Manafort's family, and more

Being a pessimist by nature, I habitually look for ways to transform good news into bad news, to find the dark cloud enshrouding each silver lining. The Great Manafort Flip was definitely good news. Yet the initial Politico report troubled me:

However, a source close to the defense told POLITICO, "the cooperation agreement does not involve the Trump campaign. ... There was no collusion with Russia."

As the day progressed, Rudy Giuliani fastened onto this exact same defense. No surprise there. But the sentiment was also repeated by John Dowd, Trump's former lawyer, the same guy who made that "orange jump suit" remark in Woodward's book. Brian Williams, on his show last night, zeroed in on Dowd's words, but could get no real explanation for why he said what he said.

Did Politico mean Dowd when they spoke of a "source close to the defense"? Doesn't make sense.

Those words still bug me. Politico's first report got it wrong: Manafort's cooperation agreement is total and all-encompassing. Mueller is free to ask about the Trump campaign; Mueller can ask about anything and everything.

Moreover, it is my understanding that Manafort's guilty plea covers the charges on which the jury deadlocked in the first trial. Those charges include bank fraud, a crime which may be prosecuted at the state level. If the state of New York should decide to pursue such a case against him, it'd be a slam-dunk, because he has already admitted guilt. And he can't be pardoned.

If you want to read the full filing in the Manafort case -- and I confess that I have not yet fulfilled that duty -- David Corn offers it here.

This Mueller filing opens a wide window into the ultra-swampy world of international lobbying and disinformation. It is a case study in sleaze, and the man at the center of it shares responsibility for the election of Donald Trump.

Family man. Manafort's lawyer made a startling announcement:

Paul Manafort’s lawyer says the former Trump campaign chairman cut a deal with prosecutors “to make sure that his family was able to remain safe and live a good life.”

This statement mirrors Trump's earlier tweet, which I interpreted as a subtle threat: "I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family."

Trump also went out of his way to reference the family in a televised interview.

Yet Trump has no reason to like Paul Manafort's daughters. They certainly dislike the current president -- and they seem very unhappy with their dad. The former Jessica Manafort has changed her name, while her sister Andrea has accused her father of murder. (In a previous post, I compared Andrea to Ina Balin's character in The Commancheros. Ina plays the daughter of an old West supervillain and...well, you'll just have to see the movie.)

So why did Trump and the lawyers go out of their way to refer to Manafort's family? To speak of that family's safety?

We can only guess, but it sure seems as though a threat lurks somewhere in the background. No less a personage than Al Franken has made the suggestion that Manafort (and his loved ones) could be in danger from Putin's goons.

What will he spill? Franklin Foer in The Atlantic outlines the various topics that Mueller may want to know more about, including Oleg Deripaska, the Russian oligangster who came under the impression that Manafort owed him millions. (No-one has yet properly explained what that was all about, but it had something to do with a communications company in a foreign country.)

Paul Manafort’s recent career could be read as a rolling series of nadirs. One of those low points was his departure from the Trump campaign on August 19, 2016. He left after The New York Times reported that Manafort was receiving off-the-books payments from his Ukrainian clients. The very day that Manafort resigned, he created a new LLC called Summerbreeze. In the months that followed, the LLC began receiving millions in loans from financial institutions with ties to Trump. Why would these lenders give cash to Manafort given the press attention he was receiving and his clearly troubled finances? (In the previous Manafort trial, the special counsel alleged that Manafort promised to help the head of one of these banks obtain a job in the Trump administration.)

When reading Mueller’s technicolor account of Manafort’s tactics in Ukraine, it’s clear that Manafort had no scruples about his work. He prided himself on smearing his client’s political opponents; he created sham think tanks and generated phony pressure campaigns.

Greg Sargent of the WP is on the same trail...

I just spoke to @RepAdamSchiff about Manafort's flip. Schiff suggests Manafort may shed light on: -- Trump Tower meeting -- conversations between Trump and Manafort as part of joint defense agreement -- whether Trump's team dangled a pardon

Trump will not be the only topic of conversation. I think that Paulie has been part of Russia's intelligence operations against the United States for quite a few years. He knows which congressfolk and media figures are in Putin's pocket. He knows how foreign interests can engineer smear campaigns in this country.

This article may be a year old, but it still deserves your attention.

Manafort and Deripaska struck a lucrative $10 million-a-year deal to lobby for Russia beginning in 2006. Under the arrangement, Manafort would influence Russian politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and former Soviet republics. Deripaska has since been banned from the U.S. for ties to organized crime but he’s traveled here as a Russian diplomat.

Manafort set up a similarly suspect offshore company with Ukrainian oligarch Dmitro Firtash. They hatched a plan to buy New York’s Drake Hotel then cancelled the deal leaving employees stranded without salaries. Firtash is wanted in the U.S. on suspicion of bribery and organized criminal activity.

Take special note of this next bit:

Much of Manafort’s international offshore dealings were routed through the Bank Of Cyprus. Investigators obtained documents of Manafort’s Cypriot transactions earlier this year. The bank is widely considered a Russian laundering front. Its former Vice Chair Wilbur Ross is Trump’s Commerce Secretary, is also under investigation.

A Daily Kos writer describes more beans which Manafort may be able to spill: The platform change, the Trump Tower meeting (I've always thought that much more occurred than we have been told), the actual role played by Papadopoulos, and the truth about Flynn.

No wonder Flynn's sentencing was delayed just a few weeks back. Mueller was likely planning for the prospect that they just might flip Manafort yet, and Flynn's insights would certainly be crucial to whatever new information Manafort offered.

The Russians really ARE coming! Is this story related to any of the above? I'm not sure, but it definitely deserves a good ponder.

Like a modern, dark inversion of the fable of the Three Wise Men from the east, the end of last January saw the three heads of Russian intelligence visit their counterparts in Washington.

These were Sergey Naryshkin of the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service (under sanction but allowed in under a special dispensation from State Department), Igor Korobov of the GU (formerly GRU), Russia’s military intelligence agency, and Aleksandr Bortnikov of the FSB, the internal security and intelligence service.

These visits, all simultaneous and all short, were unprecedented, their purpose mysterious, their outcome unknown.

Why are we playing nice with these guys? They attacked our country. They still are interfering in our elections.