Yesterday James Fallows wrote that Señor Trumpanzee's credibility crisis is now front-and-center. He worries about the inevitability of the moment a crisis causes Trump to say "Trust me," and no one can and that's why so many veteran officials have warned about his habit of incessantly telling instantly disprovable lies. "If an administration will lie about facts where the contradictory evidence is in plain sight, how can we possibly believe them on anything else? And that anything else could well involve the most bizarre charges ever lodged against an American president. Soon the whole country will want to know who in the Trump Regime is literally guilty of treason-- and has this particular stinking fish rotted from the head.Did you watch Spicy Spice on TV claiming authoritatively that "General Flynn was a volunteer of the campaign" and that Paul Manafort "played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time?" We're talking about, respectively, Trump's now-fired National Security Advisor and his former campaign manager, the one who probably cut the deal with Putin that in all likelihood won him the election. Oh, you thought Bannon was the top guy at the campaign. Well, after Manafort's relationship with Putin started leaking out, the ghastly Mercer clan put their man Bannon in place but Bannon was in charge for just 83 days... Manafort 144 days. Anyway, watch Spicy trying to weasel out from under the importance of two of the Putinistas inside TrumpWorld. Very Ministry of Truth:How did Trump even come into contact with Paul Manafort? Well longtime Trump crony Roger Stone-- the Julian Assange and Guccifer2 (GRU) contact person-- had been Manafort’s business partner, so it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to figure the introduction came from there. Trump would have taken right to Manafort, a ruthless and corrupt suck-up to power, just like Trump himself. Right now Trump and Manafort are both still claiming that neither of them was behind the only change the Trump campaign made to the GOP platform at the Republican National Convention, namely to let Putin write the position on Ukraine. Manafort, the scumbag who laundered payments from Putin's Ukrainian puppet into offshore accounts. This morning, the Associated Press blew the Manafort-Putin story sky high. Even Republicans are going to find it harder and harder to keep denying this with a straight face. "Manafort," reported AP, "secretly worked for a Russian billionaire to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin a decade ago and proposed an ambitious political strategy to undermine anti-Russian opposition across former Soviet republics...The work appears to contradict assertions by the Trump administration and Manafort himself that he never worked for Russian interests."
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 the former Soviet republics to benefit the Putin government, even as U.S.-Russia relations under Republican President George W. Bush grew worse. Manafort pitched the plans to Russian 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."We are now of the belief that this model can greatly benefit the Putin Government if employed at the correct levels with the appropriate commitment to success," Manafort wrote in the 2005 memo to Deripaska. The effort, Manafort wrote, "will be offering a great service that can re-focus, both internally and externally, the policies of the Putin government."Manafort's plans were laid out in documents obtained by the AP that included strategy memoranda and records showing international wire transfers for millions of dollars. How much work Manafort performed under the contract was unclear.The disclosure comes as Trump campaign advisers are the subject of an FBI probe and two congressional investigations. Investigators are reviewing whether the Trump campaign and its associates coordinated with Moscow to meddle in the 2016 campaign. Manafort has dismissed the investigations as politically motivated and misguided, and said he never worked for Russian interests. The documents obtained by AP show Manafort's ties to Russia were closer than previously revealed....Deripaska became one of Russia's wealthiest men under Putin, buying assets abroad in ways widely perceived to benefit the Kremlin's interests. U.S. diplomatic cables from 2006 described Deripaska as "among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis" and "a more-or-less permanent fixture on Putin's trips abroad." In response to questions about Manafort's consulting firm, a spokesman for Deripaska in 2008-- at least three years after they began working together-- said Deripaska had never hired the firm. Another Deripaska spokesman in Moscow last week declined to answer AP's questions.When asked Wednesday about Manafort's work for Deripaska, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, "we do not feel it's appropriate to comment on someone who is not an employee at the White House."Manafort worked as Trump's unpaid campaign chairman last year from March until August. Trump asked Manafort to resign after AP revealed that Manafort had orchestrated a covert Washington lobbying operation until 2014 on behalf of Ukraine's ruling pro-Russian political party.
Unpaid? No. Unpaid by Trump but not unpaid. Putin picked up that tab as surely as Mercer picked up the tab for Bannon and Kellyanne and the rest. AP makes the point that "the newly obtained business records link Manafort more directly to Putin's interests" and that "federal criminal prosecutors became interested in Manafort's activities years ago as part of a broad investigation to recover stolen Ukraine assets after the ouster of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych there in early 2014."
Manafort and his associates remain in Trump's orbit. Manafort told a colleague this year that he continues to speak with Trump by telephone. Manafort's former business partner in eastern Europe, Rick Gates, has been seen inside the White House on a number of occasions. Gates has since helped plan Trump's inauguration and now runs a nonprofit organization, America First Policies, to back the White House agenda.Gates, whose name does not appear in the documents, told the AP that he joined Manafort's firm in 2006 and was aware Manafort had a relationship with Deripaska, but he was not aware of the work described in the memos. Gates said his work was focused on domestic U.S. lobbying and political consulting in Ukraine at the time. He said he stopped working for Manafort's firm in March 2016 when he joined Trump's presidential campaign.Manafort told Deripaska in 2005 that he was pushing policies as part of his work in Ukraine "at the highest levels of the U.S. government-- the White House, Capitol Hill and the State Department," according to the documents. He also said he had hired a "leading international law firm with close ties to President Bush to support our client's interests," but he did not identify the firm. Manafort also said he was employing unidentified legal experts for the effort at leading universities and think tanks, including Duke University, New York University and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.Manafort did not disclose details about the lobbying work to the Justice Department during the period the contract was in place.Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, people who lobby in the U.S. on behalf of foreign political leaders or political parties must provide detailed reports about their actions to the department. Willfully failing to register is a felony and can result in up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, though the government rarely files criminal charges.Deripaska owns Basic Element Co., which employs 200,000 people worldwide in the agriculture, aviation, construction, energy, financial services, insurance and manufacturing industries, and he runs one of the world's largest aluminum companies. Forbes estimated his net worth at $5.2 billion. How much Deripaska paid Manafort in total is not clear, but people familiar with the relationship said money transfers to Manafort amounted to tens of millions of dollars and continued through at least 2009. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the secret payments publicly.In strategy memos, Manafort proposed that Deripaska and Putin would benefit from lobbying Western governments, especially the U.S., to allow oligarchs to keep possession of formerly state-owned assets in Ukraine. He proposed building "long term relationships" with Western journalists and a variety of measures to improve recruitment, communications and financial planning by pro-Russian parties in the region.Trump was notoriously chummy with his campaign volunteers-- and Putin cutoutsManafort proposed extending his existing work in eastern Europe to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Georgia, where he pledged to bolster the legitimacy of governments friendly to Putin and undercut anti-Russian figures through political campaigns, nonprofit front groups and media operations.For the $10 million contract, Manafort did not use his public-facing consulting firm, Davis Manafort. Instead, he used a company, LOAV Ltd., that he had registered in Delaware in 1992. He listed LOAV as having the same address of his lobbying and consulting firms in Alexandria, Virginia. In other records, LOAV's address was listed as Manafort's home, also in Alexandria. Manafort sold the home in July 2015 for $1.4 million. He now owns an apartment in Trump Tower in New York, as well as other properties in Florida and New York.One strategy memo to Deripaska was written by Manafort and Rick Davis, his business partner at the time. In written responses to the AP, Davis said he did not know that his firm had proposed a plan to covertly promote the interests of the Russian government.Davis said he believes Manafort used his name without his permission on the strategy memo. "My name was on every piece of stationery used by the company and in every memo prior to 2006. It does not mean I had anything to do with the memo described," Davis said. He took a leave of absence from the firm in late 2006 to work on John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.Manafort's work with Deripaska continued for years, though they had a falling out laid bare in 2014 in a Cayman Islands bankruptcy court. The billionaire gave Manafort nearly $19 million to invest in a Ukrainian TV company called Black Sea Cable, according to legal filings by Deripaska's representatives. It said that after taking the money, Manafort and his associates stopped responding to Deripaska's queries about how the funds had been used.Early in the 2016 presidential campaign, Deripaska's representatives openly accused Manafort of fraud and pledged to recover the money from him. After Trump earned the nomination, Deripaska's representatives said they would no longer discuss the case.
Are members of Congress paying attention? Some are. This morning, Ted Lieu issued a statement that the report about "Manafort's secret work to benefit Vladimir Putin’s government is a new explosive revelation in the increasingly disturbing story of the Trump Campaign’s connections to Russia. The revelation that Manafort was paid $10 million by a Russian oligarch to influence politics, corporate dealings and media coverage to benefit Putin is scary enough. Even more ominous is the fact that the Trump White House keeps lying about its ties to Russia. For the good of our Republic, there must be a full accounting of any and all ties between Russia, President Trump, his administration and his associates. Russia waged an unprecedented, robust, covert effort to alter the outcome of our nation's 2016 election. The importance of fully understanding if Team Trump colluded with Russia cannot be overstated. That’s why Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and I have introduced a House resolution of inquiry that could compel the Trump Administration to publicly disclose information to Congress and the American people. The American people have an absolute right to know the truth about Trump and his team's ties to Russia now." OK, now listen to Dave Gahan on this: