Season 6 of “The Wire” May Star Trump Campaign Aide

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The hot gossip about the indictments issued today is this: Was George Papadopoulos wearing a wire? Papadopoulos is a small fish who was arrested in July, but his arrest was kept secret until today. Why? In a court filing, investigators said it was because they wanted to preserve Papadopoulos’s value as a “proactive cooperator”—a term of art that means the defendant will engage in some kind of undercover activity. Allahpundit lays out the basic theory:

Imagine Papadopoulos phoning a former top Team Trump official in early August to say, “They’ve arrested me! I don’t know what to do! I think I should tell them everything and make a deal!” He might have been told no, no, no, stay calm, deny X, Y, and Z, we’ll make sure Mueller never finds our emails from the campaign. And meanwhile, unbeknownst to the target, Mueller’s recording the entire conversation on Papadopoulos’s end.

Maybe! It’s best not to get carried away with this kind of stuff right now, but we all want to keep up to date on the latest lurid speculation, don’t we?¹

¹You don’t? Then why are you reading a blog on your lunch hour?

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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