Paul Manafort
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Paul Manafort is an American political consultant, lobbyist who served as chairman for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
Work for Communist Viktor Yanukovych
Paul Manafort worked for the communist[1] anti-western, pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine. On August 14 2016, the New York Times reported that Ukraine ledgers show cash listed for Manafort:
- "Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.
- In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residence with a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin."
Additionally, it appears that Manafort actively worked against American interests even after Yanukovych was ousted.
- "Mr. Manafort continued working in Ukraine after the demise of Mr. Yanukovych’s government, helping allies of the ousted president and others form a political bloc that opposed the new pro-Western administration. Some of his aides were in Ukraine as recently as this year, and Ukrainian company records give no indication that Mr. Manafort has formally dissolved the local branch of his company, Davis Manafort International, directed by a longtime assistant, Konstantin V. Kilimnik."[2]
Work with Tad Devine in Ukraine
Excerpt from the Washington Post in 2016:[3]
- "Yanukovych’s fraudulent election in 2004 as Ukraine’s president was invalidated, but not before his opponent was poisoned by dioxin. Yet testimony in the Manafort trial and documents released by Manafort’s lawyers show Devine helped Manafort on Yanukovych’s comeback as prime minister in 2006 and successful presidential run in 2010. Devine produced a memo of advice for Yanukovych’s party in 2012, even though by then Yanukovych had thrown the leading opposition politician in jail and had built a $100 million mansion — complete with zoo, helipad, golf course and replica galleon on an artificial lake — while his people were, in Devine’s own words, struggling with “joblessness, hunger and the general despair.”
[...]
- Yanukovych was ousted in 2014 after he halted Ukraine’s movement toward the European Union, yet Devine offered to help Manafort’s efforts in the 2014 Ukraine election — for a price. “We are ready to take on this project,” he wrote to Manafort partner Rick Gates, for $100,000 per month (payable in advance), $25,000 per week of runoff, a $50,000 “success fee” and expenses including first-class airfare. In June 2014 — even as talks about the Sanders presidential run were getting underway — Devine went to Ukraine to help remnants of Yanukovych’s party reforming under a new name. “My rate for something like this would be $10,000/day, including travel days,” he wrote to Gates.
[...]
- But Devine was the guy molding the Sanders campaign as a righteous, everyman’s insurgency against the corrupt, wealthy establishment. Devine, who had worked on Sanders’s first campaign for the Senate in 2006 (the same year he plotted Yanukovych’s comeback), earned more than $5 million for his firm from the populist Sanders presidential campaign and at least $10 million in commissions split with another firm, according to a Slate tally.
- Devine, through an employee, declined to comment Wednesday.
- Devine wrote with Manafort a January 2006 memo when Russia was cutting off gas supplies to Ukraine, showing Yanukovych how to ride his “good neighbor” policy toward Russia to victory. He became prime minister. Devine drafted a presidential victory speech for Yanukovych in February 2010 (“We are all Ukrainians first,” the American wrote) and later that year wrote talking points showing how Yanukovych and his party could attack the opposition.
- By April 2012, Yanukovych had jailed his opponent and become an international pariah. Devine told Gates, “I regret that we will not be able to work with you” on Ukraine’s parliamentary elections. But four months later, Devine wrote a strategy memo for Manafort. “The number of people who admit they are having difficulty feeding their family throughout Ukraine today is stunning,” he wrote, urging Yanukovych to “signal” his concern and calling for his party to attack. “I would recommend a roughly 3:1 negative to positive ratio in the advertising,” he wrote.
- Just as well. It was almost time for him to launch the anti-corruption campaign of Bernie Sanders.