![]()
Oct. 17, 2017
According to our political correspondents in Washington, D.C., the ongoing federal Investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interferenceinfluence made new headway earlier this week i in the prosecution of Paul Manafort. earlier this week, Thewhen the former Trump campaign manager was apparently detained by FBI agents after allegedly falling for the ol’ “Diplomatic Immunity Under a Box Propped Up by a Stick” tTrick.
Deploying a so-called “hHoney–pot stratagem,” former FBI Director and current investigation head Robert Mueller explained in a press release on Thursday that the Special Counsel’s previous no-knock raid on Manafort’s home last July had obtained sufficient evidence of potentially illegal activity to “go real old-school with this one.,” Ssubsequently, the Special Counsel green-lighteding a plan to detain Manafort by trapping him beneath a large overturned cardboard box perched over a manila envelope of legal documents strategically placed in Manafort’s front yard.
Mueller went on to reveal that, in exchange for a full testimony, the actual terms and conditions of immunity in exchange for a full testimony– had been negotiated privately in a telephone conversation with Manafort’s lawyers the week before the arrest. However, Mueller stated that, but that these were merely part of a federally-authorized ruse, and that the investigation had already decided to proceed with what Mueller described as “the oldest trick in the book,” despite the logistic and legal ramifications of doing so. “The amount of paperwork I had to fill out in order to obtain a Box Warrant of that caliber was obscene,” Mueller explained, “bBut it was worth every pencil I burned through when I got to yank the rope and watch that fat cat take the bait hook, line, and& sinker.”
Manafort’s defense attorneys, who were shocked to learn both that Manafort had been arrested and that the immunity terms were fabricated as bait, quickly began retaliatory efforts against the office of the investigation, filing multiple entrapment lawsuits and publicly criticizing the manner of arrest as both “egregiously unlawful” and “cartoonishly absurd.” Police reports following the arrest also revealed that the dossier used to lure Manafort into custody, placed visibly beneath the box and labelled “Gget OUout of Jjail Ffree” in red crayon, had been opened to reveal only a printed copy of the U.S. Constitution, a Russian-to-English phrase booklet, and a large quantity of pencil shavings.
While a number of political analysts have since called into question the legality of privately discussing immunity under false pretenses, the Special Counsel’s response to the media assured the public that the measures taken to detain Manafort, while deceptive, were both fully legal and entirely necessary to prevent any potential attempts to escape detention. “I just knew in my gut that the slippery bastard would’ve high-tailed it to St. Petersburg in a heartbeat if he heard we were bringing the hammer down,” Mueller explained. “Besides,” he continued, “I had no actual intention of letting that oil-money twerp walk off scot-free. It’s his fault we’re in this mess, and I want him to hate my job just as much as I do.”
