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The indictment dramatically alters the case, although not in a way that will surprise National Review readers. There continues to be no connection to the Trump campaign( which Manafort briefly chaired and Gates also served), much less any suggestion of collusion between the campaign and Russia. The new indictment, however, retreats from the original allegations of money laundering, failure to register as foreign agents, and the so-called conspiracy against the United States. We observed back in November that all of these charges seemed problematic … We also noted at the time that the oddest thing about the original indictment was the absence of tax-evasion and bank-fraud charges. Mueller had seemed to lay the groundwork for these allegations but to have refrained from charging them.Voila ! The case is now exclusively a tax and bank-fraud case.