VOX ADMISSION: THERE’S NO THERE THERE

Vox is a hard-left website, which specializes in going after Republicans in general and Donald Trump in particular.

With that in mind, please read the beginning of Andrew Prokop’s lengthy article there, which attempts to explain why Independent Counsel Robert Mueller is zeroing in on former Trump campaign big-shot Paul Manafort:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation about Russian collusion has increasingly appeared to zero in on one particular Trump associate: Paul Manafort.

In July, we learned that Manafort — Trump’s former campaign manager — attended a meeting Donald Trump Jr. set up with a Russian lawyer last year to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. Later that month, the FBI raided Manafort’s house for documents. His business associates, from PR firms to his former lawyer and his current spokesperson, are being slammed with subpoenas from Mueller’s team. Even Manafort’s son-in-law has reportedly been approached and asked to cooperate with the investigation.

“If I represented Paul Manafort, I would conclude that my client has significant criminal liability,” says Renato Mariotti, a partner at Thompson Coburn and a former prosecutor for a US Attorney’s office in Illinois.

Now, though Manafort’s history of pro-Russia consulting work and experience with international skullduggery have long made him a prime suspect for potential collusion, public evidence on that front remains thin.

Beyond the Trump Jr. meeting, which all parties are claiming led nowhere, we haven’t yet seen specific and substantiated claims that Manafort was involved in any sort of improper collusion effort during the presidential campaign. (And of course, he maintains that none occurred.)

The catch is that Mueller’s team is also investigating what Manafort was up to before the campaign. Specifically, they’re looking into whether Manafort appropriately disclosed his foreign work, and whether he was involved in illegal money laundering or other financial crimes.

If Mueller’s team finds damaging evidence here, they’re reportedly hoping they can use the threat of charges to get Manafort to give them more information on the collusion matter (if he has any). That is: They’d like him to flip against Trump or other Trump associates.

Did you read that?  Every word.  I hope so.

Because if you did, you will note that, while Paul Manafort (a la “Scooter Libby) might be in Mueller’s crosshairs for one thing or another he has done in cahoots with Russia…

…the article makes it perfectly clear that there is no evidence Manafort did anything with, or on behalf, of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Read it again.  See for yourself.  Pay special attention to these segments:

…we haven’t yet seen specific and substantiated claims that Manafort was involved in any sort of improper collusion effort during the presidential campaign.

If Mueller’s team finds damaging evidence here, they’re reportedly hoping they can use the threat of charges to get Manafort to give them more information on the collusion matter (if he has any).

In other words, if we’re talking about possible collusion between the Trump Campaign and Russia (which we should be talking about, since it is, at least purportedly, why this investigation exists),  a hard-left investigative website, which would love to nail Trump, cannot find a thing there to nail him on.

Why does this investigation exist?  Why is it continuing?  When do any of the people in mainstream media who have been reduced to reporting NOTHING OF ANY SUBSTANCE on this for a year start asking the same questions?