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Вчера произошло одно из самых значительных событий Рашагейта - Пол Манафорт признал себя виновным и подписал соглашение о сотрудничестве со следствием. Соглашение всеохватывающее - подобно заключённому раннее Риком Гейтсом.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4883173-Manafort-DC-Superseding-Criminal-Information.html

Манафорт согласился на конфискацию имущества, включая квартиру в Trump Tower, в общей сложности около $46 миллионов, тем самым с лихвой окупив расходы на расследование Мюллера. Соглашение, однако, позволит ему сохранить часть имущества и скостить тюремный срок.

Команда Мюллера, как и ожидалось, сработала исключительно профессионально. Посмотреть на результаты своего труда они пришли большой компанией.

More than 20 members of the special counsel’s investigation team appeared in the second-floor courtroom Friday morning, where lead prosecutors Andrew Weissmann, Greg Andres and Brandon Van Grack were joined by a phalanx of FBI and IRS agents who did significant grunt work preparing for Manafort’s trial on charges of failing to register as a lobbyist for the government of Ukraine several years ago, before he joined Trump’s 2016 campaign.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/14/manafort-plea-mueller-probe-825753

Бывший коллега оценил результат по достоинству.

Mueller likely already has all of Manafort’s information. You get the information before you offer the agreement.
- Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) September 14, 2018

Mueller does not seem like he will be done anytime soon. It is a slow and steady juggernaut.
- Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) September 14, 2018

30 лет назад молодой Манафорт, работая в избирательном штабе Буша-старшего. руководил организацией съезда республиканской партии в Новом Орлеане. Там же он познакомился с Трампом, одним из участников съезда.



Окрылённые успехом избирательной кампании Буша, Манафорт с приятелями-политтехнологами вовсю развернули бизнес своей лоббистской компании Black Manafort Stone & Kelly. Среди клиентов появились диктаторы со всего мира и ряд нечистоплотных бизнесов, включая Трампа.

Two of the partners, Charles Black and Roger Stone, spent most of last year as senior campaign strategists, first with Jack Kemp, then with George Bush. A third partner, Paul J. Manafort, ran the Republican National Convention in New Orleans for Bush, and another former colleague, Lee Atwater, was the overall manager of Bush's presidential campaign. "If politics has done anything for us, it's taught us to treat everything as a campaign," said Manafort. "You have to have a strategy. The reason we are successful is that we are strategists." <...> The government of Kenya signed up for $500,000 a year on April 1; in July, Black Manafort Stone & Kelly persuaded Zaire to sign for $1 million a year. "There are three more that are about to break," Manafort said in a recent interview. "I've got handshakes." He mentioned possible clients in Africa, Europe and South America. Together with the firm's existing $600,000-a-year contract with Jonas Savimbi and the UNITA rebels in Angola, and lesser contracts with Somalia and Peru, revenues from foreign clients this year should exceed $5 million. On the domestic front, the post-election period has produced at least six new clients for a total client base of 36. Domestic clients pay at least $10,000, and often $25,000 or more, every month according to Black. To a list of clients that by 1988 already included Allied Signal, Donald Trump, Aetna Life and Casualty, Bethlehem Steel, Johnson & Johnson, Trans World Airlines and Union Pacific, the firm has added in 1989 the Mortgage Insurance Cos. of America, the Large Public Power Council, the Air Transport Association, the Edison Electric Institute and the Circle K Corp. <...> When considering possible foreign clients, Manafort said the firm will only work for countries considered U.S. allies.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1989/08/12/profit-and-presidential-politics/a2107972-c10d-4960-b9da-660d0d57182a/

6/ Just sayin' :)

ARCHIVAL VIDEO: 1989: Paul Manafort Admits to Influence Pedaling in Wake of US Department of Housing and Urban Development Federal Investigation https://t.co/crBgflZLVi
- Jay McKenzie (@JamesFourM) August 21, 2018

Не все шло гладко. Расследование коррупции в министерстве жилищного строительство привело Манафорта к повестке для показаний в Конгрессе, во время которых он неосторожно охарактеризовал свою сферу деятельности, как “influence peddling”.

Asked during his testimony to describe the involvement of Black Manafort in the project, Mr. Manafort replied, ''I would stipulate that for the purposes of today, you could characterize this as influence peddling.''
https://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/21/us/bush-consultant-peddled-influence-at-hud-he-says.html

30 лет спустя, в описании преступлений, в которых Манафорт признал себя виновным, приводятся задокументированные примеры “influence peddling”, которым он занимался на службе у Януковича.

"Bada bing bada boom"?

Damn, Paul Manafort REALLY wanted to be Paulie Walnuts, didn't he? Guess he got his wish...
- Bill C. (@only_a_bill) September 14, 2018

Manafort “orchestrated a scheme to have, as he wrote in a contemporaneous communication, ‘[O]bama jews’ put pressure on the Administration to disavow Tymoshenko and support Yanukovych,” prosecutors wrote.
Manafort “sought to undermine United States support for Tymoshenko by spreading stories in the United States that a senior Cabinet official (who had been a prominent critic of Yanukovych’s treatment of Tymoshenko) was supporting anti-Semitism because the official supported Tymoshenko, who in turn had formed a political alliance with a Ukraine party that espoused anti-Semitic views,” the charging document said.
That official seems likely to have been Clinton, who was then finishing her four-year term as secretary of state and had become a vocal critic of what she called anti-democratic currents in Ukraine. The arguments pushed by Manafort match those in an article published on the Breitbart News right-wing website attacking Clinton.
The smear-by-association was based on a political alliance that Tymoshenko’s party had formed with a movement known as Svoboda, or Freedom, which had been associated with anti-Semitic views.
Manafort “coordinated privately with a senior Israeli government official to issue a written statement publicizing this story” and “then, with secret advance knowledge of that Israeli statement, worked to disseminate this story in the United States,” prosecutors claim.
Manafort wrote at the time that “I have someone pushing it on the NY Post. Bada bing bada boom,” the document says.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bada-bing-bada-boom-paul-manaforts-attempt-to-smear-a-jailed-ukrainian-politician/2018/09/14/c5ac93b6-b837-11e8-a2c5-3187f427e253_story.html

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Заказанную Манафортом статью про антисемитизм Юлии Тимошенко разместил Бен Шапиро, нынешний интеллектуальный лидер молодых правых сил.

In October 2012 Gates emailed Manafort and Friedman, flagging a piece written by the journalist Ben Shapiro. The Breitbart article criticised Clinton for her public support of Tymoshenko, who had recently made an electoral pact with the far-right Svoboda party.
The article cited a Jewish “leader” who accused Clinton anonymously of creating a “neo-Nazi Frankenstein”. Gates wrote: “Gentlemen - Here is the first part of a series of articles that will be coming as we continue to build this effort. Alan, you get full credit for the Frankenstein comment.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/05/ex-trump-aide-paul-manafort-approved-black-ops-to-help-ukraine-president