Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by Belligerent Savant » Sun Oct 29, 2017 7:32 am
by seemslikeadream » Sun Oct 29, 2017 11:03 am
? Jeff Wells invited me to join RI before it even was established. He knew exactly the way I posted. He knew that I was interested in many things including politics after all that is where we met, at a political discussion board. So if you don't mind I will continue to post the way I have always done. And you are free to not waste your time clicking on this thread or any other thread I have started including the ones that are not about politics, of which there are many. You made your objections to many things that are discussed here, REPEATEDLY, I have a suggestion why don't you start a thread about something, ANYTHING that you think is up to your standards instead of constantly complaining about what others are talking about...I continue to wait in great anticipation of this novel occurrence.
by PufPuf93 » Sun Oct 29, 2017 11:57 am
Belligerent Savant » Sun Oct 29, 2017 4:32 am wrote:.
Puf:
I was triggered by the premise/allusion (through the use of the word "reset" ) that any of the noise issued as 'news' these days can be considered a sign of positive change for the people.
That said, I've no doubt (from all I've seen of your contributions here) you are an authentic soul - my comments were laser-focused on the use of the word, not you, of course.
by seemslikeadream » Sun Oct 29, 2017 12:00 pm
by Belligerent Savant » Sun Oct 29, 2017 12:01 pm
by seemslikeadream » Sun Oct 29, 2017 12:03 pm
And with that, I step back out of your* sandbox; you can continue playing uninterrupted. Enjoy.
That's all this is. Nothing more. I'd say it's a surprise that I must be explicit about this here at RI, but that ship sailed some time ago.
Why pay mind to the rabble?
*y'all know who you are.
Belligerent Savant » Sat Oct 28, 2017 10:39 pm wrote:.
A reset! You are surely f'ing with us, right?
A reset.
This is all fucking theatrics. Nothing is being "reset" . The plebes are being fed distractions/diversions per usual.
That's all this is. Nothing more. I'd say it's a surprise that I must be explicit about this here at RI, but that ship sailed some time ago.
And with that, I step back out of your* sandbox; you can continue playing uninterrupted. Enjoy.
*y'all know who you are.
Belligerent Savant » Sat Oct 28, 2017 11:02 pm wrote:.
Scroll up, Miss SLAD. You'll see it.
Well, there is some authenticity out there.
There are examples in the arts. Creative expression. Relationships.
But in politics? Increasingly rare, if to be found at all.
Why pay mind to the rabble?
seemslikeadream » Sun Oct 29, 2017 11:00 am wrote:good now can the derailing of this thread end..please?
by seemslikeadream » Sun Oct 29, 2017 2:07 pm
On eve of indictments, desperate Trump demands smearing of Mueller in full-scale meltdown
By Caroline Orr |
OCTOBER 29, 2017
With the first charges in the Russia investigation expected Monday, Donald Trump is now in a complete state of panic.
"Look over there! Look anywhere but at me!"(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
The first indictment — or possibly, indictments — in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation are expected on Monday.
So of course, Donald Trump took to Twitter Sunday morning in a desperate and very familiar attempt to shift attention away from him.
In a mid-morning tirade, Trump railed against the fact that he is the one being investigated, not Hillary Clinton. He also claimed that Republicans were angry and unified along with him, implying that the GOP is helping him undermine a federal investigation into election interference from a hostile foreign power.
His tweets hit on everything from the debunked Uranium One story to — what else — Clinton’s emails.Donald J. TrumpVerified account
@realDonaldTrump
Follow Follow @realDonaldTrump
More
Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier (now $12,000,000?),..Donald J. TrumpVerified account
@realDonaldTrump
Follow Follow @realDonaldTrump
More
...the Uranium to Russia deal, the 33,000 plus deleted Emails, the Comey fix and so much more. Instead they look at phony Trump/Russia,....
Trump also claimed that the “Dems are using this terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics,” despite the fact that the investigation is bipartisan.
He then said Republicans “are now fighting back like never before” — implying that the GOP is aiding his efforts to sabotage the investigation, or else demanding that they start.Donald J. TrumpVerified account
@realDonaldTrump
Follow Follow @realDonaldTrump
More
..."collusion," which doesn't exist. The Dems are using this terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics, but the R's...
7:09 AM - 29 Oct 2017Donald J. TrumpVerified account
@realDonaldTrump
Follow Follow @realDonaldTrump
More
...are now fighting back like never before. There is so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out. DO SOMETHING!
7:17 AM - 29 Oct 2017
No matter how much Trump and his cronies try to push their bizarre alternative reality where Clinton is the president who must be held accountable, the actual reality is that it is the corruption-laden Trump team currently in power, and in the line of sight of Mueller.
The repugnant smearing of Mueller, a decorated Vietnam veteran, will also not serve to distract the public from the truth.
And Trump can tweet all he wants, but he should keep one thing in mind: These are all admissible as evidence. Perhaps Republicans should consider that, too.
https://shareblue.com/on-eve-of-indictm ... -meltdown/
Trump lawyers scramble to prepare for new stage of Russia probe
The president’s legal team is bracing for the first charges just five months into the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.
By DARREN SAMUELSOHN 10/28/2017 12:31 PM EDT Updated 10/29/2017 11:35 AM EDT
President Donald Trump’s White House and personal lawyers scrambled Saturday to learn where the knife might fall in the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, triggering a guessing game among aides after days of trying to turn attention away from allegations of collusion with Russia during the election.
Attorneys involved in the case said their cellphones have been ringing nonstop as they connected with each other, and with reporters, trying to gather more concrete details after a CNN report Friday night that a federal grand jury had approved the first charges in the Russia investigation.
While the report did not cite names, attorneys close to the case said they were discussing whether the indictment was for two known Mueller targets: former campaign chairman Paul Manafort or former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Several attorneys who said they were in touch with the Manafort and Flynn lawyers said they had not been notified of any matter related to an indictment — which is customary in a white-collar criminal investigation — leading them to believe it wasn’t either of those two former high-ranking Trump aides. An attorney for Manafort did not respond to a request for comment. Michael Flynn’s attorney, Robert Kelner, declined to comment.
The attorneys close to the case also said they wouldn’t be surprised if the charges were targeting Flynn or Manafort family members, or a longtime accountant or lawyer.
Andrew Weissmann, one of Mueller’s top attorneys and a frequent presence over the last month at the grand jury proceedings in Washington, including on Friday, was known to use that tactic to gain advantage when attempting to prosecute Enron executives in the mid-2000s. “That moves you toward making a deal when the son or a wife is indicted,” said a white-collar attorney familiar with the Mueller probe.
For example, an indictment of Flynn’s son, who worked for his father’s lobbying firm, could put pressure on Flynn to begin to cooperate with investigators. Flynn and his son have been under scrutiny for their lobbying work on behalf of a Turkish client with ties to the country’s authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is friendly with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Flynn Jr. also accompanied his father to Moscow in December 2015 for a paid speech, which Putin attended, celebrating the Russian propaganda outlet RT. Michael Flynn did not disclose the payments in his application to renew his security clearance in 2016; the Democratic and GOP leaders of the House Oversight Committee earlier this year said that was likely an illegal omission.
Barry Coburn, Michael Flynn Jr.’s attorney, also declined to comment. Alan Futerfas, an attorney for Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., said he had no insight into the CNN story or any Mueller indictments.
Aaron May, an attorney for Jeffrey Yohai, Manafort’s former son-in-law, who has come under scrutiny for real estate transactions conducted with Paul Manafort, said he couldn’t talk about the case, but not because he was under any kind of court order. “I don’t know,” he said.
Several lawyers close to the case were trying to gauge the accuracy of the original report, which POLITICO has not independently confirmed. Speculation also was rising over who would release information that is sealed by a federal judge. “If the leaker isn’t the defense, that could be a legal issue,” said Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago, though he said that his “gut” suggests the story came from a defense attorney “who was told to have his client in court on Monday.”
A spokesman for Mueller, Peter Carr, declined to comment.
While Trump’s lawyers said they were just as in the dark in deducing what was happening on the Mueller indictment front, they noted White House staff interviews were continuing. They said the president’s team was adamant about maintaining a cooperative approach with the special counsel — even though the public push back from the president, his White House communications staff and even his 2020 reelection campaign were headed in a very different direction.
As Friday night’s news dominated the cable airwaves, the president on Twitter posted a link to a New York Post tabloid op-ed with the headline, “How Team Hillary played the press for fools on Russia” along with a 34-second video titled “WHAT HAPPENED.”
Trump earlier on Friday also went after the Russia investigations and added a jab at his 2016 election rival Hillary Clinton, tweeting, “It is now commonly agreed, after many months of COSTLY looking, that there was NO collusion between Russia and Trump. Was collusion with HC!”
During her daily press briefing at the White House on Friday, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump’s tweet about an expensive investigation wasn’t just about the Mueller probe. “That's not the only investigation that's taking place. Congress has spent a great deal of time on this — a better part of a year. All of your news organizations have actually spent probably a lot of money on this as well, which we would consider probably a pretty big waste,” she said.
The Trump campaign in a text message to supporters just before the CNN story broke blasted out a fundraising solicitation for upwards of $2,700 from “Trump Headquarters” with a subject line, “RUSSIA?”
“The Script Has Been Flipped,” the campaign’s website read. “Crooked Hillary and the DNC have been EXPOSED paying a company to use a foreign agent to take down my Presidency. … And the company they used has ties to Russia. I need the IMMEDIATE support of the American people. Contribute now and DEMAND answers from Crooked Hillary and the DNC!”
GOP operative and longtime Trump ally Roger Stone went on a Twitter tear against CNN commentators who were dissecting their scoop, tweeting multiple derogatory messages at the anchor. “If Carl Bernstein says something the overwhelming odds are that it’s false lied about Watergate lying lying now” he posted a few minutes later.
Stone is a longtime Trump associate who helped the billionaire set up an exploratory run for president in 1999 and became an informal adviser to his 2016 campaign. He is also a former Manafort lobbying partner.
Stone kept up the attacks in a pre-dawn email Saturday to POLITICO, this time training his fire on Mueller. “I hear Mueller has indicted Manafort's driver for double parking and nailing Manafort's housekeeper for tearing the tags off sofa cushions,” Stone wrote, calling for the former FBI director to be “prosecuted for his crimes.”
Rep. Eric Swalwell, an outspoken House Intelligence Committee member, suggested via Twitter that Republicans would face their own troubles with their recent moves to open investigations into Clinton and the DNC. “Please, everyone, save this tweet. Trust me. #TrumpRussia,” the California Democrat wrote on Twitter, citing a @GOP message with the same line used by the Trump campaign: “The script has flipped on the Russia investigation.”
A Mueller indictment in a little over five months since his mid-May appointment — if accurate — would mean movement at a much faster pace than the 17-month average seen in the nine previous independent counsel and special counsel cases that date back to the Carter administration where any criminal charges got filed, according to a POLITICO analysis of the historical legal record.
Mueller has been working off others’ efforts. In his testimony earlier this year to the Senate, former FBI Director James Comey explained that the FBI had been investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election since July 2016. And Manafort’s work in Ukraine had been under DOJ scrutiny since as far back as 2014, according to an AP report this spring.
The only case that would have moved at a faster pace than Mueller’s — Whitewater — had certain similar circumstances.
In that probe, the first independent counsel, Robert Fiske, inherited a number of earlier investigative efforts involving the Clintons’ land deals in Arkansas that sped along his first major action just two months after his January 1994 appointment. Fiske that March notched a guilty plea on federal fraud charges against David Hale, an Arkansas political insider and former municipal judge who said Bill Clinton as governor had pressured him to approve an illegal government-subsidized loan. Hale agreed to cooperate with Fiske as part of the wider Whitewater investigation.
For comparison, it took special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald nearly 22 months until October 2005 to indict Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, for making false statements to the FBI, obstruction of justice and perjury over his testimony before the federal grand jury. Independent counsel David Barrett needed almost 28 months in his investigation of Clinton HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, though the first charges were filed in September 1997 against Cisneros' mistress, Linda Medlar-Jones, as well as her sister and brother-in-law, Patsy and Allen Wooten, on multiple charges including fraud, false statements, money laundering and conspiracy surrounding the purchase of a home financed by money from Cisneros.
A former senior DOJ official who has worked with Mueller — but was unable himself to confirm the latest report — said that if true it would be well within the former FBI director’s character to bring an indictment this soon. “Bob combines thoroughness and speed,” the former official said.
Josh Gerstein and Josh Dawsey contributed to this report.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/ ... gal-244270
Trump lawyer Ty Cobb: President not worried about what Paul Manafort, Mike Flynn told Robert Mueller
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump ... le/2638904
Paul Manafort: Trump former campaign manager ‘not aware’ of possible criminal charges against him
A suspect could be detained as early as Monday
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 25201.html
EXCLUSIVE: Roger Stone Reveals His Private Conversations With Donald Trump
After this Friday’s bombshell report by CNN that Special Counsel Mueller about sealed indictments, Roger Stone went on a Twitter rampage, leading him to a permanent ban from the global social network.
Nobody can say yet what drove Stone to post a threatening tirade, but just like his last words in this interview, he probably will regret it.
https://thesternfacts.com/exclusive-rog ... 3900a69369
by seemslikeadream » Sun Oct 29, 2017 10:46 pm
1. I agree. Let one thing be clear: Manafort or Flynn indictment is a DIRECT INDICTMENT OF TRUMP. One HEADED his campaign, other WAS IN WH.Ale added,
Manafort or Flynn tie directly. The slime splash from either one would be impossible for Trump to avoid.
2. Manafort or Flynn being indicted is a DIRECT blow at Trump AND at his ENTIRE gang. Flynn's indictment is also VERY bad for PENCE.
3. Both Manafort and Flynn were indicted in EDVA MONTHS AGO, so let's not forget that whether it's tomorrow or not, they WILL be arrested.
4. Manafort was the HEAD of Trump's campaign for MONTHS, until he got the nom. There's video of Trump inviting him on stage thanking him.
5. So I better not see any ignorance like "Oh Manafort is peripheral" bc he couldn't be closer AND he is the one WHO CHOSE PENCE.
6. Pence was brought onto Trump campaign BY MANAFORT, Manafort TRICKED Trump into longer meeting with Pence and convinced him.
7. Manafort made up a story that Trump's plane had mechanical problems to make him stay the night in Indianapolis & do breakfast with Pence.
8. Trump had breakfast with the Pence family and Pence made aggressive pitch so he ditched Christie and chose Pence. MANAFORT MADE IT HAPPEN
9. PENCE KEPT TALKING TO MANAFORT DURING TRANSITION. REGULARLY. So drop the BS, Manafort is STRAIGHT IN THE HEART of Trump campaign & admin.
10. In case you forgot about how things actually went re: Pence, Manafort and Trump here's a summary.Manafort made Pence the VP, they talked regularly during the transition
By bejammin075
Wednesday Mar 22, 2017 · 1:15 PM CDT
Given the recent revelations about Paul Manafort, I thought this would be good to bring to everyone’s attention. Mike Pence is the Vice President because of Paul Manafort’s effort. During the transition period, Manafort was apparently talking regularly on the phone with Mike Pence, especially about personnel choices.
CBS News October 30th: Donald Trump offered Chris Christie vice president role before Mike Pence, sources sayManafort had arranged for Trump to meet with his [Manafort’s] first choice for the job on July 13: Indiana Governor Mike Pence. Afterwards, the plan was for Trump and Pence to then fly back to New York together and a formal announcement would be made, a campaign source said of Manafort’s thinking.
What had previously been reported as a “lucky break” by the New York Times was actually a swift political maneuver devised by the now fired campaign manager. Set on changing Trump’s mind, he concocted a story that Trump’s plane had mechanical problems, forcing the soon-to-be Republican nominee to stay the night in Indianapolis for breakfast with the Pence family on Wednesday morning.
Swayed by Pence’s aggressive pitch, Trump agreed to ditch Christie and make Pence his VP the following day, according to a source.
Daily Beast, November 30th "Paul Manafort Is Back and Advising Donald Trump on Cabinet Picks"
According to two sources with knowledge of the Trump presidential transition process, Manafort—whose formal association with the president-elect ended in August—is heavily involved with the staffing of the nascent administration.
…
“I think he’s weighing in on everything,” the former official said, “I think he still talks to Trump every day. I mean, Pence? That was all Manafort. Pence is on the phone with Manafort regularly.”
…
Another Trump campaign source who worked alongside Manafort confirmed to The Daily Beast that he is heavily involved in selecting the incoming administration’s “personnel picks.”
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/3 ... transition
11. So make no mistake, a Manafort indictment is a DIRECT and VERY damning indictment of BOTH Trump AND Pence. It is a HUGE deal.
12. The same exact thing applies to an indictment of Michael Flynn. Flynn WAS IN THE WHITE HOUSE, in a VERY significant position.
13. Both Pence and Trump & the WH as a whole LIED REPEATEDLY about Flynn and repeatedly IGNORED specific warnings abt him being compromised.
14. Pence literally made up a story about Flynn misleading him that has since been proven completely untrue as HE WAS BRIEFED re: Flynn.
15. Pence WAS told about Flynn being compromised AND KNEW, just like Trump did, about his foreign agent activities. They both COVERED IT UP.
16. Then Trump and Pence covered up the REAL story about Flynn's firing. To cover THEIR OWN conspiring to keep Russia happy that Flynn led.
17. Remember how TRUMP PERSONAL LAWYER Cohen met with Ukrainian MP, dinner organized by SATER, and said MP is tied to DERIPASKA? Right.
18. Meeting was to broker a ridiculous "peace deal" for Ukraine that naturally favored RUSSIA and forgot all about Russia's invasion.
19. Said deal was DELIVERED TO FLYNN, it ended up on HIS TABLE at WH, courtesy of Cohen. Cohen denied but was BUSTED. Mueller has evidence.
20. Flynn was directly contacted bc he was THE person to make this happen. This was of course about ultimately LIFTING RUSSIA SANCTIONS.
21. I don't think it's necessary to go further to show how Flynn's indictment is ALSO a DIRECT indictment of Trump, Pence AND White House.
22. Even if COHEN is indicted, that is a DIRECT indictment of Trump. So, STOP following the completely WRONG MSM idea about "Lower people".
23. PS:that Ukraine deal? Was drafted by Cohen brother's father-in-law. Just as FURTHER direct link. Again: Cohen is TRUMP'S PERSONAL LAWYER
24. So STOP buying the MISinformation that is "lower people" for Monday's indictments, because there is NO SUCH THING here.
25. ANYONE indicted on Monday, be it Manafort, Flynn, Kushner, Cohen, Sater, is a DIRECT indictment of Trump & WH. /END
https://twitter.com/aliasvaughn
by seemslikeadream » Mon Oct 30, 2017 10:25 am
by liminalOyster » Mon Oct 30, 2017 10:34 am
by seemslikeadream » Mon Oct 30, 2017 10:40 am
POLITICS 10/30/2017 10:31 am ET Updated 6 minutes ago
Trump Campaign Foreign Policy Adviser Pleads Guilty In Russia Probe
George Papadopolos admitted lying to the FBI.
By Ryan J. Reilly
WASHINGTON ― A foreign policy adviser to President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has pleaded guilty to a charge of lying to FBI agents.
George Papadopoulos, 30, pleaded guilty on Oct. 5, 2017, but the case wasn’t unsealed until Monday, when two other Trump associates were indicted by a federal grand jury. Papadopoulos reached a plea deal with prosecutors, and has since been cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Prosecutors’ statement of the offense alleges Papadopoulos “made material false statements and material omissions” during a Jan. 27, 2017, interview with the FBI. He was arrested July 27. Prosecutors agreed to recommend between no prison time to six months under the plea agreement.
Papadopoulos told the FBI an overseas professor had “told him about the Russians possessing ‘dirt’ on then-candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of ‘thousands of emails,’ but stated multiple times that he learned that information prior to joining the campaign,” according to court documents. In fact, Papadopoulos was contacted after he learned he’d be joining the campaign, and the professor only mentioned the “thousands of emails” after he’d been on the Trump campaign for more than a month.
The professor, the statement indicates, had “substantial connections to Russian government officials” even though Papadopoulos claimed the professor was “a nothing.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ge ... dc5fbfa210
Former Trump campaign adviser pleaded guilty to lying to FBI
Photo: Brynn Anderson / AP
George Papadopolous, former policy adviser to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI, the Special Counsel's Office announced today.
Why it matters: He's another Trump campaign official wrapped up in Robert Mueller's charges. But unlike Paul Manafort's indictment, the charges against Papadopolous are explicitly linked to attempts at collusion with Russia.
His involvement: In March 2016, Papadopolous tried to set up a meeting with Russian leadership and the Trump campaign team. He sent an email to the foreign policy team, according to Washington Post, promising a "meeting with Russian Leadership - Including Putin."
Although some members of the team were skeptical of the proposed meeting — including Paul Manafort, who rejected a May 2016 meeting from Papadopolous — he tried to set up at least 6 meetings with Russian officials and the Trump team between March and September 2016, per WashPost.
Legal details: Papadopolous' sentence hearing will be set for a later date, per the Special Counsel's Office. He will face up to six months in prison (though the max for this charge could be 5 years) and $500 to $9,500 in fines, according to the DOJ plea agreement.
https://www.axios.com/george-papadopolo ... 37360.html
George Papadopoulos cuts plea deal against Donald Trump and exposes criminal Trump-Russia collusion
Bill Palmer
Updated: 11:08 am EDT Mon Oct 30, 2017
Home » Politics
Even as the nation is still trying to get to know the name “Rick Gates” after he was arrested alongside Paul Manafort this morning, yet another name is coming front and center in Donald Trump’s Russia scandal. Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos has cut a plea deal with the Feds, and in the process he’s exposed a criminal level of collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russian government during the election.
If you’ve heard the name “George Papadopoulos” before, it’s because the Trump campaign initially tried to throw him under the bus when it first began voluntarily turning over campaign emails to Special Counsel Robert Mueller last month. What’s not clear is whether the campaign knew that Papadopoulos was already working with the Feds. According to numerous major news outlets Papadopoulos was caught lying to the FBI back in January, he was quietly arrested in July, and his plea deal secretly became official earlier this month. He’s confessed to the kind of crimes that leave no doubt about Trump-Russia collusion.
According to lengthy official court documents that became public today (link), George Papadopoulos took a meeting with a Kremlin-connected professor who promised to give him emails that had supposedly been stolen from Hillary Clinton. He initially lied to the FBI by claiming that the meeting took place before he joined the Trump campaign. He’s since confessed that the meeting took place while he was working as a Trump campaign adviser.
So now we have a Donald Trump campaign adviser formally confessing to having colluded with the Russian government on behalf of the Donald Trump campaign. Here’s what stands out: today’s criminal charges filed against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates have nothing to do with what Papadopoulos has given Mueller. That means we’re looking at just the start of the criminal takedowns. Trump tweeted this morning that “there is NO COLLUSION!” He couldn’t be more wrong.
by SonicG » Mon Oct 30, 2017 11:48 am
by seemslikeadream » Mon Oct 30, 2017 11:54 am
Ukraine Lobbying Contract Linked To Manafort Also Involved Another Trump Aide
Mike McSherry, who helped lead Trump's delegate strategy at the convention, is also listed in lobbying disclosures as having represented a nonprofit group tied to former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.
Posted on August 18, 2016, at 2:37 p.m.
Rosie Gray
ERIC THAYER / Reuters
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump's campaign chairman Paul Manafort is not the only Trump aide to have been involved in lobbying for Ukraine's pro-Russian ex-president.
Mike McSherry, a senior vice president at Mercury Public Affairs who helped lead the Trump campaign's convention committee strategy last month, is listed in Mercury's lobbying disclosure forms as having represented a Brussels-based nonprofit group linked to former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine. The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that Manafort steered the Centre toward hiring two lobbying firms in Washington: Mercury and the Podesta Group, which is run by Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman's brother.
During that era, Manafort was consulting for Yanukovych's Party of Regions. Yanukovych, a close Putin ally, now lives in Russia after being ousted from power in 2014.
Neither the firms nor Manafort filed documents with the Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, despite the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine's close ties to a foreign political leader and Manafort's work for Yanukovych's party. The Centre was founded by a top Party of Regions official. The AP reported that Manafort helped to steer a total of $2.2 million to the two firms in 2012.
McSherry's name appears in documents Mercury filed with the Senate under the Lobbying Disclosure Act.
Trump's campaign brought McSherry on to help with delegate efforts for the convention, and it was reported earlier this month that his role in the campaign was being expanded. McSherry did not respond to BuzzFeed News requests for comment.
An email obtained by BuzzFeed News shows McSherry taking an active role in lobbying for the Centre; in the February 2013 email, he reached out to a Republican senator's office to pass on a request from Vin Weber, the former congressman who is a partner at Mercury and also lobbied for the Ukrainian group, who wanted to set up a meeting for former Polish president Aleksander Kwaśniewsk on behalf of the Centre.
Weber told Yahoo News on Wednesday that Manafort had recruited him to represent the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, and that he had repeatedly asked Manafort who was backing the group financially, but Manafort would not say. Weber told Yahoo that he "never doubted they were tied to Yanukovych.”
The Brussels-based head of the group, Ina Kirsch, told BuzzFeed News she had "nothing to do with Manafort," though she told the AP she had met with Manafort twice.
A former Podesta employee told the AP that Manafort's associate Rick Gates, also now on the Trump campaign, had "described the nonprofit's role in an April 2012 meeting as supplying a source of money that could not be traced to the Ukrainian politicians who were paying him and Manafort."
Though FARA violations are rarely prosecuted, they carry a heavy potential penalty: up to five years in prison or a $250,000 fine. To avoid the stringent disclosures required by FARA, foreign governments and political leaders sometimes use seemingly unconnected groups that can hire lobbyists in their stead. Under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, lobbyists are not required to disclose as much information as under FARA.
Washington lawyer Ken Gross advised Mercury before they took on the client that they did not need to file under FARA. His legal opinion, which was also used by the Podesta Group, was based on the Centre's promise, in writing, that they were not backed by a foreign government or political leader. The written declaration, dated April 30, 2012, and signed by Kirsch, says that the Centre was not "directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed, or subsidized in whole or in major part by a government of a foreign country or a foreign political party."
"Mercury fully disclosed activity under the LDA," Gross told BuzzFeed News in an email, referring to the Lobbying Disclosure Act. "Mercury was not required to register under FARA based on the unequivocal written and oral certifications stating that the Centre was a private entity and was not under the direction or funded by the Ukrainian government or foreign political party. If the Centre had advised otherwise, Mercury would have registered under FARA without hesitation."
Gross said he did not think there could be grounds for an investigation because, "We did everything we could have reasonably done under the circumstances" to ensure that the Centre was not being directed by a foreign politician or government.
Podesta Group CEO Kimberly Fritts said that her firm "has a formal process in place, led by in-house counsel, to ensure that we follow the law, which includes determining whether our work for a given client would best be registered and reported under the Lobbying Disclosure Act or the Foreign Agent Registration Act. In this case, because the firm was partnering with Mercury, in-house counsel coordinated with Mercury’s counsel and Mercury’s outside legal counsel. Together, they concluded that LDA was the appropriate reporting route. If counsel had determined FARA was the way to go, we would have gladly registered under FARA."
Fritts said that the Centre attested in writing that it was not being controlled or subsidized by a foreign government or party.
"Further, we were not aware that Rick Gates was a Party of Regions consultant at the time he introduced us to the Centre. We believed he was working for the Centre, as we were hired to do," Fritts said.
Mercury's Weber did not return a request for comment.
In the run-up to the Ukrainian parliamentary elections in 2012, the Centre was behind a covert scheme to spread its talking points among U.S. conservative media. One person involved in the arrangement said they had been paid $500 to do so.
There have been several revelations about Manafort's connections to pro-Russian forces in Ukraine over the course of the campaign. The Times of London also reported on Wednesday that a Ukrainian prosecutor has accused Manafort of fomenting anti-NATO protests in Crimea prior to Russia's annexation of Crimea. And last week, the New York Times reported that a secret Party of Regions letter showed $12.7 million in cash payments listed for Manafort, though Manafort denies receiving the money.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/ukra ... .xkW5zmkzN
Thoughts On the Papadopolous Plea
By JOSH MARSHALL Published OCTOBER 30, 2017 12:06 PM
We can’t know these things for sure. But it certainly seems like Mueller was sending a message and sending a shock to the Trump White House by releasing the Papadopolous charges mid-morning. The Manafort/Gates charges are very serious as crimes and bring heavy punishments. They’re a big deal. But they do not connect directly to the campaign’s ties with Russia or even the campaign itself. The White House can accurately say that these are crimes that do not relate to them, as they have. (Set aside for the moment that they are serious crimes undertaken by the campaign chairman while the campaign was underway and that they provide Mueller with immense leverage to extract more information from Manafort.)
The Papadopolous plea is quite different.
It shows a Trump foreign policy advisor in active communication with what appear to be Russian government officials or spies trying to get dirt on Hillary Clinton, arrange meetings with Russian government officials (even Vladimir Putin, rather ludicrously) and solicit Russian support. That an active foreign policy advisor was taking these actions while in active communication with the campaign about those actions is quite damning. An unnamed campaign official sent back word that a meeting with Trump himself was not happening.
Papadopolous was arrested in July and has apparently been cooperating since. I see no purely legal reason why the news of his arrest in July and guilty plea in early October had to be revealed today, other than keeping the news from Manafort. One other potential reason is that one of the ‘campaign officials’ referenced in the Papadopolous plea appears to be Manafort. It sends two clear messages. First, we’re not at all done with collusion and we’re making progress. Second, we arrested Papadopolous in July and he pled out in October and no one knew. So don’t think you have any idea what we have.
This may be projecting too much. But in revealing the Manafort news early, giving time for the White House to respond as you’d expect (nothing to do with us or Russia or the campaign) and then following up by revealing this Papadopolous indictment certainly has the feel of sucker punching the White House.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/tho ... olous-plea
There’s a sealed “Indictment (A)” and it looks like it’s against Donald Trump
Bill Palmer
Updated: 12:47 pm EDT Mon Oct 30, 2017
Home » Opinion
For all the attention being given today to the arrests of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump campaign adviser Rick Gates, the text of their indictment reveals something which may be a far bigger story. It has to do with the legal labeling of the Manafort and Gates indictment in question, which very much reads like there’s also a sealed indictment against Donald Trump.
As caught by the keen eye of Kierán Suckling of the Center for Biological Diversity and then pointed out on Twitter, the Manafort-Gates indictment is labeled “Indictment (B)” (link). This one letter matters greatly, because it means there’s also an Indictment (A), which is still sealed. By the nature of these things, Indictment (A) is more high profile than Indictment (B). That means it’s someone higher profile than Paul Manafort. That’s a very short list. There’s also only one reason for it to still be sealed.
Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos has also been indicted, but he has a different case number altogether – so he can’t be Indictment (A). Nor can it be Michael Flynn, because he’s being pursued by a different federal grand jury in a different district altogether. And again, by definition, Indictment (A) has to be higher profile than Indictment (B). That means it can only possibly be three people: Jeff Sessions, Mike Pence, or Donald Trump. We can narrow it down further, because if it were Sessions, it probably wouldn’t be sealed.
It’s entirely believable that an indictment against Donald Trump or Mike Pence would still be sealed. But it’s highly difficult to imagine that Robert Mueller is indicting Pence for crimes related to Paul Manafort, while not indicting Trump. So the only logical interpretation is that this sealed indictment is against Donald Trump. Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe and others have argued that a sitting president can indeed be indicted.
http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/sea ... ment/5796/
by stillrobertpaulsen » Mon Oct 30, 2017 3:23 pm
seemslikeadream » Mon Oct 30, 2017 9:40 am wrote:I am feeling more relief but have to admit overwhelming joy that trump is finally going to go to jail
This is just the beginning
by seemslikeadream » Mon Oct 30, 2017 4:25 pm
The group was formed by six former members of Trump and Pence's staffs, including former spokeswoman Katrina Pierson and former deputy campaign manager Rick Gates. The group formed in January to gather people who "believe in the Trump agenda," Gates said at the time.
“This goes beyond Trump supporters,” Gates told the Associated Press in January. “We’re trying to capture all people who believe in the Trump agenda.”
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... r-opposing
Back in January, it was announced that Rick Gates would be part of the Mercer-funded America First Policies non-profit, an organization that is reportedly intended as Trump's version of Organizing for Action, an organization formed to promote President Obama's policies.
Trump Advisers Start 'America First Policies' Nonprofit
Six of President Donald Trump's top campaign aides have banded together to start a nonprofit called "America First Policies" to back the White House agenda.
The group includes Trump's digital and data director Brad Parscale, onetime deputy campaign manager Rick Gates and two campaign advisers to Vice President Mike Pence, Nick Ayers and Marty Obst.
David Bossie and Katrina Pierson also will be involved, according to a statement announcing the group.
"Some of the same like-minded individuals who put their energy into getting Mr. Trump elected are now going to be part of a grassroots group to go out there and help with the agenda, help the White House be successful," Parscale said.
Of course, unlike Organizing for Action, America First Policies is heavily funded by a single American oligarch, Robert Mercer, a man who also has himself a propaganda arm — Breitbart News — and his own PsyOps outfit, Cambridge Analytica. I'm also going to guess that Mercer, whose cadre of operatives (Conway, Bannon and Bossie) took over the top three spots in the Trump campaign after the undeniably Russian-connected Manafort slithered off, ain't quite as keen on the Putin-love as some of the other power players in Failing El Presidente Trump's orbit.
......
Rick Gates out at America First Policies over Manafort ties to Russia
Washington (CNN) Rick Gates, the longtime deputy to President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, was forced to leave his position with a nonprofit supporting Trump this week due to his longstanding relationship with Manafort, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
Gates' exit from America First Policies came after the Associated Press reported this week that Manafort had sought to further Russian government interests in his work for a Russian businessman. Gates did not return CNN's requests for comment.
One administration source familiar with the matter called the departure "amicable." A second source told CNN that Gates was asked to leave after his name popped back into the news this week due to his connections to Manafort.
Gates previously served as Manafort's deputy when he was campaign chairman, and has long worked with him in the private sector, including in consulting work for foreign interests.
Gates and five other former Trump staffers, including Digital Director Brad Parscale and longtime Mike Pence aide Nick Ayers, formed a nonprofit called America First Policies with backing from wealthy Republican donors Bob and Rebekah Mercer.
Rick Gates
FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN AIDE/PAUL MANAFORT DEPUTY
Rick Gates is Paul Manafort’s protégé and junior partner who served with him as deputy campaign chairman for the Trump campaign. When Manafort left in August 2016, Gates moved to the Republican National Committee where he was a liaison to the campaign, working on joint fundraising and other agreements. After the election, Gates and five other former Trump staffers, including Digital Director Brad Parscale and longtime Mike Pence aide Nick Ayers, formed a nonprofit called America First Policies with backing from wealthy Republican donors Bob and Rebekah Mercer. The nonprofit’s goal was to support the President’s agenda.
In March 2017, America First Policies asked Gates to leave because of his connection to Manafort, who –The Associated Press discovered – had worked for a Russian billionaire furthering the interests of Vladimir Putin’s government.
In June, a Trump campaign lawyer sent a memo to staffers asking them to save records pertaining to five members of the transition team, including Manafort and Gates, giving the impression Gates either is or will soon be under investigation.
Gates first met Manafort as an intern for Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly -- Manafort’s D.C. consulting firm -- in the 1980s. He then went on to work with lobbyist Rick Davis who formed a new firm with Manafort in 2006.
Davis Manafort opened an office in Kiev, Ukraine and worked for Kremlin-allied president Viktor Yanukovych. At the same time, Davis and Manafort pursued investment deals in Eastern Europe, connecting with Russian oligarch and Putin ally Oleg Deripaska who is suspected of having ties to organized crime. When Davis left to join Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign 2008, Gates took over his part of the business. Gates’ name has turned up on documents connected to shell companies Davis Manafort set up in Cyprus to facilitate deals and accept payments.
Gates claims he and Manafort are being targeted unfairly.
https://investigaterussia.org/players/rick-gates
Trump Waives Ethics Rules for Top Pence Aide to Meet With PAC
By Bill Allison
October 19, 2017, 6:09 PM CDT
Nick Ayers previously worked for Pence’s leadership committee
Ayers called for purge of GOP lawmakers in meeting with donors
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/ ... ent=safari
Manafort protege Rick Gates worked in Ukraine, made his way into Trump campaign’s inner circle
BY
TERENCE CULLEN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Updated: Monday, October 30, 2017, 9:49 AM
Rick Gates, the longtime protege of ex-Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, was advised to turn himself in Monday along with his mentor as part of the Russia investigation.
Both were hit with 12 counts Monday, including conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, according to the Justice Department.
Gates’s relationship with Manafort goes back decades, and they’ve steadily worked together for more than 10 years.
He followed Manafort overseas to work in Ukraine, and later to the Trump campaign, where he was a senior aide in the future President’s inner circle.
Paul Manafort indicted for money laundering by Russia probe
When Manafort’s role was reduced, Gates stayed with the campaign, however, and went on to run a pro-Trump group after the election.
Connection with Manafort
Gates, 45, first started as an intern three decades ago at Black, Manafort, Stone, Kelly — an influential Washington lobbying firm in the 1980s.
He started there the same year Manafort departed, according to a July profile in the New York Times.
But in 2006 he joined Manafort’s consulting firm, Davis Manafort, working in Kiev, Ukraine.
Wire transfers tied to Paul Manafort in 2012 were flagged to feds
“Rick was Paul’s business guy,” Tad Devine, a Democratic operative who worked with the firm for some time, told the Times last summer.
Among the firm’s high-profile Eastern European clients was Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Moscow politician who they shaped as a reformer. Yanukovych fled Ukraine during an early 2014 revolution and now lives in exile in Russia.
Investigators have reportedly been looking at Manafort’s overseas connections — particularly investment funds and companies set up in Cyprus to receive payments.
Gates worked with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a Kremlin ally accused of having ties to organized crime, in 2008 on a deal with Davis Manafort on a botched deal for communications firms in the Ukraine, Bloomberg reported in September.
Paul Manafort under investigation for possible money laundering
Deripaska, who has had repeated difficulty getting a U.S. visa, late sued Manafort in Cayman Islands court, parts of which were reportedly resolved.
Manafort later came under fire when it was revealed he offered Deripaska personal briefings while he ran the Trump campaign.
Trump campaign
Gates followed Manafort to the Trump campaign, where he rose quickly.
After campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was ousted in favor of Manafort, Gates took on the No. 2 role previously held by Stuart Jolly.
Manafort offered election briefings to Russian oligarch: report
Sunday, July 17, 2016 Photo
Gates, left behind Manafort, has worked with the veteran lobbyist for more than a decade. (MATT ROURKE/AP)
He worked in tandem with Manafort during the heated end of the primary season, as Trump secured the Republican nomination.
Rumors swirled last July that he oversaw Melania Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention, which turned out to have sections lifted from Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech at the Democratic National Convention.
Manafort and other campaign officials said news reports of Gate’s work on the speech weren’t true.
“Rick's not a speechwriter and he doesn't have a role in the campaign's speechwriting process — we have other people for that,” campaign spokesman Jason Miller told CNN at the time. “Anybody saying differently is being intentionally misleading.”
He was, however, involved in the inner circle for the Trump campaign at that time, appearing on stage as the candidate prepared for his speech before the RNC in Cleveland.
Gates was copied on emails from Trump urging them to back up his attacks on a judge of Mexican descent.
Gates’ role in the campaign was apparently so prominent that Kellyanne Conway referred to him as part of the campaign’s “core four,” along with herself, Manafort and Bannon, to the Washington Post in August.
After Manafort resigned from the campaign, Gates stayed on for weeks. He served as a liaison to the RNC, and was reported to be out of the campaign by late September.
At the time, the Washington Post reported Gates wasn’t paid during his time on the Trump campaign.
After the campaign
Gates went on to play a role in arranging President Trump’s inauguration committee, and was considered Manafort’s man on the inside, CNN reported in December.
He helped launch the "America First Policies" non-profit after the election with five other Trump campaign aides.
Trump digital director Brad Parscale and former Pence aide Nick Ayers were among the co-founders.
Gates was nudged out of the group in late March, after reports of Manafort’s overseas dealings — particularly with Russian figures — started to spill out.
A source told CNN the split was “amicable.”
John Weaver, a Republican strategist, told the Times in July that the ongoing probe is “the only reason Rick Gates isn’t in the West Wing and why Paul Manafort doesn’t have a thousand clients in Washington.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3599032
How the Russia Investigation Entangled a Manafort Protégé
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and BARRY MEIERJUNE 16, 2017
Rick Gates said that criticism of him and Paul Manafort was based on flawed news media reports and documents whose authenticity the two men question. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times
Nearly everywhere Paul Manafort went, it seemed, Rick Gates followed, his protégé and junior partner. Election campaigns in Eastern Europe and Africa. Business ventures with a Russian tycoon. The upper ranks of Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign.
Mr. Gates survived Mr. Manafort’s purge last summer amid allegations that his mentor had taken millions of dollars from Kremlin allies, retaining a central role on Mr. Trump’s campaign and inaugural committee. But Mr. Gates, 45, soon followed in Mr. Manafort’s footsteps once again: In April, amid new questions about Russian interference in the 2016 election, he was abruptly forced out of a lobbying group formed to advance President Trump’s agenda.
Now, Mr. Gates has been drawn into the burgeoning federal investigations into diplomatic and financial dealings between Russian interests and the president’s inner circle. In a newly disclosed memo, a lawyer for the Trump campaign ordered members of the president’s transition team to preserve records relating to five Trump associates, among them Mr. Manafort — already known to be a subject of the investigation — and Mr. Gates. The memo indicates that transition lawyers believe Mr. Gates’s actions are under scrutiny by the Justice Department or the House or Senate Intelligence Committees — or soon will be.
As investigators examine Mr. Manafort’s financial and political dealings at home and abroad, they are likely to run into Mr. Gates wherever they look. During the pair’s heady days in Ukraine, it was Mr. Gates who flew to Moscow for meetings with associates of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch. His name appears on documents linked to shell companies that Mr. Manafort’s firm set up in Cyprus to receive payments from politicians and businesspeople in Eastern Europe, records reviewed by The New York Times show.
Following an inquiry from the Department of Justice, Mr. Gates and Mr. Manafort are also now weighing whether to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act in connection with an effort in Washington several years ago to burnish the image of a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.
Mr. Gates said late Thursday night that federal investigators had not been in contact with him. He has not been accused of any wrongdoing and, in recent interviews, he said that criticism of him and Mr. Manafort was based on flawed news media reports and documents whose authenticity the two men question.
“Everything was done legally and with the approval of our lawyers,” Mr. Gates said. “Nothing to my knowledge was ever done inappropriately.”
Mr. Gates’s rapid ascent into Mr. Trump’s orbit, and his sudden ejection from it, is just one example of how the Russia-related controversies have shaken the Trump administration. The federal investigations are also casting a harsh light on the crossroads of Washington lobbying and international deal making, where Mr. Manafort made his fortune — and Mr. Gates once hoped to follow.
“I don’t know if it is a Greek tragedy, but it is certainly ironic,” said John Weaver, a Republican political consultant. Mr. Weaver feuded with a former business partner of Mr. Manafort’s and Mr. Gates’s when their work with Mr. Deripaska, the Russian oligarch, vexed the 2008 presidential campaign of Senator John McCain.
The investigations into Mr. Manafort’s relationships overseas, Mr. Weaver said, are “the only reason Rick Gates isn’t in the West Wing and why Paul Manafort doesn’t have a thousand clients in Washington.”
The two men met nearly three decades ago when Mr. Gates was an intern at Black, Manafort, Stone, Kelly, a high-powered Washington consulting firm.
The firm specialized in running Republican campaigns and then lobbying the politicians they had helped elect. In Washington, Mr. Manafort worked to smooth the rough edges of various dictators and strongmen, among them Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Mobutu Sese Seko of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Trump Organization was also a client, employing the firm to lobby the Treasury Department on casino transaction rules and to guide Mr. Trump’s ill-fated New York-Washington airline venture.
Mr. Manafort left the firm the same year Mr. Gates started there. But Mr. Gates worked closely with another rising Republican lobbyist, Rick Davis, and in 2006 joined him and Mr. Manafort at their new company, Davis Manafort.
From an office in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, the firm was working a variation on Mr. Manafort’s Washington business model. While rebranding Ukraine’s Moscow-aligned president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, as a reformist candidate who favored closer ties to the European Union, they sought investment deals with politically connected industrialists in Eastern Europe. One of them was Mr. Deripaska, the Russian aluminum magnate and an ally of President Vladimir V. Putin, who has been denied a visa to the United States, apparently because of allegations linking him to organized crime — charges Mr. Deripaska has denied.
When Mr. Davis left the company to manage Mr. McCain’s 2008 campaign, Mr. Gates took over his duties in Eastern Europe, meeting with potential business partners, developing deals, and negotiating contracts. He often flew to London or Paris, according to a former colleague in the Kiev office, and made at least two business trips to Moscow.
Foreign capitals, of course, have long been a lucrative destination for American political consultants: Big-name campaign operatives can earn a small fortune working for controversial or disreputable candidates, largely out of sight of the American news media. Mr. Yanukovych’s operation boasted numerous veterans of both George W. Bush’s and John Kerry’s presidential campaigns.
“Rick was Paul’s business guy,” said Tad Devine, a Democratic political consultant who worked with Davis Manafort on the Ukraine campaigns. (He quit in 2012, after Mr. Yanukovych jailed a former rival for the presidency.) Working for Mr. Yanukovych, Mr. Devine said, helped position Mr. Gates and his bosses to do business in the country.
“You elect Yanukovych, he is going to make it a market economy, so you work to do deals and get foreign investment — and that’s where the real money was,” Mr. Devine said.
One Davis Manafort venture, a private equity fund called Pericles, was set up to buy small companies in Russia and Eastern Europe within industries that had yet to consolidate: cable television, for example, or pharmaceutical manufacturing. The fund’s biggest investor was Mr. Deripaska, the Russian oligarch.
For Mr. Gates, then in his mid-30s, partnering with moguls such as Mr. Deripaska seemed like a route to the kind of financial success enjoyed by Mr. Manafort, a multimillionaire with vacation homes in the Hamptons and in Palm Beach, Fla. Mr. Gates had read news reports of Mr. Deripaska’s problems with the State Department, but said he was not overly troubled by them; the Russian was already in business with blue-chip American firms like General Motors.
In 2007, Mr. Gates and his wife traded in their $700,000 home in Richmond, Va., taking out a $1.5 million loan for a house in one of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, public records show.
“We thought we had a good business model,” Mr. Gates said. “We thought we were going to be successful.”
As it turned out, the fund foundered amid the global economic crisis, and the only deal with Mr. Deripaska devolved into a legal dispute. But today, nearly a decade later, investigators are known to have an interest in the money that Mr. Manafort and his colleagues made in Eastern Europe, how those funds were paid and the offshore conduits such as Cyprus through which that money traveled.
Handwritten ledgers found in a former office of Mr. Yanukovych’s political party indicate that it made $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments to Mr. Manafort between 2007 and 2012. Other recently disclosed documents suggest that a payment earmarked in those ledgers for Mr. Manafort may instead have been paid through an offshore bank account and as a supposed payment for a computer.
Mr. Manafort has insisted that the ledgers were forged and that he never received any secret cash payments. “Paul’s payments for his work abroad have all come through traceable wire transfers to his U.S. accounts,” said Jason Maloni, a spokesman for Mr. Manafort.
Davis Manafort used shell companies in Cyprus both to receive payments for its political consulting and for business investment activities. Documents reviewed by The Times show that Mr. Gates was among the employees who dealt with the Cypriot law firm that registered those companies.
Mr. Gates explained that Mr. Deripaska had recommended the firm, Dr. K. Chrysostomides & Co. Five shell companies were set up to facilitate anticipated business deals with Mr. Deripaska; four others were for payments received for political consulting services in Ukraine, he said.
Cyprus has long been a popular tax haven for Russian oligarchs and businesses. Mr. Gates said he was told that Davis Manafort clients had instructed the firm to use Cyprus as a financial transfer point, because American banks preferred to work with the island’s European Union-regulated banks rather than those in Eastern Europe. A representative for Mr. Deripaska and his companies did not respond to questions from The New York Times. Mr. Davis, who now works at a private equity firm, did not reply to an email seeking comment.
After protesters forced Mr. Yanukovych from power in early 2014, Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates began looking for potential political clients elsewhere: Hungary, Uganda, and Kenya. But then another revolution began to crest — the one back home, in the Republican presidential primary.
In the spring of 2016, when Mr. Trump found himself outmaneuvered in the arcane battle for Republican convention delegates, he turned to Mr. Manafort. Mr. Gates came along as his deputy — the man behind the man in charge. In a campaign known for its factionalism, Mr. Gates won over colleagues by managing the mundane but essential work of daily operations. He traveled often with Mr. Trump and forged relationships with Reince Priebus, the future chief of staff, and Brad Parscale, the campaign’s digital director.
“What made him valuable was, people trusted him, No. 1, and No. 2, he was effective,” said Richard F. Hohlt, a longtime Republican lobbyist who worked on Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee.
Those ties enabled Mr. Gates to outlast his mentor last summer, when Mr. Manafort was ousted. Mr. Gates moved to the Republican National Committee, helping iron out joint fund-raising agreements and other contracts with Mr. Trump’s campaign.
Mr. Gates was soon established in Mr. Trump’s circle. Before the first presidential debate, he glad-handed with Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s top security adviser — now also a subject of the federal investigations — and Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino mogul. At an election night party, Mr. Gates hit it off with Thomas J. Barrack Jr., the wealthy Los Angeles investor, who hired Mr. Gates to help run Mr. Trump’s inaugural.
After Mr. Trump was sworn in, Mr. Gates joined Mr. Parscale and other Trump aides to raise $25 million for a new pro-Trump group, America First Policies. Mr. Gates lined up office space adjacent to the Willard Hotel, a Washington power-breakfast spot, and became a frequent visitor to the White House, hoping to join the new Trump era elite.
“He did it to stand on his own,” Mr. Hohlt said. “He wanted his own presence with Trump.”
But his work in Ukraine cast a long shadow. Amid the Russia investigations, reports on Mr. Manafort’s work for Mr. Deripaska rattled colleagues at America First Policies. Mr. Gates was let go.
Mr. Gates said he and Mr. Manafort were being unfairly smeared by Democrats and Mr. Trump’s enemies. “Everybody has tried to take these instances of anyone in the Trump orbit doing something in Russia, and then fast-forwarding however many years, and then saying it is evidence of collusion with Russia on the election,” Mr. Gates said. “It’s totally ridiculous and without merit.”
Correction: June 16, 2017
An earlier version of this article included an erroneous example in a list of locations where Paul Manafort has vacation homes. Though he has such homes in the Hamptons and in Palm Beach, Fla., he does not have one in France.
Correction: June 20, 2017
An article on Saturday about how the Russia investigation entangled Rick Gates, a protégé of Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, referred incorrectly to work Mr. Gates and Richard Holht did on behalf of President-elect Trump. They worked on his inaugural committee; they were not part of the presidential transition team.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/us/p ... ussia.html
Robert Mueller arrests Paul Manafort for money crimes, then reveals he has Manafort nailed on Trump-Russia collusion
Bill Palmer
Updated: 4:39 pm EDT Mon Oct 30, 2017
Home » Opinion
After Special Counsel Robert Mueller arrested Donald Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort this morning for an assortment of financial crimes, Trump responded by tweeting “No collusion!” This was a total failure on Trump’s part when it comes to understanding how the legal system works. Sure enough, just hours later Mueller revealed that he also has Manafort nailed on Trump-Russia collusion.
Mueller revealed today that Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos was secretly arrested four months ago for lying to the FBI, and that he’s since cut a deal and spilled his guts. He’s confessing to having colluded with a representative of the Russian government with regard to stealing emails from Hillary Clinton. Moreover, Papadopoulos has named a number of Trump campaign officials who were well aware of what he was doing at the time, making them co-conspirators. Now comes word that Manafort was indeed one of the officials who knew.
Jesse Rodriguez of MSNBC tweeted that according to NBC News, “Manafort is one of the unnamed officials in Papadopoulos document.” This led Brian Fallon of CNN to explain that “Unsealed Papadopoulos plea is thus a warning to Manafort: Mueller has an informant who may ensnare him in collusion.” (link). In other words, Mueller arrested Manafort on financial crimes this morning because they involve the kind of paper trail that allows for comparatively quick and easy proof and conviction – but he's also sending a signal to Manafort that he has him nailed on collusion as well. What's the upshot? Paul Manafort may be counting on Donald Trump pardoning him for the financial crimes. But legally speaking, Trump would have a much harder time successfully pardoning Manafort for collusion crimes, because he'd be pardoning his own co-conspirator; the Supreme Court could strike down the pardon. Robert Mueller is making clear to Manafort that he's boxed in, and he might as well just cut a deal.
http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/nai ... fort/5801/
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