"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Not included in that brief is a direct encounter with Mr Trump.
The Washington Post reported that barely a month after Mr Trump declared his candidacy for the presidency, Ms Butina asked the candidate a question during a public forum about Russian sanctions and his plans towards Russia.
It was seemingly innocuous. Mr Trump issued his standard attack on President Barack Obama and added "I know Putin — I'll tell you what — we get along with Putin".
She also reportedly had a brief encounter with Don Junior, Mr Trump's son.
Photo: Prosecutors accused Butina of trying to infiltrate the powerful NRA gun lobby. (Facebook)
But there is another more critical link to Mr Trump and his immediate family.
Butina's boyfriend, Republican activist Paul Erickson, was in contact with the Trump campaign.
He hasn't been charged yet, though he has reportedly received a "target letter" from investigators saying they may file conspiracy charges against him.
Mr Trump's argument that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's work is a "witch hunt" remains just an attempted smear.
Yes, Russians have been charged before — 13 Russians and three companies have been indicted with conspiracy to tamper with the 2016 election.
A further 12 Russian intelligence officers have been indicted for hacking Democratic Party targets.
But today on US soil a Russian is prepared to plead guilty to being an illegal foreign agent, to working in the US at the direction of an unnamed "Russian official".
Photo: Maria Butina is expected to plead guilty to being a foreign agent after reaching a deal with prosecutors. (AP: Jon Elswick.)
Title 18 of the US Code sections 371 and 951 make it clear from their titles:
371 Conspiracy 951 Agents of Foreign Governments
The FBI literally has her communications in which she states "I am ready for further orders".
What this plea deal between Butina and the US Attorney's office does show is that the Mueller investigation is inching ever closer to the question of collusion.
This is a decent read. Some of our local "useful idiots" should recognize a few of it's elements. Russia Is Co-opting Angry Young Men [...] In the United States too, the alt-right and Kremlin ideologues share a common cause. While many of these ties are the result of mutual admiration more than active recruitment, the recent charges against the gun-rights advocate Maria Butina for serving as a Russian agent prove the Kremlin is also actively seeking to cultivate groups on the American right. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143314494
New outcry over Trump's revocation of Brennan security clearance [...] Representatives Elijah Cummings and Stephen Lynch, top Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, in a letter on Monday to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, questioned the security clearance of John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser. p - Cummings and Lynch asked Kelly to turn over documents related to whether Bolton, in security clearance forms or “other White House vetting materials,” reported that in 2013 he participated by video in a roundtable discussion on gun rights organized by Maria Butina. p - Butina was arrested in July and accused of acting as a Russian agent while developing ties with U.S. citizens and infiltrating political groups. p - The Washington Post has reported that Bolton recorded the video promoting an expansion of gun rights in Russia used by Right to Bear Arms, a group Butina formed. p - The White House National Security Council had no immediate comment on the letter. White House aides also declined to comment. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143044428
The NRA Says It’s in Deep Financial Trouble, May Be ‘Unable to Exist A new legal filing by the powerful gun group against the state of New York paints a grim picture August 3, 2018 11:10AM ET by Tim Dickinson The National Rifle Association warns that it is in grave financial jeopardy, according to a recent court filing obtained by Rolling Stone, and that it could soon “be unable to exist… or pursue its advocacy mission.” (Read the NRA’s legal complaint at the bottom of this story.) p - The reason, according to the NRA filing, is not its deep entanglement with alleged Russian agents like Maria Butina. "Inside the Decade-Long Russian Campaign to Infiltrate the NRA and Help Elect Trump" https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/inside-the-decade-long-russian-campaign-to-infiltrate-the-nra-and-help-elect-trump-630054/ p - Instead, the gun group has been suing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state’s financial regulators since May, claiming the NRA has been subject to a state-led “blacklisting campaign” that has inflicted “tens of millions of dollars in damages.” https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=142672869
Alleged Russian agent's infiltration of GOP circles anything but subtle By Sara Murray, CNN Updated 7:59 PM ET, Thu August 2, 2018 The alleged covert Russian agent liked to communicate via Twitter messages and WhatsApp. Her overly flirtatious approach left men wondering what she was truly after. She tended to brag about her ties to Russian intelligence when she was intoxicated, according to people familiar with the situation. p - "She's like a Scud missile. There's no precision," said CIA veteran Robert Baer, a CNN intelligence and security analyst. p - Butina has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy and acting as a foreign agent in the US. Her lawyer, Robert Driscoll, told CNN Wednesday that she wouldn't take a deal from prosecutors if it meant admitting she was a spy. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=142659689
fuagf,...this is an all-inclusive time line connecting Butina the various individuals and illegal activity,.... [...] Update, July 16, 2018: Russian gun activist Maria Butina has been charged in an alleged political conspiracy against the United States. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=142332515
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