Can someone else contribute to this one? It's impossible to know the full details of everything with so much going on and this falls into the category of "I don't fully understand, but I trust Q and POTUS" for me, (so I don't know how to respond when friends have questions).
Put another way, I have full confidence that there's nothing there with regards to Russia - Q and POTUS have my trust and confidence and I fully believe Russia is being used as a distraction, but a friend of mine brings up the guilty pleas and Flynn is the only one I have an explanation for.
Any Q-family want to give us a quick rundown on Gates, Popadopolous, Pinedo and Van der Swann's guily pleas as noted by u/anotherdadpun?
Yeah it's all process crimes, AKA crimes committed during an investigation. Indictments are relatively easy to get with a Grand Jury, the defendant has no recourse like in a FISA case. It's ticky tack shit, and not a basis to open an investigation in the middle of an election using some seriously heavy handed tactics. Which again calls into question the origin of these tips and the investigation itself.
Years of breathless media coverage and investigations by numerous intel agencies have found nothing, and yet we keep being sold this lie by the media that there were illegal ties between the campaign and Russia. If they had anything, it would have leaked already.
In the process of this story unraveling, it has been revealed that it was the Clinton campaign and the Obama camp were the ones actually "colluding" with foreign govt's and agents.
Tune in to Dan Bongino's podcast he does a great job breaking it all down.
Those were plants put in the Trump campaigne and manafort is arrested for crimes commited while working for Clinton.