 30 million bucks on top of all the other charges would get me speed-dialing my legal counsel. (Or, as apparently was the case with Gates, I would find me a new attorney with a rep for cutting deals with federal prosecutors.)

Just from the elbows, I’m betting that a lot of Mueller’s attention is being directed at the very strange period in the summer of 2016 when Manafort was the president*’s campaign manager until, oops, he wasn’t any more. During that time, he wrangled the delegates who would hand the president* the nomination, keeping them in line while the party establishment pretended to faint at the very prospect of being led by a comic-opera grifter. (For a brief time, this wasn’t a sure thing.)

More to the point, last June, he was central to the famous Trump Tower meeting at which it is alleged that a Kremlin-connected lawyer offered hacked oppo concerning Hillary Rodham Clinton to the Trump campaign. He also was running things when the Republican platform was softened as regards the Russian actions against the Ukraine, Manafort having had extensive business dealings with the Kremlin-aligned elements in that country. He ran the campaign from June until August. Most of what interests Mueller probably happened during that slice of time.

Anyway, the events on Friday should come as no surprise to anyone, not even the fellow in the Oval Office. Mueller has proven to be dogged and patient. He’s not going anywhere except steadily up the food chain. Gates has copped a plea. Manafort is done like dinner, and the fog is beginning to set in over the Great Grimpen Mire, distant sounds echoing ever louder.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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