Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort arrives at the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., for a hearing on June 15. (photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
16 September 18
rump’s campaign manager April-August of 2016, Paul Manafort has agreed to plead guilty
to conspiring against the United States. In return for a reduction of
his sentence he must answer fully and candidly all the questions asked
him by special counsel Robert Mueller and his team about criminal
wrongdoing. Since Manafort is alleged to have had close relations with
Russian oligarchs, money-launderers and even organized crime, he almost
certainly knows about a fair number of crimes.
Mueller is not interested in random crimes, however,
but in any that may have been commmited by Trump or his close
associates, especially crimes involving contacts with Russia during the
2016 campaign, of which Manafort was the chairman. In that period, Trump
would call him 20 times a day. The two men were very close.
A Washington, D. C., court was about to begin a trial
against Manafort. Mueller’s side had easily won their first case against
Manafort, in Virginia, and the likelihood is that they would have won
the Washington one, as well. Manafort was looking at going bankrupt
defending himself, and at being sentenced to life in prison (he is 69 so
any long sentence amounts to a life sentence).
As it is, Manafort has to give to the Federal
government over $40 million in ill-gotten gains. Manafort has been
convicted of lobbying for pro-Russian politicians and interests in
Ukraine, of not registering as a foreign agent, and of keeping tens of
millions of dollars in payments from Russian oligarchs and their
Ukrainian counter-parts in banks in Cyprus while never paying any taxes
on them. He got paid for doing things like circulating a false charge
that Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko (anti-Russian) was guilty
of ordering people killed (Manafort said he wanted to “put some stink”
on her).
Manafort colluded with an unnamed Israeli official to weaponize “anti-Semitism”
for Russian aims in Ukraine, painting Tymoshenko as an anti-Semite. He
then put pressure on the Jewish figures in the Obama administration to
pressure Obama to oppose Tymoshenko, in favor of the pro-Russian Viktor
Yanukovych.
The casual way in which the Likud government of
Binyamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, throws around charges of
anti-Semitism for narrow, everyday political gain has almost entirely
undermined the force of the charge. When I see a campaign against Jeremy
Corbyn waged by the British Israel lobbies, attempting to smear him as
bigotted against Jews because he disagrees with Israeli colonization of
the Palestinians, I am inclined to discount it. It is just more
Manafortism, in which there is an attempt to have Corbyn Manafortized.
All that speaks to Manafort’s character but it is
ancient history. The big story is that he attended the July, 2016 Trump
Tower meeting with Russian agent Natalia Veselnitskaya, in which the
Trump campaign expected to receive damaging information on Hilary
Clinton from Russian hacking of her accounts. The Russians wanted
Magnitsky Act sanctions lifted on President Vladimir Putin’s cronies in
return.
Trump himself dictated a description of that meeting
which is nothing but a lie. Don Trump, Jr., had called the meeting after
receiving an invitation to meet by a high Russian source.
That is, Manafort is potentially in a position to
begin putting Trump family members in jail, and to provide the smoking
gun to Mueller against Trump himself.
Moreover, since Manafort knows the Russian oligarchs
and criminal elements, it is not impossible that he has incidental
information about Trump moneylaundering via Moscow.
If Mueller indicts Trump, that is a constitutional
crisis. If Mueller hands over irrefutable evidence of criminal
wrongdoing to the Department of Justice, that is a constitutional
crisis. If he hands the dossier over to Congress, that is a
constitutional crisis. This plane does not have a soft landing, folks.
Fasten your seatbelts.
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