Evidence of Collusion Was Revealed In October

This past October, leaked emails revealed at the very least, attempted collusion by a Trump campaign staffer and as happens sometimes in this era of the fast and furious news cycle, it went largely unnoticed.

I stumbled across an article about the emails last week and U2U'd a couple of you about it but I haven't had a chance to sit down and type up an OP until now and as it happens, this was fortuitous as a lengthy article from the March issue of The Atlantic was just published which provides additional context.

The collusion I refer to is not collusion between Donald Trump and the Russian government. In fact, if you're somebody who follows my posting, you'll know that it's been my opinion that Donald Trump likely didn't collude with the Russians. You'll also know that I've long believed that if any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians to get Trump elected occurred, it would involve Paul Manafort.

Documents obtained by the AP in March of last year detailed a deal struck in 2005 between Manafort and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska in which Manafort was paid millions of dollars a year to lobby for the Putin regime.

AP Exclusive: Before Trump job, Manafort worked to aid Putin

WASHINGTON (AP) — Before signing up with Donald Trump, former campaign manager Paul Manafort secretly worked for a Russian billionaire with a plan to “greatly benefit the Putin Government,” The Associated Press has learned. The White House attempted to brush the report aside Wednesday, but it quickly raised fresh alarms in Congress about Russian links to Trump associates.

Manafort proposed in a confidential strategy plan as early as June 2005 that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and former Soviet republics to benefit President Vladimir Putin’s government, even as U.S.-Russia relations under Republican President George W. Bush grew worse.

Manafort pitched the plans to aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, a close Putin ally with whom Manafort eventually signed a $10 million annual contract beginning in 2006, according to interviews with several people familiar with payments to Manafort and business records obtained by the AP. Manafort and Deripaska maintained a business relationship until at least 2009, according to one person familiar with the work.

At the time, Manafort was in Ukraine and also working for the pro-Kremlin Ukrainian political party, Party of Regions, and its leader Viktor Yanukovych. Manafort saw opportunity to make millions and with Rick Gates joining him in 2006, he created a private-equity firm called Pericles, with Gates at the helm. His goal was to raise $200 million to invest in Ukrainian and Russian enterprises and he was able to secure an initial $100 million commitment from his then pal, Oleg. At the time, Deripaska was worth an estimated $28 billion. As the article in The Atlantic notes, Manafort was taking a healthy cut in "management fees" right from the start:

The Plot Against America

For Pericles’s first deal, Manafort used Deripaska’s money to buy a telecommunications firm in Odessa called Chorne More (“Black Seas,” in English) at a cost of $18.9 million. He also charged a staggering $7.35 million in management fees for overseeing the venture.

But months after the Chorne More purchase, the 2008 financial crisis hit, gutting Deripaska’s net worth. It plummeted so far that he needed a $4.5 billion bailout from the Russian state bank to survive. The loan included an interest payment in the form of abject humiliation: Putin traveled to one of Deripaska’s factories and berated him on television.

Deripaska's fortune took a big hit in 2008 — so much so that he apparently received a $4.5 billion bailout from his buddy Putin. Deripaska needed money and his people reached out to Manafort and told him to liquidate Pericles and remit Deripaska's share. That never actually happened and by 2011, Manafort and Gates were apparently no longer returning their calls.

Things were going much better on other fronts however. By 2010, his principal client, Yanukovych, had become the 4th President of Ukraine. However that good fortune was not destined to last. In 2014, the horribly corrupt Kremlin puppet, Yanukovych, was ousted following bloody protests in which dozens of protesters are alleged to have been shot by snipers under his orders. Putin retrieved his puppet, sending a team to whisk Yanukovych off to asylum in Russia.

I surmise it was this loss of power that left Manafort vulnerable to Deripaska as after years of no legal action, Deripaska filed suit against Manafort in 2015. By then though, Manafort didn't have the means to pay. In fact, he was struggling to maintain his lavish lifestyle. From the Atlantic article:

The FBI investigation into Yanukovych’s finances came to cover Manafort’s own dealings. Soon after the feds took an interest, interviewing Manafort in July 2014, the repatriations ceased. Meanwhile, Manafort struggled to collect the money owed him by Yanukovych’s cronies. To finance his expensive life, he began taking out loans against his real estate—some $15 million over two years, his indictment says. This is not an uncommon tactic among money launderers—a bank loan allows the launderer to extract clean cash from property purchased with dirty money. But according to the indictment, some of Manafort’s loans were made on the basis of false information supplied to the bank in order to inflate the sums available to him, suggesting the severity of his cash-flow problems. All of these loans would need to be paid back, of course. And one way or another, he would need to settle Deripaska’s bill.

While his ability to rake in millions in misbegotten gains from Ukraine and Russian were drying up, Manafort's personal life was also falling apart. His daughters had discovered he'd been having an affair with a woman 30 years his junior as his daughter Jessica's hacked texts (confirmed by Manafort) revealed. (excerpt from The Atlantic)

Collectively, the texts show a sometimes fraught series of relationships, by turns loving and manipulative. Manafort was generous with his family financially—he’d invested millions in Jessica’s film projects, and millions more in her now-ex-husband’s real-estate ventures. But when he called home in tears or threatened suicide in the spring of 2015, he was pleading for his marriage. The previous November, as the cache of texts shows, his daughters had caught him in an affair with a woman more than 30 years his junior. It was an expensive relationship. According to the text messages, Manafort had rented his mistress a $9,000-a-month apartment in Manhattan and a house in the Hamptons, not far from his own. He had handed her an American Express card, which she’d used to good effect. “I only go to luxury restaurants,” she once declared on a friend’s fledgling podcast, speaking expansively about her photo posts on social media: caviar, lobster, haute cuisine.

The texts also revealed his tear filled phone calls and threats of suicide. Under the pressure, Manafort cracked.

Manafort had committed to couples therapy but, the texts reveal, that hadn’t prevented him from continuing his affair. Because he clumsily obscured his infidelity—and because his mistress posted about their travels on Instagram—his family caught him again, six months later. He entered the clinic in Arizona soon after, according to Andrea’s texts. “My dad,” she wrote, “is in the middle of a massive emotional breakdown.”

Out of the clinic and back in the DC area, Manafort began working on a comeback. He reached out to his old friend Tom Barrack. (excerpt Atlantic)

“I really need to get to” Trump, Manafort told an old friend, the real-estate magnate Tom Barrack, in the early months of 2016. Barrack, a confidante of Trump for some 40 years, had known Manafort even longer. When Manafort asked for Barrack’s help grabbing Trump’s attention, he readily supplied it.

Barrack forwarded to Trump’s team a memo Manafort had written about why he was the ideal match for the ascendant candidate. Old colleagues describe Manafort as a master pitchman with a preternatural ability to read his audience. He told Trump that he had “avoided the political establishment in Washington since 2005,” and described himself as a lifelong enemy of Karl Rove, who represented the entrenched party chieftains conspiring to dynamite Trump’s nomination. In other words, to get back on the inside, Manafort presented himself as the ultimate outsider—a strained case that would strike Trump, and perhaps only Trump, as compelling.

As I'm sure you're all well aware, Manafort took the job for no money. A man who had spent his entire adult life doing shady things for despicable characters the world over for piles of money, suddenly was willing to work for free. And here is where the collusion comes in. At this point, I'll cite an earlier article from the The Atlantic (and the same reporter) from last October. This is already a longer OP then I'd intended (and I didn't fit in the bit about how Deripaska's bestie is Nathaniel Philip Victor James "Nat" Rothschild) so I'll excerpt the juiciest bits:

Did Manafort Use Trump to Curry Favor With a Putin Ally?

On the evening of April 11, 2016, two weeks after Donald Trump hired the political consultant Paul Manafort to lead his campaign’s efforts to wrangle Republican delegates, Manafort emailed his old lieutenant Konstantin Kilimnik, who had worked for him for a decade in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev.

“I assume you have shown our friends my media coverage, right?” Manafort wrote.

“Absolutely,” Kilimnik responded a few hours later from Kiev. “Every article.”

“How do we use to get whole,” Manafort asks. “Has OVD operation seen?”

According to a source close to Manafort, the initials “OVD” refer to Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska, a Russian oligarch and one of Russia’s richest men. The source also confirmed that one of the individuals repeatedly mentioned in the email exchange as an intermediary to Deripaska is an aide to the oligarch.

“Yes, I have been sending everything to Victor, who has been forwarding the coverage directly to OVD,” Kilimnik responded in April, referring again to Deripaska. (“Victor” is a Deripaska aide, the source close to Manafort confirmed.) “Frankly, the coverage has been much better than Trump’s,” Kilimnik wrote. “In any case it will hugely enhance your reputation no matter what happens.”

“I am carefully optimistic on the issue of our biggest interest,” Kilimnik went on. “Our friend V said there is lately significantly more attention to the campaign in his boss’s mind, and he will be most likely looking for ways to reach out to you pretty soon, understanding all the time sensitivity. I am more than sure that it will be resolved and we will get back to the original relationship with V.’s boss.” The source close to Manafort confirmed that “V” is a reference to Victor, the Deripaska aide.

On July 29, a week after Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort received another email from Kilimnik, this one with the subject line “Black Caviar.” “I met today with the guy who gave you your biggest black caviar jar several years ago,” Kilimnik wrote. “We spent about 5 hours talking about his story, and I have several important messages from him to you. He asked me to go and brief you on our conversation. I said I have to run it by you first, but in principle I am prepared to do it, provided that he buys me a ticket. It has to do about the future of his country, and is quite interesting. So, if you are not absolutely against the concept, please let me know which dates/places will work, even next week, and I could come and see you.”

The picture that emerges is clear. Paul Manafort, who had once admitted to influence-peddling in a congressional hearing, was banking on his position within the Trump campaign as an opportunity to sell influence to "get whole" with Oleg Derispaska. We can readily surmise that the influence he sought to peddle was of the same pro-Putin variety that the oligarch had paid him tens of millions of dollars to provide in the past.

What we have here folks is evidence that Manafort was in fact attempting to collude with his pals to push a pro-Putin agenda. A move intended to get him back into the good graces of Deripaska and the Putin clique.

But of course, as well all know, that was not to be. Manafort's tenure didn't survive the reports from Ukraine that his name had turned up in a "black ledger" of bribes and payoffs, associated with millions in transactions.

Less discussed is that after he left the campaign, his literal partner in crime, Rick Gates stuck around. In fact, it was announced that Gates would be a part of America First Policies.

It appeared briefly, in March, that Rick Gates had gotten the boot but later reporting from The Daily Beast revealed that Gates had gone to work for Tom Barrack and was still making trips to the White House as late as last June.

Pro-Russian Lobbyist Is Lurking Around the White House

After leaving the Trump-boosting nonprofit America First Policies in March—as former FBI Director James Comey officially announced an investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign team and Russian officials—Gates is now working directly for Tom Barrack, according to eight sources in and around the Trump White House.

And when Barrack stops by to meet Trump in the West Wing, he has brought Gates with him, according to multiple sources familiar with the meeting. Late last week, Barrack was again at the White House, with Gates in tow, two White House officials confirmed.

It should come as no surprise now that Manafort and Gates are under indictment and utterly useless to their foreign friends, Deripaska has emerged again and filed suit against them this very month.

Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska sues Manafort and Gates in N.Y.

We should all count ourselves lucky that Manafort and Gates are under indictment in the Mueller investigation and that should include President Trump himself. We should also hope that others in the dirty business of influence peddling, selling influence over our elected officials to their foreign patrons, find themselves in the same boat.

I think you meant to say "Evidence of DELUSION was released in October ".

Fixed it for you.

the only evidence I've seen of anything that apparently is fact and not rhetoric is the obviously collusion of the FBI with the Clinton campaign which to me is worse than anything

that's ok, we understand you are hurt we want to help you wake up for your traumatization so you can come back to reality as quickly as possible

The BIGGEST collusion however, occurred within the FBI and DOJ to help candidate Hillary, while simultaneously hurting candidate Trump.

Now THAT collusion deserves a Special Prosecutor's attention!

a reply to: theantediluvian

Trump was also made aware of it last year too....let these people say fake news, it isn't. It is a fact.

Even after being made aware of that, he called it fake news. Like I have been saying, he has lied about it from the beginning.

I am beginning to see that this is actually traumatic to some people. And I truly feel for them...and regret mocking them as fools.

I just want to say that once you let it all out, once the screaming and kicking and fighting and denial is all played out...I will be here to help anyone who needs me. Lots of us will be here. And we won't judge.

What is happening in our government is very like a death. And the emotional reactions are very real. We need to pull together now more than ever. Light be with us all.

I didn't fit it into the OP because the thrust was to show the relationship with Deripaska but anyone who is interested in learning more about Manafort and Gates, what they've been indicted for, why Tony Podesta resigned from Podesta Group, etc should do a little reading into the ECFMU and its lobbying efforts in the US.

Interestingly, it was reported on by some outlets back in 2014 but it doesn't seem like there was enough to put all the pieces together. For instance, article from The Daily Beast makes no mention of Manafort.

Ukraine’s D.C. Lobbyists in Disarray as Dictator Flees

On paper, the Centre represented itself as a non-partisan research institution that pressed for Ukraine’s integration with the European Union. In reality, it was closely tied to the party of Viktor Yanukovych and one of his principal financial backers, Sergei Klyuyev.

The two firms that got the ECFMU contract are the Podesta Group, which is run by the brother of White House special counselor John Podesta, Tony; and Mercury, a public relations firm staffed by former GOP Congressman Vin Weber and other Republican lobbyists.

Also of interest is the work that Manafort and Gates did for Deripaska in Montenegro and Deripaska's lobbying for a visa which reveal connections to people close to John McCain. One other thing to note, when starting to research Manfort's involvements in Ukraine and Russia, you should probably start with Rinat Akhmetov in 2004. Manafort was hired initially to do some sort of image makeover for Akhmetov who was the Party of Regions biggest backer and seems to have been his in with Yanukovych.

Does Mueller know about this???



To the Bat-phone!

a reply to: theantediluvian

I think thios is a solid OP.

Again, I give you credit to pointing out to me manaforts shadiness in the first place.

To me its seems likely that Manafort was going to used his position to allow russians to have trumps ear, in return for personal benefit.

Sadly, this behavior seems to be quite common.

My hope is that Manafort gets a fair trial where all of the evidence comes to light, and his fate serves as a warning to others that seek to peddle foreign influence for personal benefit without properly filing.

Let me get this straight.

You put together all of the information that you had already presented in your numerous previous threads, to do what exactly? Are you trying to deflect from the memo, that's about to destroy the credibility of the democratic party even more?

originally posted by: carewemust
The BIGGEST collusion however, occurred within the FBI and DOJ to help candidate Hillary, while simultaneously hurting candidate Trump.

Now THAT collusion deserves a Special Prosecutor's attention!

So what you are speculating, is worse than a potentially hostil country, meddling in our election, and collusion within trumps team.

Gotcha!

Exactly the reason Trump put Manifort in a "Sunlight" position.

Plenty of rope.

Plenty of height.



And ....

old thread

originally posted by: Nikola014
Let me get this straight.

You put together all of the information that you had already presented in your numerous previous threads, to do what exactly? Are you trying to deflect from the memo, that's about to destroy the credibility of the democratic party even more?

No. In fact, Grambler can confirm that I actually U2U'd him the one article a week ago when I found it. And as you can clearly see, I've been talking about Manafort and Gates all along.

originally posted by: kurthall

originally posted by: carewemust
The BIGGEST collusion however, occurred within the FBI and DOJ to help candidate Hillary, while simultaneously hurting candidate Trump.

Now THAT collusion deserves a Special Prosecutor's attention!

So what you are speculating, is worse than a potentially hostil country, meddling in our election, and collusion within trumps team.

Gotcha!

Yes if the intel community colluded to help one candidate, it is a far bigger deal than a foreign government working with a candidate to do that.

Now, the questions is did either of those two collusions occur.

But no doubt a corrupt intel community is a far more damaging scenario.

originally posted by: kurthall

originally posted by: carewemust
The BIGGEST collusion however, occurred within the FBI and DOJ to help candidate Hillary, while simultaneously hurting candidate Trump.

Now THAT collusion deserves a Special Prosecutor's attention!

So what you are speculating, is worse than a potentially hostil country, meddling in our election, and collusion within trumps team.

Gotcha!

I don’t know that I would call it only speculation at this point....

originally posted by: theantediluvian

originally posted by: Nikola014
Let me get this straight.

You put together all of the information that you had already presented in your numerous previous threads, to do what exactly? Are you trying to deflect from the memo, that's about to destroy the credibility of the democratic party even more?

No. In fact, Grambler can confirm that I actually U2U'd him the one article a week ago when I found it. And as you can clearly see, I've been talking about Manafort and Gates all along.

Yes that is true. Not only that, I also feel that you had been discussing manafort well before people like me were taking him serious as a shady character.

So I do feel like this thread is relevant, and a logical extension of what you have been saying for around a year.

Article from March 2017

Manafort Worked for Billionaire to Aid Putin

? I think some MSM is digging up old news for ?