08/17/16

Manafort Caught Secretly Routing at Least $2.2 Million in Payments to Lobbyists

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

After documents surfaced implicating Paul Manafort in corrupt dealings in the Ukraine with ties to not only Vladimir Putin, but the Russian mob, now comes a new bombshell. It turns out that Manafort probably broke the law, secretly routing at least $2.2 million to two prominent Washington lobbying firms in 2012 from the pro-Russian governing party in the Ukraine. He did it in a way that hid those connections to influence foreign policy. Bad Russian plant… bad, bad.

Per the AP, under federal law, US lobbyists must declare publicly if they represent foreign leaders or their political parties and provide detailed reports about their actions to the Justice Department. A violation is a felony and can result in up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Manafort has some ‘splainin’ to do and federal charges may be forthcoming.

The Trump campaign, now in panic mode, shuffled the deck quickly last night, saying that Trump doesn’t like to be ‘constrained’. I guess he’s not into handcuffs much. Go figure. Manafort is still on his team as campaign manager… wouldn’t want to sever that life or death connection to Putin, now would we?

Look carefully at who Trump brought up the ranks. Kellyanne Conway joined the Donald Trump campaign three weeks ago and she has appeared on television an average of three times daily, projecting titanic optimism: Trump will win over America’s women as his new campaign manager. That’s just laughable. But even more hilarious is the selection of Breitbart’s Steve Bannon as CEO… a vicious and predatory media hit man with leanings toward racist nationalism. He’s literally turned Breitbart into Pravda for Donald Trump. Which is apropos considering that BuzzFeed put out that he was accepting $500 per story at Breitbart in 2014 to favor Russia over the Ukraine. Think about that and then think about all of Trump’s nefarious Russian connections. Once again, Bannon sought Trump out just as Manafort did. Last but not least, former Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes has been hired to prepare Trump for the debates. Yeah, that ought to be great for PR and women love men who have sexually accosted other women. What a winner.

And don’t forget Donald Trump’s daughter and her husband, Jared Kushner, who spent some time on billionaire Democrat David Geffen’s yacht off the coast of Croatia on Friday. The couple were photographed jet skiing and sunbathing on the $200 million boat, named the Rising Sun. Geffen, a Hollywood executive and close friend of President Barack Obama, donated large sums of money to both Bernie Sanders’ and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns during the primaries, according to the Daily Mail.

Ivanka is said to be vacationing with Wendi Deng Murdoch – Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife and Vladimir Putin’s current rumored girlfriend. Cozy with Russia AND Progressive Marxists. It’s a twofer and all in the elite family, don’t ya know.

Wendi Deng Murdoch, left, is shown with Ivanka Trump in Dubrovnik, Croatia. (Ivanka Trump / Instagram)

Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner are seen riding jet skis and sunbathing while enjoying a vacation on the Rising Sun yacht with a friend on the Adriatic Coast in Croatia.
Featuring: Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner
Where: Adriatic Coast, Croatia
When: 12 Aug 2016
Credit: WENN.com
**Only available for publication in UK, USA, Germany, Austria, Switzerland**

And we come back to Manafort, because he is key in all this. Manafort and business associate Rick Gates, another top strategist in Trump’s campaign, were working in 2012 on behalf of the political party of Ukraine’s then-president, Viktor Yanukovych. During the period when Gates and Manafort were consultants to the Ukraine president’s political party, Gates was also helping steer the advocacy work done by a pro-Yanukovych nonprofit that hired a pair of Washington lobbying firms, Podesta Group Inc. and Mercury LLC. That’s right… the freaking Podesta Group.

From the AP:

Gates told the AP that he and Manafort introduced the lobbying firms to the European Centre nonprofit and occasionally consulted with the firms on Ukrainian politics. He called the actions lawful, and said there was no attempt to circumvent the reporting requirements of the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act.

The heads of both lobbying firms told AP they concluded there was no obligation to disclose their activities to the Justice Department. Manafort did not directly respond to AP’s requests to discuss the work, but he was copied on the AP’s questions and Gates said he spoke to Manafort before providing answers to them.

Political consultants are generally leery of registering under the foreign agents law, because their reputations can suffer once they are on record as accepting money to advocate the interests of foreign governments — especially if those interests conflict with America’s.

Ironically, one of the lobbying firms Manafort and Gates worked with has strong Democratic ties.

The founder and chairman of the Podesta Group, Tony Podesta, is the brother of longtime Democratic strategist John Podesta, who now is campaign chairman for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The head of Mercury, Vin Weber, is an influential Republican, former congressman and former special policy adviser to Mitt Romney. Weber announced earlier this month that he will not support Trump.

Whether Manafort and Gates will be prosecuted for this is unclear, but it would not surprise me. Prosecutions under the Foreign Agents Registration Act are generally rare, but they do happen. This looks extremely corrupt to me and it appears that Manafort was covering up where the money was coming from and why.

Then you add Carter Paige, who is heavily invested with Gazprom and living in Putin’s lap and Michael Flynn ― a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who was paid by a Russian state-funded television network to speak at its 10th-anniversary gala ― who Trump brought to his first national security briefing on Wednesday. Flynn is strongly connected to Russia. And did I mention he’s a Democrat? All of these people might as well be living in the Kremlin and if they tried harder they couldn’t more obviously be plants.

They are all certainly national security threats, but here we go… bringing our biggest enemy into our election and possibly into the White House. SMH. With Hillary Clinton you get the Middle Eastern Islamists, the Russians and the Chinese. With Trump, you get the same, only more Russian seasoning with a hint of mob. #WorstElectionEver #NeitherOne2016

07/21/16

Trump’s Blind Spot on Russia

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

It is not unusual for a politician to change his mind, even on critical national security matters. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) essentially flip-flopped on the damage done by NSA defector Edward Snowden. He went from saying that Snowden may have violated the law to accusing the NSA defector of being an outright traitor. On Thursday night, while the media continue their preoccupation with style rather than substance, Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump will be watched closely to see whether he has learned anything about the aggressive intentions of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump’s position on Russia has been so weak, from a national security perspective, that Hillary Clinton has accused him of being soft on Putin. “He praises dictators like Vladimir Putin,” Clinton said of Trump. “He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia.” The criticism of Trump has caused a number of GOP foreign policy experts to say they cannot support the New York businessman for president.

Trump has praised Putin, and vice-versa. What’s more, one of his top advisers on national security matters, retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), has been embarrassed by revelations that he went to Moscow to celebrate the 10^th anniversary of Russian propaganda channel Russia Today (RT) and sat next to Putin at a gala dinner. Flynn was being considered as Trump’s vice-presidential nominee.

At the GOP convention, Flynn was caught off-guard during an interview when Michael Isikoff of Yahoo! News questioned him about the financing of the trip to Moscow. Flynn insisted that his speakers’ bureau paid for the trip. “Ask them. I was given an opportunity and I took it,” he said. Of course, even if there was a speakers’ bureau involved, the money came from Moscow, and most of it went to Flynn.

At the time, we called it “Moscow’s Five-Star Treatment of a Three-Star Army General.” We broke the story of Flynn flying to Moscow.

On the defensive, Flynn said, “I have no problems calling out Russia.” He is the author of the new book, The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies.

But Flynn is known for advocating cooperation with Moscow in the Middle East, despite evidence that Moscow is using the refugee crisis as a weapon of war against the West.

Of course, as Flynn is quick to point out, Mrs. Clinton’s “experience” has been a disaster for the nation, as her “Russian “reset” paved the way for the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Russian military intervention in Syria.

But what will Trump do to counter the Russians in Europe and the Middle East?

The criticism of Trump’s soft position on Russia has been a sore point with many on the conservative side. It doesn’t appear that Trump understands Putin’s geo-political game plan on the world stage.

This is one reason that GOP 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney had denounced Trump. “Trump says he admires Vladimir Putin, while he has called George W. Bush a liar. That is a twisted example of evil trumping good,” said Romney.

By contrast, Mike Pence, the Indiana governor and former member of Congress picked as Trump’s running mate, has had a more realistic view of Putin. At the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2015, he said that “A new Iron Curtain is descending down the spine of Europe as modern Russia seeks to redraw the map of Europe by force.” He added, “Putin’s Russia ignores talk of sanctions, claims land and supports rebels in Ukraine with impunity.”

Has Trump changed his position on Russia? There’s no evidence that he has done so.

Josh Rogin of The Washington Post noted that Trump’s people watered down a provision of the 2016 GOP platform calling for a tough response to Russian aggression. “The Trump campaign worked behind the scenes last week to make sure the new Republican platform won’t call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces, contradicting the view of almost all Republican foreign policy leaders in Washington,” he reported.

Rogin added that “Republican delegates at last week’s national security committee platform meeting in Cleveland were surprised when the Trump campaign orchestrated a set of events to make sure that the GOP would not pledge to give Ukraine the weapons it has been asking for from the United States.” He noted that Diana Denman, a platform committee member from Texas who was a Cruz supporter, proposed a platform amendment calling for “providing lethal defensive weapons” to the Ukrainian military. Trump’s people vetoed that, and put in the phrase “appropriate assistance.” That means that Trump would continue the Obama policy of failing to give Ukraine the weapons they need to defend their nation and turn back the Russian invasion.

Meanwhile, Senator Cruz has become a more realistic thinker about Russia, and has admittedly changed his position on the damage done by former NSA and CIA employee Edward Snowden, who is now living in Moscow. “If Mr. Snowden has violated the laws of this country, there are consequences to violating laws and that is something he has publicly stated he understands and I think the law needs to be enforced,” Cruz said in early 2013.

Later, however, Cruz said, “Today we know that Snowden violated federal law, that his actions materially aided terrorists and enemies of the United States, and that he subsequently fled to China and Russia. Under the Constitution, giving aid to our enemies is treason. By disclosing secret intelligence information to our enemies—helping terrorists evade our surveillance overseas—Snowden made it more likely that Americans will be killed. It is now clear that Snowden is a traitor, and he should be tried for treason.”

To his credit, Trump recognizes Snowden’s treason. “I think Snowden is a terrible threat, I think he’s a terrible traitor, and you know what we used to do in the good old days when we were a strong country—you know what we used to do to traitors, right?” Trump said on Fox News. The implication was that Snowden should be executed. “This guy is really doing damage to this country, and he’s also making us look like dopes,” Trump said.

What Trump doesn’t talk about is the fact that Snowden’s sponsor and patron is Putin’s Russia, and that Snowden has facilitated the activities of the Islamic State targeting citizens in the West, including the United States.

At the GOP convention on Tuesday night, Donald Trump, Jr. said, “If Hillary Clinton is elected, she would be the first president who couldn’t pass a basic background check.”

But could his father pass a background check? That’s the question that will be on many minds when the Republican candidate accepts the nomination and outlines his vision for the Free World.

Whatever he says, doubts will still surround some of his top advisers, including Paul Manafort, a “fixer” with Russian connections.

Cliff Kincaid

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected]View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.