Garrett Graff: “The new guilty plea firmly—and dramatically—shifts the narrative and timeline of the Russia investigation, establishing that while pursuing the White House, Donald Trump was also pursuing personal business deals with a foreign adversary that, according to Mueller’s earlier indictments, engaged in a multifaceted, complex, expensive, and long-running criminal conspiracy to help deliver Trump to the presidency.”
“The guilty plea—which, like every step of the Mueller investigation took even close watchers by surprise with its timing and rich level of detail—draws a direct connection between Donald Trump’s business deals and Russian president Vladimir Putin.”

