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Monday, September 24, 2018 7:31:21 AM
What Paul Manafort Knows
"A Series Of Suspicious Money Transfers Followed The Trump Tower Meeting"
Paul Manafort’s decision to cooperate with Robert Mueller could clarify several of the biggest mysteries of the Russia investigation.
Franklin Foer
Sep 14, 2018
Jonathan Ernst / Reuters / Thanh Do / The Atlantic
What kind of threat does Paul Manafort now pose to Donald Trump? Robert Mueller’s indictment of the fallen lobbyist is a masterful portrait of a craven man and his methods. But the chronology contained in the document filed this morning takes us right up to the eve of Manafort joining the Trump campaign, and then leaves the reader bursting with curiosity about what comes next. While Mueller has tied up all sorts of narratives about Manafort’s strange career in Ukraine, so many strands of the Manafort story remain maddeningly untidy.
{ Paul Manafort’s decades of shady deals laid the groundwork for the corruption of Washington.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/paul-manafort-american-hustler/550925/ ]
Perhaps not even Mueller fully knows what Manafort has to offer about his time in the Trump campaign. But in the unresolved threads of the tale, there are hints of the subjects that Manafort could clarify. When we look at ellipses in the case that Mueller has laid out, all the chapters of the Manafort story he hasn’t yet officially pursued, we can guess the lines of questioning that might dominate Manafort’s meetings with the lawyers in the special counsel’s office.
The Oleg Deripaska Connection
At the very beginning of his time working in Ukraine in 2003, Paul Manafort was in the employ of one Russia’s richest men, an aluminum magnate named Oleg Deripaska. We lazily describe many Russian oligarchs as residing in Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. But in the case of Deripaska, that closeness is a documented fact.
From 2003 to 2008, Manafort and his firm worked for Deripaska across Europe—in Montenegro, Georgia, and Ukraine. Over that time, the consultant and the client also became business partners. Deripaska invested millions in a private-equity fund that Manafort established, with the intent of buying assets across the former Soviet Union. Based on various court filings and lawsuits, we know that the relationship went very badly. In these documents, Deripaska suggests that Manafort might have stolen his money. And based on the special counsel’s filings, we also know that Manafort owed Deripaska even more money in the form of unpaid loans. Instead of making an effort to settle these large debts, Deripaska says that Manafort simply stopped returning his messages.
Manafort finally reached out to Deripaska, just after he joined Donald Trump’s campaign. In emails .. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/emails-suggest-manafort-sought-approval-from-putin-ally-deripaska/541677/ .. obtained by The Atlantic that Paul Manafort traded with an aide, Manafort proposed giving Deripaska special access to the campaign, with the apparent hope of making his debts disappear. We don’t know what became of Manafort’s outreach to Deripaska. Perhaps it yielded nothing. Deripaska claims that he never received messages from Manafort in 2016. But it’s also worth watching hidden video footage of Deripaska sitting on his yacht with a top Putin official, procured by the Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny. The video captured a meeting held in August 2016, two weeks before Manafort resigned as campaign chair. According to Navalny, the video lends credibility to the theory that Deripaska might have been a crucial intermediary between Manafort and the Kremlin.
[ INSERT:
BOREALIS, yep, result gives credence to Mueller's probe. It certainly puts to rest Trump's much repeated, bullshit mantra that the whole thing is a hoax
[...]
Yep, Manafort's "How do we use to get whole" ..
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/emails-suggest-manafort-sought-approval-from-putin-ally-deripaska/541677/
to Kilimnik for Deripaska and others benefit sure suggests Manafort intended to use his position with Trump to fix up his Russian debts.
.. posted May '18, with more ..
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=140578600
.. all here ..
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143070379 ]
The Curious Case of Konstantin Kilimnik
Robert Mueller has periodically suggested that Manafort’s top aide was an active agent of Russian intelligence in 2016. When I profiled .. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/the-astonishing-tale-of-the-man-mueller-calls-person-a/562217/ .. Konstantin Kilimnik earlier this year, an old colleague of his quoted Manafort as describing him as “my Russian brain.” Is this connection to Russian intelligence just a meaningless coincidence? Kilimnik was Manafort’s primary interface with Deripaska.
[ One of the most shocking revelations from the Mueller investigation
is the suggestion that Manafort’s longtime aide is a pawn of Russian intelligence.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/the-astonishing-tale-of-the-man-mueller-calls-person-a/562217/ ]
Manafort’s Loans
Paul Manafort’s recent career could be read as a rolling series of nadirs. One of those low points was his departure from the Trump campaign on August 19, 2016. He left after The New York Times .. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/politics/paul-manafort-ukraine-donald-trump.html .. reported that Manafort was receiving off-the-books payments from his Ukrainian clients. The very day that Manafort resigned, he created a new LLC called Summerbreeze. In the months that followed, the LLC began receiving millions in loans from financial institutions with ties to Trump. Why would these lenders give cash to Manafort given the press attention he was receiving and his clearly troubled finances? (In the previous Manafort trial, the special counsel alleged that Manafort promised to help the head of one of these banks obtain a job in the Trump administration.)
Roger Stone
We know that the political consultant Roger Stone has proclaimed .. https://www.businessinsider.com/roger-stone-says-he-could-be-indicted-by-mueller-2018-6 .. that Mueller will possibly indict him soon. (Stone apparently conversed with WikiLeaks about hacked material.) But that promise of an indictment hasn’t actually arrived. Manafort might be able to fill in whatever blanks exist in that case. Manafort’s friendship with Stone traces back to the 1970s, when Manafort managed Stone’s campaign to run the Young Republicans group. During the ’80s, they became business partners and created a legendary consulting firm together. If Mueller does intend to pursue a case against Stone, he suddenly has his oldest confidant as a cooperating witness.
[ INSERT:
A Timeline of Paul Manafort’s Relationship with Donald Trump
They’ve known each other since the 1980s.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143585543
.. plus ..
The Manafort Guilty Plea, the Mueller Investigation, and the President
[...]
Did Trump Just Admit to an Impeachable [obstruction] Offense?
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143577185
.. and ..
What could Paul Manafort share with Mueller? A lot, potentially.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143574143 ]
The Trump Tower Meeting
I have never invested much significance in the Trump Tower meeting on June 9, 2016, with the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. It doesn’t seem to have been the prelude to anything meaningful, an apparent disappointment to all those who attended. But Manafort was a presence in the room, a careful note-taker, and a witness to whatever transpired. And until we know more about the meeting, it’s impossible to know with certainty whether it was as hapless as conventionally portrayed.
[ INSERT:
I asked 6 legal experts if Trump obstructed justice. Here’s what they told me.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143586021 ]
A Troubling Pattern
When reading Mueller’s technicolor account of Manafort’s tactics in Ukraine, it’s clear that Manafort had no scruples about his work. He prided himself on smearing his client’s political opponents; he created sham think tanks and generated phony pressure campaigns. He funded his work using methods designed to evade detection and to skirt legal constraints. This work merely repeats patterns that appear elsewhere in Manafort’s body of work. Why would he suddenly have broken with character in the course of the Trump campaign? Thanks to the cooperation of Manafort’s deputy Rick Gates, Mueller probably has a very keen sense of how to lead this line of questioning. For nearly two years, the public has lived with the tension that comes with an unresolved narrative, the outcome of which has potentially extraordinary implications. Today represents a looping turn in the direction of closure.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter .. https://www.theatlantic.com/contact/letters/ .. to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.
Franklin Foer is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He is the author of World Without Mind .. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1101981113/theatla05-20/ .. and How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization .. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0013M31GE/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 . He is the former editor of The New Republic
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/09/paul-manafort-cooperating-mueller/570364/
See also:
Timeline: The birth of the Russia investigation
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143668888
TRUMP'S GROWING LEGAL TEAM HAS A PROBLEM: IT'S OPERATING PARTLY IN THE DARK
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143627148
BOREALIS, MIKE PENCE WILL BE THE MOST POWERFUL CHRISTIAN SUPREMACIST IN U.S. HISTORY
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143620353
That twit and Rooster have come up with the same story that was posted at the end of July.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143588568
John Kerry Calls Trump An Insecure Teenage Girl Who Pays More Attention To Twitter Than His Job
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143584276
The Trump organization is under investigation... The Trump Foundation, which
appears to have operated as a Trump family piggy bank, is under investigation.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143581577
Mueller Just Called Bullshit on Lobbying Powerhouse Mercury LLC
.. with link added in reply ..
https://www.thedailybeast.com/mueller-just-called-bullshit-on-lobbying-powerhouse-mercury-llc
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143577409
Paul Manafort’s flip is a major turning point in the Mueller investigation
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143576338
Time to put president and party false equivalence to bed again.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143741748
Just a little comparison...
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143741769
Finally let's give fair and due recognition to one of wannabe strongman Trump's mates again.
what is self explanatory... your love for russian colluders like trump? You cult45 people hang out with the worst guys on the planet.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=142325166
"A Series Of Suspicious Money Transfers Followed The Trump Tower Meeting"
Paul Manafort’s decision to cooperate with Robert Mueller could clarify several of the biggest mysteries of the Russia investigation.
Franklin Foer
Sep 14, 2018
Jonathan Ernst / Reuters / Thanh Do / The Atlantic
What kind of threat does Paul Manafort now pose to Donald Trump? Robert Mueller’s indictment of the fallen lobbyist is a masterful portrait of a craven man and his methods. But the chronology contained in the document filed this morning takes us right up to the eve of Manafort joining the Trump campaign, and then leaves the reader bursting with curiosity about what comes next. While Mueller has tied up all sorts of narratives about Manafort’s strange career in Ukraine, so many strands of the Manafort story remain maddeningly untidy.
{ Paul Manafort’s decades of shady deals laid the groundwork for the corruption of Washington.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/paul-manafort-american-hustler/550925/ ]
Perhaps not even Mueller fully knows what Manafort has to offer about his time in the Trump campaign. But in the unresolved threads of the tale, there are hints of the subjects that Manafort could clarify. When we look at ellipses in the case that Mueller has laid out, all the chapters of the Manafort story he hasn’t yet officially pursued, we can guess the lines of questioning that might dominate Manafort’s meetings with the lawyers in the special counsel’s office.
The Oleg Deripaska Connection
At the very beginning of his time working in Ukraine in 2003, Paul Manafort was in the employ of one Russia’s richest men, an aluminum magnate named Oleg Deripaska. We lazily describe many Russian oligarchs as residing in Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. But in the case of Deripaska, that closeness is a documented fact.
From 2003 to 2008, Manafort and his firm worked for Deripaska across Europe—in Montenegro, Georgia, and Ukraine. Over that time, the consultant and the client also became business partners. Deripaska invested millions in a private-equity fund that Manafort established, with the intent of buying assets across the former Soviet Union. Based on various court filings and lawsuits, we know that the relationship went very badly. In these documents, Deripaska suggests that Manafort might have stolen his money. And based on the special counsel’s filings, we also know that Manafort owed Deripaska even more money in the form of unpaid loans. Instead of making an effort to settle these large debts, Deripaska says that Manafort simply stopped returning his messages.
Manafort finally reached out to Deripaska, just after he joined Donald Trump’s campaign. In emails .. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/emails-suggest-manafort-sought-approval-from-putin-ally-deripaska/541677/ .. obtained by The Atlantic that Paul Manafort traded with an aide, Manafort proposed giving Deripaska special access to the campaign, with the apparent hope of making his debts disappear. We don’t know what became of Manafort’s outreach to Deripaska. Perhaps it yielded nothing. Deripaska claims that he never received messages from Manafort in 2016. But it’s also worth watching hidden video footage of Deripaska sitting on his yacht with a top Putin official, procured by the Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny. The video captured a meeting held in August 2016, two weeks before Manafort resigned as campaign chair. According to Navalny, the video lends credibility to the theory that Deripaska might have been a crucial intermediary between Manafort and the Kremlin.
[ INSERT:
BOREALIS, yep, result gives credence to Mueller's probe. It certainly puts to rest Trump's much repeated, bullshit mantra that the whole thing is a hoax
[...]
Yep, Manafort's "How do we use to get whole" ..
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/emails-suggest-manafort-sought-approval-from-putin-ally-deripaska/541677/
to Kilimnik for Deripaska and others benefit sure suggests Manafort intended to use his position with Trump to fix up his Russian debts.
.. posted May '18, with more ..
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=140578600
.. all here ..
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143070379 ]
The Curious Case of Konstantin Kilimnik
Robert Mueller has periodically suggested that Manafort’s top aide was an active agent of Russian intelligence in 2016. When I profiled .. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/the-astonishing-tale-of-the-man-mueller-calls-person-a/562217/ .. Konstantin Kilimnik earlier this year, an old colleague of his quoted Manafort as describing him as “my Russian brain.” Is this connection to Russian intelligence just a meaningless coincidence? Kilimnik was Manafort’s primary interface with Deripaska.
[ One of the most shocking revelations from the Mueller investigation
is the suggestion that Manafort’s longtime aide is a pawn of Russian intelligence.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/the-astonishing-tale-of-the-man-mueller-calls-person-a/562217/ ]
Manafort’s Loans
Paul Manafort’s recent career could be read as a rolling series of nadirs. One of those low points was his departure from the Trump campaign on August 19, 2016. He left after The New York Times .. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/politics/paul-manafort-ukraine-donald-trump.html .. reported that Manafort was receiving off-the-books payments from his Ukrainian clients. The very day that Manafort resigned, he created a new LLC called Summerbreeze. In the months that followed, the LLC began receiving millions in loans from financial institutions with ties to Trump. Why would these lenders give cash to Manafort given the press attention he was receiving and his clearly troubled finances? (In the previous Manafort trial, the special counsel alleged that Manafort promised to help the head of one of these banks obtain a job in the Trump administration.)
Roger Stone
We know that the political consultant Roger Stone has proclaimed .. https://www.businessinsider.com/roger-stone-says-he-could-be-indicted-by-mueller-2018-6 .. that Mueller will possibly indict him soon. (Stone apparently conversed with WikiLeaks about hacked material.) But that promise of an indictment hasn’t actually arrived. Manafort might be able to fill in whatever blanks exist in that case. Manafort’s friendship with Stone traces back to the 1970s, when Manafort managed Stone’s campaign to run the Young Republicans group. During the ’80s, they became business partners and created a legendary consulting firm together. If Mueller does intend to pursue a case against Stone, he suddenly has his oldest confidant as a cooperating witness.
[ INSERT:
A Timeline of Paul Manafort’s Relationship with Donald Trump
They’ve known each other since the 1980s.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143585543
.. plus ..
The Manafort Guilty Plea, the Mueller Investigation, and the President
[...]
Did Trump Just Admit to an Impeachable [obstruction] Offense?
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143577185
.. and ..
What could Paul Manafort share with Mueller? A lot, potentially.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143574143 ]
The Trump Tower Meeting
I have never invested much significance in the Trump Tower meeting on June 9, 2016, with the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. It doesn’t seem to have been the prelude to anything meaningful, an apparent disappointment to all those who attended. But Manafort was a presence in the room, a careful note-taker, and a witness to whatever transpired. And until we know more about the meeting, it’s impossible to know with certainty whether it was as hapless as conventionally portrayed.
[ INSERT:
I asked 6 legal experts if Trump obstructed justice. Here’s what they told me.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143586021 ]
A Troubling Pattern
When reading Mueller’s technicolor account of Manafort’s tactics in Ukraine, it’s clear that Manafort had no scruples about his work. He prided himself on smearing his client’s political opponents; he created sham think tanks and generated phony pressure campaigns. He funded his work using methods designed to evade detection and to skirt legal constraints. This work merely repeats patterns that appear elsewhere in Manafort’s body of work. Why would he suddenly have broken with character in the course of the Trump campaign? Thanks to the cooperation of Manafort’s deputy Rick Gates, Mueller probably has a very keen sense of how to lead this line of questioning. For nearly two years, the public has lived with the tension that comes with an unresolved narrative, the outcome of which has potentially extraordinary implications. Today represents a looping turn in the direction of closure.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter .. https://www.theatlantic.com/contact/letters/ .. to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.
Franklin Foer is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He is the author of World Without Mind .. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1101981113/theatla05-20/ .. and How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization .. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0013M31GE/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 . He is the former editor of The New Republic
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/09/paul-manafort-cooperating-mueller/570364/
See also:
Timeline: The birth of the Russia investigation
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143668888
TRUMP'S GROWING LEGAL TEAM HAS A PROBLEM: IT'S OPERATING PARTLY IN THE DARK
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143627148
BOREALIS, MIKE PENCE WILL BE THE MOST POWERFUL CHRISTIAN SUPREMACIST IN U.S. HISTORY
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143620353
That twit and Rooster have come up with the same story that was posted at the end of July.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143588568
John Kerry Calls Trump An Insecure Teenage Girl Who Pays More Attention To Twitter Than His Job
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143584276
The Trump organization is under investigation... The Trump Foundation, which
appears to have operated as a Trump family piggy bank, is under investigation.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143581577
Mueller Just Called Bullshit on Lobbying Powerhouse Mercury LLC
.. with link added in reply ..
https://www.thedailybeast.com/mueller-just-called-bullshit-on-lobbying-powerhouse-mercury-llc
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143577409
Paul Manafort’s flip is a major turning point in the Mueller investigation
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143576338
Time to put president and party false equivalence to bed again.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143741748
Just a little comparison...
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143741769
Finally let's give fair and due recognition to one of wannabe strongman Trump's mates again.
what is self explanatory... your love for russian colluders like trump? You cult45 people hang out with the worst guys on the planet.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=142325166
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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