This week's bombshell - that the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign financed former British spy Christopher Steele's salacious dossier allegedly connecting Donald Trump and Russia - may suggest something even more devious. The dossier was compiled by the notorious firm Fusion GPS, which also worked for Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, the very woman who met with Donald Trump Jr. in a meeting deemed pivotal to the case for Trump-Russia "collusion."

The Fusion GPS connection raises a supremely interesting question: Did the Clinton campaign actually orchestrate the meeting between Trump campaign officials and Veselnitskaya? Is the entire Trump-Russia collusion narrative the result of a Clinton set-up?

Do not be fooled by the "Conspiracy against the United States" heading.

The Paul Manafort indictment is much ado about nothing . . . except as a vehicle to squeeze Manafort, which is special counsel Robert Mueller's objective - as we have been arguing for three months (see here, here, and here).

Do not be fooled by the "Conspiracy against the United States" heading on Count One (page 23 of the indictment). This case has nothing to do with what Democrats and the media call "the attack on our democracy" (i.e., the Kremlin's meddling in the 2016 election, supposedly in "collusion" with the Trump campaign). Essentially, Manafort and his associate, Richard W. Gates, are charged with (a) conspiring to conceal from the U.S. government about $75 million they made as unregistered foreign agents for Ukraine, years before the 2016 election (mainly, from 2006 through 2014), and (b) a money-laundering conspiracy.

Paul Manafort raked in tens of millions of dollars by secretly working for the Ukrainian government - and blew more than $12 million on shopping sprees, antiques, Range Rovers and housekeeping, according to court documents.

President Trump's former campaign manager allegedly personally laundered $18 million through offshore accounts, located mainly in Cyprus and the Grenadines, out of more than $75 million funneled into them by him and his "right-hand man" political consulting partner Richard Gates.

Between 2008 and 2014, Manafort tapped into the overseas accounts as if they were his personal piggy bank to fund his lavish lifestyle in the United States, according to the indictment filed Monday.

Amid controversy over his own methods of maintaining control over Russia, President Vladimir Putin has unveiled a memorial dedicated to victims of Soviet-era government repression and said the years of suffering at the hands of the state must never be forgotten.

Putin spoke at the opening ceremony for the Wall Of Sorrow on October 30 as part of the official Day Of Remembrance For Victims Of Political Repression -- an event first held in 1991, the year the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

"This horrific past must not be stricken from the national memory -- let alone justified in any way -- by any so-called higher good of the people," said Putin, who came to the site after a meeting of his Human Rights and Civil Society Council focusing on state policy on the remembrance of victims of political repression.

Special counsel Robert Mueller's team made a major factual error in the indictment charging Paul Manafort and Richard Gates with multiple violations of federal law.

Via Lawnewz...

That indictment, signed October 27, 2017, was finally made public this morning. Manafort and Gates surrendered themselves to the FBI soon thereafter. But a cursory glance at the indictment itself should provide their attorneys with at least one point of contention.

Midway through the charging documentation-on page 16 of the 31-page indictment-is a reference to Viktor Yanukovych, the former president of the Ukraine and one of Manafort's former clients. Manafort is accused of failing to have registered as a lobbyist for Yanukovych in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act("FARA"), amongst other various crimes detailed therein.

Contained within that reference to Yanukovych is a glaring and atypically sophomoric error that could have easily been avoided or remedied with a simple Google search by someone-an intern, maybe-amongst Mueller's legion of lawyers.

The United States has put on pause the question of providing Ukraine with lethal weapons, writes The Washington Post.

The article notes, in particular, that after several months of negotiations and consultations, the administration of President Donald Trump has so far denied Kiev what it needs to repel "Russian aggression."

"This increases doubts about the willingness of the American president to oppose his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin," the material underlines.

Speaking on "Fox & Friends" Monday morning, liberal law professor Alan Dershowitz broke down the Paul Manafort indictment and what it means going forward for FBI special counsel Robert Mueller's Trump-Russia probe.

What did he say?

• It's all about leverage: "They're going after Manafort on something that apparently has to do with Trump, [something] from years ago, his own business. But what they're saying to him is: 'We've got you now, and we don't care about that, but if you can tell us something about Trump and the campaign and collusion, we'll give you a get out of jail card free.' So it's all about leverage, that's the way prosecutors work."
• Manafort is very important if a much larger criminal case exists: "Manafort knows where the bodies are buried. He was an intimate. And if anything wrong happened in the campaign, and there's no evidence that anything did, Manafort would know about it. Even if he wasn't directly there, he heard about it."
• Manafort is the first "domino": "What Mueller wants to do is see [Manafort] as the first domino, the second domino, the third domino, ultimately trying to get to the big domino - that is President Trump."
• Manafort could be on his own: "If he has nothing to offer, he's just going to have to defend himself on these financial charges that have nothing to do with Trump."
• Manafort may sing and "compose": "Sometimes prosecutors can twist you not only into singing but into composing, into making something up against somebody. They're so desperate to make a deal. If you can get yourself out of trouble by turning somebody else in, a lawyer is going to help you try to do that."
• There may be a "grand strategy" to Mueller's investigation: "If he only gets Manafort, at least he has earned some of his money - the special prosecutor. And if he can get Manafort turn it into somebody a little higher and a little higher and a little higher, the dominoes begin to fall. So it's a win-win strategy for prosecutors and, of course, it creates vulnerability for the ultimate target."

Based on this morning's news of indictments and guilty pleas, did Robert Mueller's special counsel probe into Russia's 2016 election interference just accelerate or decelerate? Actors on both sides of the partisan divide are already offering diametrically opposed answers to that question, but the truth is that only Mueller and his team have any real insight into how the bigger picture is shaping up -- if there is a bigger picture at all. Some initial thoughts, as we attempt to reset our understanding of this story, using new information:

(1) On its face, the federal charges against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his associate once again reflect quite poorly on Team Trump's competence and judgment; Manafort was tainted from the get-go yet was brought aboard to chair the campaign, later getting forced out amid controversy. Malpractice. As far as the new indictments go, however, the alleged criminality revealed today was not related to the campaign. The government's allegations against Manafort and Rick Gates pertain to money laundering, violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), and misleading investigators. The underlying crimes appear to have taken place between 2006 and 2014, long before Donald Trump was even a candidate for office. On CBSN this morning, journalist Ryan Grim made the point that the White House may see today's developments as something of a victory, noting that the contents of these indictments are "not even close" to proving collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign:

Jason Chaffetz, former House of Representatives member and Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was on Justice with Judge Janine Pirro Saturday night and he again dropped a BOMBSHELL about Attorney General Jeff Sessions

Judge Janine: ...What can you do?

Chaffetz: Yeah, the State Department has been holding tens of thousands of documents on a case that they claim is closed. And when I met with Attorney General Sessions much like Ron DeSantis did, I basically got a stiff arm. I got an Attorney General that said he would not comply, he wasn't going to do any sort of prosecutions and it's such a huge difference. When he was a Senator he would have never put up with that.

The US sent a "planeload of FBI agents" to Iceland in 2011 to frame WikiLeaks and its co-founder Julian Assange, according to a former Icelandic minister of interior, who refused them any cooperation and asked them to cease their activities.

In June 2011, Obama administration implied to Iceland's authorities they had knowledge of hackers wanting to destroy software systems in the country, and offered help, then-Interior Minister Ogmundur Jonasson, said in an interview with the Katoikos publication.

However, Jonasson said he instantly became "suspicious" of the US good intentions, "well aware that a helping hand might easily become a manipulating hand."

Later in the summer 2011, the US "sent a planeload of FBI agents to Iceland seeking our cooperation in what I understood as an operation set up to frame Julian Assange and WikiLeaks," Jonasson said.

Icelanders seemed like a tough nut to crack, though.

"Since they had not been authorized by the Icelandic authorities to carry out police work in Iceland and since a crack-down on WikiLeaks was not on my agenda, to say the least, I ordered that all cooperation with them be promptly terminated and I also made it clear that they should cease all activities in Iceland immediately," the politician said.