Rick Gates

Rick Gates

Richard William Gates III is a former political consultant who worked alongside Paul Manafort in Ukraine, aiding the communist anti-western, pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine. Gates, in partnership with Manafort, was involved with the campaign of Yanukovych, where they collaborated with Democratic strategist Tad Devine. Devine, who later worked on the Bernie Sanders Presidential Campaign 2016, wrote Yanukovych's victory speech.

Newsmax Appearance

Rick Gates during Newsmax appearance (screenshot)

Rick Gates was featured in a Newsmax report discussing Tim Walz in August, 2024.

Turning on Manafort

In December, 2019, Rick Gates was "sentenced to 45 days in jail and three years probation". Excerpt from CNN article:

"Gates, a longtime deputy to 2016 Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort who shared searing details about Trump’s efforts in 2016 with special counsel Robert Mueller, admitted to helping Manafort conceal $75 million in foreign bank accounts from their years of Ukraine lobbying work.

[...]

Ultimately, Mueller relied on many details from Gates in his final report, and Gates testified at trials against Manafort, Roger Stone and another former associate on Ukraine matters, Greg Craig.

Russia-aligned Ukrainian Party of Regions

Excerpt from the Washington Post in 2016:

"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.

In March 2014, Devine sent Gates a $100,000-per-month proposed agreement “to work on the election in Ukraine.” In court Tuesday, Devine said Gates had recruited him to work for the man who is now Ukraine’s president, billionaire Petro Poroshenko, but Devine didn’t wind up working on the project.

Just as well. It was almost time for him to launch the anti-corruption campaign of Bernie Sanders.

Bernie Sanders Key Campaign Operative

• Tad Devine, Sanders' "top campaign strategist," is the president of a media advisory firm called Devine Mulvey Longabaugh and "worked on the Sanders' campaign that put him in the Senate in 2006. And he's been chief of staff for Sanders in both his House of Representative and Senate positions." Devine was also a "former high-level campaign aide to Al Gore, John Kerry, and Michael Dukakis..."

Politico described Tad Devine as "a longtime Democratic strategist, has helped shepherd Sanders’ political efforts. Devine is a big name in Democratic politics...has a rapport with Washington reporters, giving Sanders’ early political efforts some cachet. His exact role with the campaign remains undetermined, but he has been an important veteran Democratic voice for Sanders, the longtime independent who has said he will run to win the party’s nomination."

• Phil Fiermonte, Sanders’ "longtime state director, is the campaign’s field director." Fiermonte, who has worked for Sanders for 16 years, has "long been in Sanders’ inner circle and helped manage his past campaigns. Most recently, he was heavily involved in coordinating the senator’s upcoming trip to Iowa. He was also previously listed as the treasurer of Sanders’ leadership PAC Progressive Voters of America. In April, he joined Sanders, Sanders’ wife Jane Sanders and another adviser, Tad Devine, in Vermont for a planning weekend to discuss his bid. He’s a former member of the Burlington City Council and previously worked as executive director of the Vermont American Federation of Teachers. Both he and Weaver are Vermont natives."

• Mark Longabaugh, one of Tad Devine’s business partners, has "played a central role in helping to organize the early stages of Sanders’ campaign, serving as an unofficial campaign manager of sorts before Weaver signed on. He ran former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley’s 2000 presidential campaign operations in New Hampshire."

Senior Advisors

Tad Devine was later named as "Senior Advisor" to the Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign.

Tad Devine: President at Devine, Mulvey, Longabaugh since 2007. With Mike Donilon formed D&D Media in 2005. President of Shrum, Devine & Donilon, Inc. At the media consulting firm Doak Shrum and Associates, Inc. from 1993 until it split in early 1995. Extensive experience on presidential campaigns: Senior advisor and strategist on Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2003-04. Senior strategist on the Gore-Lieberman campaign in 2000. Campaign manager on Sen. Bob Kerrey's 1992 presidential campaign. Director of delegate selection and field operations for Mike Dukakis' campaign in 1987-88, and in the Fall, campaign manager for VP nominee Sen. Lloyd Bentsen. Worked on Walter Mondale's 1984 campaign in the Florida primary, as deputy delegate director, and in the Fall as executive assistant to the campaign manager. Started in politics in 1980 helping track delegates for Jimmy Carter. Devine has also worked as a strategist and consultant on campaigns overseas. Other experience includes: Assistant to the president of Boston University, 1991-93. Chief of staff to the Mayor of Providence, RI, 1989-90. Associate attorney at the law firm of Winston & Strawn, 1985-87. J.D. from Suffolk University Law School in Boston, 1982; B.A. in American history from Boston University, 1978. Born in Providence, RI.