CONRAD BLACK: Focus of Russia Probe Needs To Be on Clintons.

The fact that, on the same day as the Manafort and Gates indictments, Tony Podesta — who was intimately connected with the Uranium One dealings that were contemporaneous with extraordinarily large pledges to the Clinton Foundation and the celebrated $500,000 speech-making payment to the former president, Bill Clinton — retired as head of the firm that bears his name — may indicate that Special Counsel Mueller is shifting gears with the evidence and broadening his attack, conducted by his largely Clintonian lawyer group. Mr. Gates had so little notice of what was coming that he had not even hired a criminal lawyer; he had a public defender enter his plea.

I presume Mr. Mueller raced out with the Manafort-Gates charges in the hope that, if there were anything Mr. Manafort could say that would be damaging to Trump, an indictment such as this — the usual U.S. prosecutorial technique of throwing all the spaghetti at the wall (“conspiracy against the United States” is one of the more extreme charges) — will bring him to the standard plea bargain: giving extorted and false but incriminating testimony against the big target (Mr. Trump), in exchange for a reduced sentence with an immunity for perjured testimony. Mr. Mueller and his protégé, James Comey, are superstars in the firmament of this profoundly rotten system, but Mr. Manafort’s lawyer gave them clear notice that it won’t work.

At the same time, to shake Mr. Podesta out of his own company, and incite rumors in the Democratic press that the Podestas are being investigated (Tony Podesta’s brother, John Podesta, was Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager), means that Mr. Mueller is already much closer to lifting the rock all the way on the Clintons and President Obama than he is to finding anything vulnerable around President Trump or his campaign.

Months of “Russia, Russia, Russia” may prove to be the Clinton’s worst own-goal yet.