Paul Manafort: An Array of Facts -- Texts, The Ukraine, Shell Companies, His Marriage, etc

Seven months and ~35 additional counts ago.

First of 2 trials starts Wednesday. Let's go, baws.

*holds up hand*

No thanks, baw. We've had quite enough of that.

0 convictions but yet somehow in solitary confinement and the ACLU says nothing

Tony Podesta - same set of criminal circumstances but given immunity

One is a long time Dem operative and gets immunity
One very briefly worked on the Trump campaign and sits in solitary confinement

It does seem that conspiracy is what Mueller is still investigating him for. The Rosenstein memo explicating the Manafort investigation has very extensive redaction (documented in greater detail than the parts of the investigation that are known). There was reporting that the President told friends back in January that he felt safe in the investigation because Paul wasn't going to flip.

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Donald Trump is telling friends and aides in private that things are going great — for him. Some reasons: He's decided that a key witness in the Russia probe, Paul Manafort, isn't going to "flip" and sell him out, friends and aides say.

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LINK

I could. And I would return to my initial question. What has he done that is so egregious compared to others? Corruption is rampant in our government. What makes his of any particular significance?

The main difference is that the Mueller is working toward alleging is that the swamp Manafort represents is the Russian government. His frame for this investigation is "conspiracy to defraud the United States", investigating those who claim that they were acting in good faith in our politics but secretly serving the interests of Russia and that by doing so essentially prevented the United States government from protecting our politics from undisclosed outside influence.

Paul has been working in Ukraine for a decade to provide a patina of democratic respectability to his former patron, Viktor Yanukovych, concealing Yanukovych's deep influence from Russia there. Paul set up Potemkin elections, funded phony think tanks to launder Russian influence through European politics and Mueller will allege Paul did some of the same things here. After Yanukovych was toppled and fled to Moscow where he remains, Paul was in hock to Oleg Deripaska for >$10 million dollars, was despondent and suicidal before coming to work for Trump (for "free"). Paul wrote to his Russian military intelligence friend and former employee, Konstantin Kilimnik (who incidentally the government alleges Paul also used to suborn perjury in his upcoming trial) to see how they could use his role as Trump campaign manager to "get whole". I'll remind you that Mueller has just indicted 12 Russian military intelligence for hacking political emails and analytics and distributing them to wikileaks and that the same organization Novichoked a former officer who was probably working with British intelligence on this case.

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One very briefly worked on the Trump campaign

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. . . and on the Ford Campaign, and for Reagan's 1980 campaign, and as deputy director of the RNC, and as Reagan's Associate Director of the Presidential Personnel Office at the White House, and as an adviser to both the GHWB and Dole campaigns.

quote:

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His frame for this investigation is "conspiracy to defraud the United States", investigating those who claim that they were acting in good faith in our politics but secretly serving the interests of Russia and that by doing so essentially prevented the United States government from protecting our politics from undisclosed outside influence. 

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Sounds like what every D.C. politician and lobbyist not named Paul or Amash does with both Israel and Saudi Arabia.

It's a bad optic.

But campaign Trump was a private citizen, not a government official.

Kind of a leap to say he was tricking the government. Now if this had continued into the presidency phase, different story.