Paul Manafort - a look back

This will be a multi-part OP, so please wait until I have posted all parts before responding, thank you in advance.

Yesterday a news item dropped that indictments have been handed down in Mueller's investigation into Russian influence into the 2016 election cycle. from the OP to numerous other posters, one name comes to the forefront as to against whom at least one of the charges will be issued.

Paul Manafort.

Considering the potential impacts this could have on things moving forward, I thought I might take a closer look at Mr. Manafort's past and figured others would have some contributions to share as well and thus, this thread comes into being.

Mr. Manafort has been a part of the D.C establishment for quite some time, entering the fray under Gerald Ford first as Associate Director of the Presidential Personnel Office at the White House in 1975-77 and then in 1981 Ronald Reagan offered this position:

The President today announced his intention to nominate Paul J. Manafort, Jr., to be a member of the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, United States International Development Cooperation Agency.

Nomination of Paul J. Manafort, Jr., To Be a Member of the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation
May 13, 1981

The first scandal in which Manafort is involved is one with HUD:

Paul J. Manafort, a prominent Republican political consultant and campaign adviser to Presidents Bush and Reagan, told a congressional committee yesterday that he engaged in "influence-peddling" three years ago when he used his Washington contacts to obtain a potentially lucrative federal housing contract. "The technical term for what we do -- and law firms, associations and professional groups do -- is lobby," said Manafort, a partner in the firm Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly. "For the purposes of today, I will stipulate that, in a narrow sense, some people may term it influence-peddling."

WaPo

Early on and he is brought before congressional committee and called to the carpet for his activity with HUD. A few years later we come to this:

The opportunist president of Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko, is on a public relations binge in the United States. He thinks that if he can put a veneer on his vices, the United States will keep giving him money. But for someone who wants to clean up his image, Mobutu has chosen an odd PR team. He has been hobnobbing with a face from the past -- Tongsun Park, the central figure in the "Koreagate" congressional bribery scandal of 1976. And he has hired the premier Washington lobbying firm of the present -- Black Manafort Stone & Kelly, implicated in the Housing and Urban Development Department scandal.
...
The firm is so hot in Washington that even being roped into the HUD scandal has not slowed business. Paul Manafort, a partner in the firm, admitted to "influence peddling" to win HUD contracts for his clients, including a housing project in New Jersey that local officials called "a horrible waste of taxpayers' money." Since Manafort's admission of influence peddling, new clients have been beating down the firm's door.

WaPo

Moving forward, we come to this:

WASHINGTON, March 28 (UPI) -- Foreign Agent Registration Act (Department of Justice) reporting shows that authoritarian Ukrainian Presidents Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yanukovych have poured far more millions of U.S. dollars into Washington political consultants, lobbyists and lawyers than pro-Western opposition and ruling "orange" forces.

In addition to the on-going contract with Davis Manafort International since 2005, the Yanukovych administration and Party of Regions, Arnall Golden Gregory LLP and Tauzin Consultants LLC provide consultancy services to Party of Regions parliamentary deputy Petro Shpenov for the sum of $40,000 per month.
...
The ECFMU has additionally hired the Podesta Group to lobby in Washington. Tony Podesta, like Weber, is among the top lobbyists in the United States and is close to the Democratic Party and his brother, John Podesta, is a former member of President Bill Clinton's administration, is an advisor to President Barack Obama.

The ECFMU's U.S. Allies Project "seeks to inform the American government, opinion leaders, political decision makers and civil society, focusing on reforms being undertaken by Ukraine as part of its commitment to becoming a fully Western-facing democracy."

UPI

Above we see both Manafort and the Podesta group working for the Ukranian government. This is also where we get to tie in Senator McCain and Russia:

Yet despite McCain’s tough talk, behind the scenes his top advisers have cultivated deep ties with Russia’s oligarchy–indeed, they have promoted the Kremlin’s geopolitical and economic interests, as well as some of its most unsavory business figures, through greedy cynicism and geopolitical stupor. The most notable example is the tale of how McCain and his campaign manager, Rick Davis, advanced what became a key victory for the Kremlin: gaining control over the small but strategically important country of Montenegro.

According to two former senior US diplomats who served in the Balkans, Davis and his lobbying firm, Davis Manafort, received several million dollars to help run Montenegro’s independence referendum campaign of 2006. The terms of the agreement were never disclosed to the public, but top Montenegrin officials told the US diplomats that Davis’s work was underwritten by powerful Russian business interests connected to the Kremlin and operating in Montenegro. Neither Davis nor the McCain campaign responded to repeated requests for comment.

McCain's campaign manager is partnered with Manafort in their lobbying efforts for Montenegro, McCain is being wined and dined:

In mid-September The Nation‘s website published a photo of McCain celebrating his seventieth birthday in Montenegro in August 2006 at a yacht party hosted by convicted Italian felon Raffaello Follieri and his movie-star girlfriend Anne Hathaway. On the same day one of the largest mega-yachts in the world, the Queen K, was moored in the same bay of Kotor. This was where the real party was. The owner of the Queen K was known as “Putin’s oligarch”: Oleg Deripaska, controlling shareholder of the Russian aluminum giant RusAl, currently listed as the ninth-richest man in the world, with a rap sheet as abundant as his wealth.

End part 1

Part 2

Oleg Deripaska is one of Putin's cronies, but that doesn't prevent senator McCain from enjoying his hospitality as can be seen above. Meanwhile, I include the following bit because there are a couple of names here that seem to keep coming up throughout all of these political stories:

Despite rampant Russophobia among Republicans, Deripaska turned to powerful GOP figures to solve his problem–especially to Republicans connected with McCain. In 2003 Deripaska hired former presidential candidate Bob Dole, who had nearly picked McCain as his running mate, and Dole’s lobbying partner Bruce Jackson (also a McCain aide) to lobby the State Department to overturn the visa ban, according to Glenn Simpson and Mary Jacoby of the Wall Street Journal. Over the next few years Dole’s firm, Alston & Bird, was paid more than $500,000 to push for Deripaska’s visa.

Make note of this bit:

Deripaska’s business partner in London, Nathaniel Rothschild, an heir to the English Rothschild fortune, bought a stake in Diligence, according to the New York Times and confirmed by a Rothschild spokesman.

I have read in numerous places that Putin was vehemently anti-Rotshchild, but the above would seem to belie that?
Perhaps this is a ‘keep your enemies close’ kind of thing, but regardless any time you have Rothschild business interests at play, there will be shenanigans afoot somewhere.


Anyway, this is where we tie things up a bit more tidily:

If you’re wondering how Deripaska came to know Davis & Co., the answer lies in Russia’s next-door neighbor Ukraine.
…
Shortly after the Orange Revolution, a murder investigation was launched against the country’s richest oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov, Yanukovich’s main backer. Akhmetov fled the country. In exile in Monaco, he turned to Davis’s business partner, Paul Manafort–the second name in the lobbying firm Davis Manafort. An old GOP hand, Manafort, like Davis, had played a key role in Dole’s failed 1996 presidential run and had worked for dictators like Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire. Akhmetov initially hired Manafort to improve the image of his beleaguered conglomerate, SCM, but soon Manafort’s role shifted to helping Yanukovich.
Manafort assembled a skilled team of political operatives in Ukraine and set about raising the popularity of Yanukovich’s pro-Russian Party of Regions, which Akhmetov financed. It was a very lucrative deal for Davis Manafort–and successful (according to Ukrainian investigative journalist Mustafa Nayem, Akhmetov paid Manafort upward of $3 million). Yanukovich’s disgraced party won a resounding victory in the March 2006 elections–and Akhmetov returned as the top Ukrainian oligarch. Thanks in part to the work of Davis Manafort, the Orange Revolution was essentially undone, putting Putin back in the chess match over Ukraine’s future.

We can see here that it’s not just Hillary who has a public face and a private face:

Publicly McCain and his campaign chief’s lobbying firm were on opposite sides. In 2005 McCain had nominated Orange Revolution hero Yushchenko for the Nobel Prize, and that spring he’d honored Yushchenko in the headquarters of the International Republican Institute, whose board McCain has chaired since 1993. But behind the scenes the former head of IRI’s Moscow office, Philip Griffin, was recruited by Manafort to work on Yanukovich’s campaign against Yushchenko. Davis Manafort’s work was considered so detrimental to US interests that a National Security Council official called McCain’s office to complain, according to the New York Times. The McCain campaign denies receiving the NSC complaint.

As is apparent, Paul Manafort was active, and quite successful, working for Russian interests. But what about senator McCain, what’s his bit in all of this?

Aside from a little campaign dough, what has McCain gotten out of all this? It’s hard to tell–either he was utterly clueless while his top advisers and political allies ran around the former Soviet domain promoting the Kremlin’s interests for cash, or he was aware of it and didn’t care. McCain was reportedly so angry about Davis Manafort’s role in stifling Ukraine’s Orange Revolution that he almost removed Davis as campaign manager. But in the case of Montenegro, he should have known what Davis & Co. were up to. After all, McCain lent a helping hand. And by the time he visited the country, the Russian takeover was plain to see.

The Nation

So here we have senator McCain’s top advisors working for Russian interests the whole time he is publicly condemning Russia’s actions. McCain, who has been critical of president Trump does not have a very solid foundation himself upon which to base such criticism. Keep in mind also that all of the above in reference to Manafort and McCain are taking place during George W. Bush’s presidency. Bush, of whom president Trump was vociferously critical.

Now, this is not necessarily related to Paul Manafort’s political activities, but I did run across this and so thought to include for context. From Wikipedia we learn:

Manafort was born April 1, 1949,[14] in New Britain, Connecticut, the son of Antoinette Marie (née Cifalu) and Paul J. Manafort, Sr. (1923–2013).[15][16] His grandfather was an Italian who immigrated to the U.S.[17] and founded the construction company "Manafort Brothers". His father served with the US Army combat engineers in World War II[15] and was mayor of New Britain from 1965 to 1971

Concurrently with Paul in his lobbying efforts for the Yanukovych administration, his brothers’ company is involved in this:

Deirdre M. Daly, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut; Ted Doherty, regional Special Agent in Charge for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General; Patricia M. Ferrick, Special Agent in Charge of the New Haven Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Cheryl Garcia, Acting Special Agent in Charge, U.S. Department of Labor Office of Inspector General, Office of Labor Racketeering and Fraud Investigations, New York Region, today announced that Plainville-based construction company Manafort Brothers Inc. (Manafort) will pay $2.4 million and implement internal reforms subject to independent monitoring to resolve a multi-agency joint criminal and civil investigation into alleged fraud committed by the company in connection with a public works project that commenced in 2007. As part of the resolution, Manafort admitted that it made false statements to the United States and the State of Connecticut Department of Transportation that disadvantaged business enterprises (DBE) performed subcontracted work on the federally and state funded relocation of Route 72 when, in fact, non-DBE performed the work.

FBI

3rd and final part

So, not only has Paul Manafort been involved in influence pedaling regards to HUD contracts, but his brothers are committing fraud against their home state governments, he then went on to lobby on behalf of a Putin backer in addition to several other less than savory characters. I have to ask, who in the hell on Trump’s staff was responsible for vetting the people he was bringing on to his campaign? They need to be fired from all I can tell.

Well ATS, I have rambled on long enough and so will yield the floor to my fellow members to enjoy or otherwise. Once again, thank you for your consideration.

Related ATS threads:

Breaking: First Charges Filed in Mueller Investigation

Banks Subpoenaed for Manafort Records

Trump senior aide Manafort resigns after being pushed aside

Manafort may have worked with Podesta group to influence policy for Russia through Hillary

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

Wow!

This is an excellent and much needed thread!

The connections with McCain/Ukraine is very intriguing, also seems that Manafort has been an agent of the deep state for a very long time, going back to Ford!

No political loyalty to be found here, this man does the bidding of his controllers, I hope that the scumbag Podesta bro's are taken down with this POS.

Seems to me not much of an investigation would be needed to charge this guy with something.

His fingers have been in the Kool Aid for decades.

Awesome summation BTW. S&F

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

Great thread.....

I have to ask, who in the hell on Trump’s staff was responsible for vetting the people he was bringing on to his campaign? They need to be fired from all I can tell.

That was Trump himself, And yes he needs to go.....

I have to ask, who in the hell on Trump’s staff was responsible for vetting the people he was bringing on to his campaign? They need to be fired from all I can tell.

Absolutely. So just WHO was it that hired Manafort, who was it that made him an early Campaign Manager????? Just how far from the top of the campaign is the Campaign Manager...... My guess is right at the top. So who could it have been that hired Manafort and vetted him other than the most logical of logical people. Trump himself. How can we deny this, how can we slough this off as someone else's responsibility. Trump worked hand in hand with Manafort for the early part of the campaign and from video clips we have seen that Trump praised him highly.

So who was it? My guess is Mr. President. So if this is the case, the draining of the swamp was only mentioned after getting a kick start from that very swamp. And to believe that now that Manafort is officially out of power with Trump and that trump is now draining the swamp is sadly laughable.

And back to your suggestion on who should be fired for this, the answer is simple to me at least ...Trump

It looks as though Mr. Manafort is involved in shady dealings elsewhere as well:

A US political consultant has admitted being paid by an intermediary in 1994 arms sales for advising the campaign of French presidential hopeful Édouard Balladur. The admission may shed new light on the scandal known as the “Karachi affair”.

...

The payments to Manafort came from a bank account held by Abdul Rahman el-Assir, one of the two middlemen in the submarine deal.

Manafort also said that he travelled to France and met with Balladur’s entourage to present his ideas. His translator during the meeting was the second intermediary, Ziad Takieddine.

On June 20, Takieddine, who is currently in jail for trying to procure a false passport, admitted to judges that he delivered illegal funds to people close to Balladur to fund his presidential bid.

Manafort and his associates also received additional payments from el-Assir’s bank account in 2000 and 2001, well after the election in question.

france24

And yeah, I get it...fire Trump!

Personally, I doubt he did any vetting himself but rather relied on the experience of others. Unless something is published explicitly stating so, neither one of those positions are verifiable and so my opinion on the matter is just as valid as is those who think Trump did the checking on his own.

originally posted by: jadedANDcynical
So, not only has Paul Manafort been involved in influence pedaling regards to HUD contracts, but his brothers are committing fraud against their home state governments, he then went on to lobby on behalf of a Putin backer in addition to several other less than savory characters. I have to ask, who in the hell on Trump’s staff was responsible for vetting the people he was bringing on to his campaign? They need to be fired from all I can tell.

Good stuff, J&C!

Of course, IMO, the buck stops with Trump on who was vetted (and how thoroughly) for his campaign staff...because he vetted the vetters!

That said, I predict Manafort will be the next Scooter Libby, Rod Blagojevich, etc...

ETA: ...Dan Egan....*snort*

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

Accusations are that McCain approached the FBI with the infamous dossier.

Could his relationship with Manafortaffected that decsion.

And isnt it starnge how many of these shady people involved with Trump were also involved with Hillarys team.

Manafort worked for years with the Podestas to peddle russian influence.

Now we find out the the russian lawyer that Trump jr. met with was actively working with Fusion GPS for years on behalf of russsia. Fusion GOS being the firm that the dems hired for the russian dossier.

Could it be that Hillarys team pushed for these shady russian connected characters to get involved with trumps team so that they would have dirt on them?

Or maybe trump was just an idiot and didnt vet people himself?

Or maybe Trump is a Russian stooge and knew exactly what he was doing.

Either way, the democrats calling out of trump for his connection to these people may come baack to haunt them.

a reply to: MotherMayEye

Of course, IMO, the buck stops with Trump on who was vetted (and how thoroughly) for his campaign staff...because he vetted the vetters!

On this I 100% agree. It makes me wonder if there were any other staff shake outs that occurred in the wake of Manafort's exit.

Ran across this interesting blog after I made my previous post:

At this time, Manafort’s current work and location are unknown. Burns and Haberman [2014] reported that in early March, not long after Yanukovych abandoned his opulent multi-million dollar mansion to flee Ukraine, Manafort’s former colleagues did not know his whereabouts, and he did not respond to messages sent to half a dozen email accounts linked to him, nor did he answer calls to phone numbers at his Virginia and Florida addresses. However, a couple of March twitter messages -- true or not -- placed Manafort in an expensive hotel in Kiev.

In one of his few newspaper interviews after starting his work in Ukraine, Manafort said that in his work there he wanted to “play a constructive role in developing a democracy.” To do so, he helped a corrupt thug take power, thereby steering a nation into a crisis that not only hurts its citizens, but threatens to destabilize the world. Manafort’s actions in Ukraine suggest that where ever he is and whatever he is doing now, he is making lots of money, justifying his work in lofty phrases, and showing no concern for its consequences.

Manafort is definitely one of the sleaze mongers and should certainly be treated accordingly.

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

We've hired some people too that we later regretted hiring, but damn! Trump has to be the king of poor hiring practices. It's almost like he tried to hire people with Russian connections.

You know, Manafort, Flynn, Jared Kushner, Stone, [maybe] Sessions. Such an odd co-inky-dinky. heh.

originally posted by: jadedANDcynical
a reply to: MotherMayEye

Of course, IMO, the buck stops with Trump on who was vetted (and how thoroughly) for his campaign staff...because he vetted the vetters!

On this I 100% agree. It makes me wonder if there were any other staff shake outs that occurred in the wake of Manafort's exit.

Ran across this interesting blog after I made my previous post:

At this time, Manafort’s current work and location are unknown. Burns and Haberman [2014] reported that in early March, not long after Yanukovych abandoned his opulent multi-million dollar mansion to flee Ukraine, Manafort’s former colleagues did not know his whereabouts, and he did not respond to messages sent to half a dozen email accounts linked to him, nor did he answer calls to phone numbers at his Virginia and Florida addresses. However, a couple of March twitter messages -- true or not -- placed Manafort in an expensive hotel in Kiev.

In one of his few newspaper interviews after starting his work in Ukraine, Manafort said that in his work there he wanted to “play a constructive role in developing a democracy.” To do so, he helped a corrupt thug take power, thereby steering a nation into a crisis that not only hurts its citizens, but threatens to destabilize the world. Manafort’s actions in Ukraine suggest that where ever he is and whatever he is doing now, he is making lots of money, justifying his work in lofty phrases, and showing no concern for its consequences.

Manafort is definitely one of the sleaze mongers and should certainly be treated accordingly.

Roger Stone, too, though. His record should have eliminated him from the Trump campaign. It could be that Trump chose people to be fall guys.

They are both guys that have taken falls before.

a reply to: MotherMayEye

Speaking of Stone:

WASHINGTON — Four prominent Republicans in George Bush`s presidential campaign worked for a firm that promised a ``back-channel relationship`` between the Reagan administration and the Bahamas at a time when U.S. officials suspected Bahamian leaders of accepting payoffs from drug traffickers.

A 1984 memo made available Wednesday by a Democratic congressman from Ohio tells how the firm of Black, Manafort and Stone proposed-for an $800,000 fee-to improve the standing in Washington of the Bahamas and its president, Lynden Pindling, who was believed by U.S. drug enforcement officials to be taking bribes from Latin American drug traffickers.

...

Goodin said Black, Manafort and Stone were hired primarily to help ensure that the Bahamas got more resources from the United States to fight drug tafficking.

Chicago Tribune

Hm, so the lobbying group had the intention of getting more money from congress so that the 'war on drugs' in the Bahamas would be well funded. We now know what all was really going on down there with the 'war on drugs' and who was involved.

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

This one is new to me! Very interesting...off to read the article...

***

ETA: And now I am down a rabbit hole!

I don't know much about Manafort but the first line of your second quote there should be enough to get Trump off the hook for "knowingly" hiring this guy.

Paul J. Manafort, a prominent Republican political consultant and campaign adviser to Presidents Bush and Reagan

Maybe that's all Trump knew about him or maybe someone from the Bush or Reagan administrations recommended him?

a reply to: RazorV66

But both presidents had major scandals in their records.

And Bush Sr. LOST his re-election. And Bush had Atwater advising him and Atwater was widely reviled.

I would think anyone serious about winning would want to know as much as they could about the records of Manafort and Stone. And, again, maybe Trump knew all about both Manafort & Stone and chose them for their 'fall guy' potential....or other unpleasant reasons.

I am so hesitant to ever absolve the highest in the chain of command because a lesser guy/gal COULD take the blame.

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

Great work here J&C.

We can hope that Special Counsel will be fair
in looking at everyone's role in this.

Especially the Podesta ties.

I read a report that said a Fusion GPS high up
had a spouse working in the Obama Admin.

I have not been able to verify that yet.

I did however find that yesterday new revelations
have come to light concerning Fusion GPS.

New information here about
Fusion GPS and it's close ties to CNN, especially reporter
Evan Perez, who was ties to the CNN "leak" that Special Counsel
will be announcing an indictment.

dailycaller.com...

a reply to: burntheships

Thank you!

Looking at how slimey Manafort was well before Trump ever gave politics more than passing consideration, I am almost stunned that he would have been allowed anywhere near the campaign of a person who gave the appearance of wanting to root out corruption.

Not saying Trump is clean or dirty. He is a wealthy real estate developer and has become so in one of the most ruthless cities on earth and so he would have to have some big brass ones in order to even be able to ante up over and above any financial considerations the beginnings of such an enterprise would need. Not to mention unions and government officials he would encounter at various stages or a project. So yes, he's had to deal with the filth of corruption we know is within our system.

Paul Manafort, on the other hand has been hip deep in the snip since he got his feet wet and from what I've found in making this thread and subsequent replies, absolutely epitomizes the term 'swamp creature,' that has recently been coined in reference to dirty politicos.

I'm thinking about a similar 'theme thread' for Fusion GPS as this one was aimed at Manafort; there's already a bunch of good threads on them as is so not sure if one is necessary, though.

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

Manafort working for Podesta speaks volumes.

Another angle I have been looking at is there were many operatives
working on the outside to gain access to the inside.

One instance was Russian Operatives working to get close
to Hillary Clinton. The FBI was watching this take place,
when the Russian got close enough, FBI warned Hillary.

Perhaps they knew a lot more than they were telling Trump...
just a thought. How easy would it be for them to have set
some of this up?