Who is playing who

This smacks of an "inside baseball" type post for political junkies like myself.  Of course the Paul Manafort case is getting big play by the MSM.  I don't know about Faux News and talk radio.  The gist of the stories is Manafort took a plea deal with the special counsel's office, but then lied to the investigators and in addition relayed what questions he was being asked to Cheeto Jesus' defense team.  In what now looks increasingly suspicious, The Donald completed and submitted the answers to the questions Mueller's team had for him.  Many pundits, attributing superhuman powers of deduction to Mueller's people have speculated they not only knew of Manfort's perfidy ahead of time, but allowed for it in their interactions with the *president's men.  In this iteration of events, Paulie M not only screwed himself, but allowed tRump to incriminate himself.   I'm not so sure the special counsel wasn't played a little bit in this case.  I think Mueller and most of his people are not prepared to deal with a totally amoral person in the president's office who is willing to lie and lie about anything and everything.