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During the Manafort’s  Virginia trial back in August, 2018-before what turned out to be a pretty friendly judge in T.S. Ellis-the talking points of faux ‘President Trump’ and his GOP co-conspirators was that whatever Manafort’s crimes they had nothing to do with collusion.This became a mantra of the GOP co-conspirators-if something didn’t clearly relate directly to Russian collusion then it was a mere ‘process crime’-which somehow meant the crime shouldn’t be prosecuted-including all Trump’s obstruction of justice. Though of course they impeached Clinton for obstruction and perjury the GOP now thinks these crimes don’t matter unless you can also prove beyond a reasonable doubt-+90%-guilt in the underlying crime. This ignores that if this were true any criminal defendant would have incentive to obstruct without limit-the more you obstruct the more likely prosecutors won’t discover the underlying crime.

So Manafort’s despicable actions on behalf of Russia linked Ukrainian oligarchs for 10 years was handwaved away-but it has nothing to to do with Russian collusion! 

To be sure if Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager were guilty of any crime-even jaywalking-much less the kind of anti democratic and unAmerican crimes Manafort committed in the Ukraine-they’d be launching an inquiry by nightfall-with most of the MSM endorsing it with editorials. It’s instructive to compare the ‘savvy set’s’ attitude to Trump’s crimes and wrongdoing-yeah but no one cares let’s forget it and discuss 2020 like a normal horse race election-with their attitude in 1998: many editorial pages demanded Clinton step down.

But in point of fact Mueller was always interested in Manafort primarily for collusion-the error was presuming that if he’s being tried for financial crimes and tax evasion that was all Mueller had on him. In reality prosecutors do this every day-they got Al Capone on tax evasion.

That Mueller suspected Manafort of being implicated in collusion was confirmed by reporting going back at least to April 2018.

Manafort’s lawyers had argued in typical Trumpian fashion that Mueller had no business looking at Manfort’s money laundering and acting as an agent of a foreign government as it was supposedly outside Mueller’s mandate. But Manafort’s ‘longstanding ties to Russian backed politicians’ naturally begged the question if he provided the Trump campaign a back channel to Russia.

Of course a year later, post Manafort’s attorney’s mistakenly revealing his handing the Trump campaign polling data to Konstantin Kilimnik and post the Mueller Report-with all the revelations of what Rick Gates told Mueller about Manafort’s activities it’s clear Manafor had a major role in Russian collusion.

TBH this was always logically very likely-just starting with his relationships with Russia backed politicians and his long term business relationship and friendship with Roger Stone-who it was always clear was deeply involved with Russian collusion.

Then there was his presence at the Russian Collusion Trump Tower meeting of June 9, 2016 where he took notes.

For what Manafort specifically took down see here.

Then there was that Guardian article-Chapter A-that asserted Manafort and Julian Assange met three times between 2013 and 2016-the last time in March 2016 around the time Manafort joined the Trump campaign. However, this report about a Manafort-Assange was totally dismissed by the US MSM. There was no followup reporting confirming it-or debunking it we should add-and the ‘smart set’ decided this proved the story basically had cooties-kind of like they decided in 2014 that Hillary Clinton had cooties-or that Iran Contra had cooties in 1990 or so. Or that more recently they’ve decided Mueller is over. Time to turn the page to 2020.

Once the MSM decides on a narrative the facts really don’t matter-to the extent that they have the facts on their side this is accidental-of course they only give a hearing to the facts that confirm their bias. And the bias against the idea that there could be any link between Manafort and Assange was so strong that the NY Times basically buried its own reporting of a meeting Manafort had in 2017 with the Ecuadorean President to have Assange sent to the US.

However, if the Church of the Savvy has ruled out the idea of an Assange-Manafort link out of hand, Robert Mueller didn’t in his testimony last Wednesday-he clearly left the door open for an Asssange-Manafort meeting.

Note that if the Trump campaign was involved in the theft of Clinton campaign emails that’s the crime of conspiracy to commit computer crimes. This is what I’ve been a voice in the wilderness on since Barr first released his fake exoneration letter-‘didn’t establish conspiracy with the Russian government’ doesn’t mean there was on conspiracy.

What we do know post release of the Mueller Report from Rick Gates is that Manafort was at least very enthusiastic about the coming Assange email dumps-they had prior knowledge of both the DNC emails and then the Podesta emails-Chapter A.

Because the MSM decided the very idea that there’s a Manafort-Assange link is absurd on its face they never considered Seth Abramson’s very reasonable conjecture that Manafort was the Senior Campaign Official in Roger Stone’s indictment memo who directed Stone to find out what else Wikileaks had. 

Indeed, the Mueller Report suggests that Manafort himself spoke with Trump about Wikileaks.

It’s big news that the MSM has totally missed but logically it makes a lot of sense-after all Manafort was the campaign manager at the time-it’s clear Trump himself was talking to Stone about it-add to this picture Manafort’s 40 year business relationship and friendship to the picture and you’d expect Manafort was in the loop. As noted above, Gates told Mueller that Manafort was very enthusiastic about the Wikileaks’ dumps so it’s only natural he’d have spoken to Trump about it.

Then there’s Konstantin Kilimnik. Manafort goes back with the the Russian intel operative to the years he was rigging Ukrainian elections-only fitting that they moved on to an American election.

We know about his messages to Kilimnik about how can we use this to get whole-get whole with the Putin linked oligarch Oleg Deripaska-and that in July Manafort emailed Kilimnik about offering Deripaska a private campaign briefing. 

Then there was Manafort’s infamous August 2 meeting with Kilimnik in NYC at the Cigar Club. They discussed-lots of totally innocent stuff-like removing sanctions on Russia for invading Crimea. They also discussed-Wikileaks hacks of the DNC. And then there was the 75 pages of Trump campaign polling data on the three swing states that would put Trump over the top.

In court documents in January, 2019 the Mueller team made it clear they considered the August 2 meeting to be key to getting to the bottom of collusion. However, thanks to Manafort’s lies and dissembling the full truth remains obscured.

Like Malcom Nance says-coincidences takes a lot of planning. The coincidences stack on top of themselves in Trump’s collusion with Russia to steal the 2016 election.

On the same day Manafort and Kilimnik talked ending sanctions, Wikileaks’ hacks, and Manafort gave him the polling data, Jerome Corsi was emailing Roger Stone-the next email dump would be Podesta in October.

There is a belief that Deripaska is the missing link to Russia collusion. 

Intelligence veterans say Kremlin linkages could have been at play in the back-to-back talks in Moscow and New York.

“Deripaska is a key lieutenant and a significant oligarch in Putin’s oligarch system,” said Steven Hall, a retired CIA chief of Russia operations.

“Deripaska would get his marching orders from the Kremlin about what Russia wanted, including lifting of sanctions and a resolution of the situation in Ukraine that favored Russia,” Hall said. “It seems likely the chain of communication would have been Putin to Deripaska to Kilimnik to Manafort.”

“The Manafort connection to Deripaska is essential,” Hall added. “I think people really need to focus on the Manafort-Deripaska relationship. It’s essentially a Trump-Putin connection.”

And it turns out that Kilimnik and Deripaska worked together to set up the meeting with Manafort on August 2:

The timing of the talks between Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, a veteran political consultant, and Konstantin Kilimnik, his longtime aide who allegedly had ties to Russian intelligence in 2016, occurred in New York on 2 August.

The meeting came just days after Kilimnik met in Moscow with Oleg Deripaska, a powerful oligarch and close ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Deripaska had been a major client of Manafort but had sued him over a failed business deal in Ukraine and was seeking to recoup almost $25m.

In emails first reported by the Washington Post, Manafort proposed giving Deripaska “private briefings” on the Trump campaign, and told Kilimnik to pass the idea on to the oligarch, apparently an effort to win his favor and settle the lawsuit that Deripaska had brought against him. Manafort, Kilimnik and Deripaska have said no formal proposal was ever made and nothing came of the idea.

The private briefing between Manafort and Deripaska may not have been direct but it appears Kilimnik was his intermediary on August 2.

In his July emails to Manafort, which the Atlantic first reported, Kilimnik said he told Deripaska he had to “run it by you first”, but could come quickly “provided that he buys me a ticket”. Kilimnik called Deripaska’s ideas about his country’s future “quite interesting”.

Manafort replied that Tuesday 2 August would work, and the two men reportedly met that day at the Grand Havana Room, a cigar bar in midtown Manhattan.”

If Deripaska is in fact integral to Russian collusion-the direct link to Putin-this brings you to the story of Deripaska’s sex coach friend-who claimed to have tapes proving collusion and the central role Deripaska played-see chapter A.

And clearly he was integral to the August 2 meeting-not only did he plan it with Kilimnik in July-and spoke to him again a few days before it-in yet another ‘total coincidence’ the timing in his jet arriving in New Jersey was very close to the time of the meeting.

Again that’s the thing about coincidences-they take a lot of planning

Finally the Steele Dossier. So much has been done to calumny the document-when Mueller was inevitably asked about it by the GOP co-conspirators on Wednesday he simply declared the dossier outside his investigation’s scope.

FN: While the GOP asked him about the Dossier for the wrong reasons you wonder if this means Mueller made no attempt to falsify or corroborate it? That is a fair question though Mueller refused to answer most fair questions at the hearing.

However it is interesting to recall what the Dossier said about Manafort:

There was a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between Trump and Russia.

Steele describes a Trump-Russia “conspiracy,” managed by Paul Manafort, with Carter Page serving as intermediary until Manafort’s firing in August 2016, after which point Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen played an increasingly large role in managing the “Kremlin relationship.”

This is broadly similar to some things that have been demonstrated later, but totally different in the details.

In dealing with raw intelligence you don’t necessarily expect every detail to be 100% right-something the GOP co-conspirators as well as the MSM pundits conveniently ‘forget’-amazing how easy it is for the GOP hacks to play the pundits. But certainly the fact pattern described above is consistent with the idea that Manafort managed the conspiracy.

UPDATE: For still more in Manafort’s central role in Russian collusion:

 

Augment on Van Der Zwaan?

Augment: After doing so much to facilitate collusion during the election Manafort advised the Trump campaign on managing the Russia  scandal after the election.

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/25/manafort-trump-russia-advise-238803

Augment? Emptywheel’s piece about the brief time Manafort was pretending to cooperate with Mueller. 

Roger Stone, who’s shrewder than Rudy, immediately suggested anything Manafort may be saying (or may already have said) implicating him would be a lie.

I am uncertain of the details of Paul’s plea deal but certain it has no bearing on me since neither Paul Manafort or anyone else can testify truthfully that I am involved in Russian collusion, WikiLeaks collaboration or any other illegal act pertaining to the 2016 election.

Though of course, Stone’s seeming awareness that Mueller might pursue Manafort testimony about Stone reveals his brave comment for the lie it is.”

Uh actually…

 

 

 

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October 28, 2016: a Day That Will Live in Infamy Copyright © by . All Rights Reserved.

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