Monday, October 30, 2017

Trump Campaign indictments are a simple "follow the money" story

Well, today was interesting, wasn't it? Let me give a few observations.

First of all, in the Manafort and Gates indictments, the real keys that connect back to the Trump Administration and Russian influence aren't at the topline, but come in later in the federal criminal complaint. Both Manafort and Gates sent letters to the US Department of Justice in November 2016 and Feburuary 2017 claiming that they were not working for two foreign companies, and “had merely served as a means of introduction of Company A and Company B" to the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine- a pro-Putin front group.

Instead, the US government alleges Manafort and Gates were main participants in this effort, and also
…communicated directly with United States officials in connection with this work; and paid the lobbying firms over $2 million from offshore accounts they controlled, among other things. In addition, court-authorized searches of MANAFORT and GATES’ DMI email accounts and MANAFORT’s Virginia residence in July 2017 revealed numerous documents, including documents related to lobbying, which were more than thirty-days old at the time of the November 2016 letter to the Department of Justice.
Gee, why would they lie about working with pro-Putin front groups to lobby the newly-installed Trump Administration? And as a side note, remember this note about our Fair Governor?



Let's keep that one in mind as this develops, shall we?

Manafort is also accused of “funnel[ing] millions of dollars in payments into foreign nominee companies and bank accounts, opened by them and their accomplices in nominee names and in various foreign counntries, including Cyprus, Saint Vincent & the Grenadines (Grenadines) and the Seychelles.” Why does that matter? Let’s go back to March and this article in the Guardian.
Wilbur Ross, the Trump administration’s new commerce secretary, presided over a deal with a Russian businessman with ties to Vladimir Putin while serving in his previous role as vice-chairman of the Bank of Cyprus.

The transaction raises questions about Ross’s tenure at the Cypriot bank and his ties to politically connected Russian oligarchs. It comes amid confirmation by the FBI that it is investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow to influence the outcome of the presidential election.

In 2015, while he served as vice-chairman of the Bank of Cyprus, the bank’s Russia-based businesses were sold to a Russian banker and consultant, Artem Avetisyan, who had ties to both the Russian president and Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank. At the time, Sberbank was under US and EU sanctions following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Avetisyan had earlier been selected by Putin to head a new business branch of the Russian president’s strategic initiative agency, which was tasked with improving business and government ties.
The criminal complaint says Manafort and Gates were laundering money through Cyprus from 2008 to 2013. This predates Ross’s purchase of the bank in 2014, but it’s noteworthy that Ross worked with Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg when he ran the Bank of Cyprus, as David Corn described last December in Mother Jones.

Now add in the guilty plea of Trump advisor George Papadopolous after getting caught lying to investigators about being part of the Trump Administration when he met with Russian officials to try to get dirt on Hillary Clinton and Democrats. You know what Papadopolous's role with Trump's campaign was? Let's allow Trump himself to tell you, as part of his interview with the Washington Post editorial board in March 2016.
TRUMP: Well, I hadn’t thought of doing it, but if you want I can give you some of the names… Walid Phares, who you probably know, PhD, adviser to the House of Representatives caucus, and counter-terrorism expert; Carter Page, PhD; George Papadopoulos, he’s an energy and oil consultant, excellent guy; the Honorable Joe Schmitz, [former] inspector general at the Department of Defense; [retired] Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg; and I have quite a few more. But that’s a group of some of the people that we are dealing with. We have many other people in different aspects of what we do, but that’s a representative group.

Much like as we saw with Scott Walker's John Doe case in Wisconsin, this is an easy "follow the money" situation, as it often is when we talk about corruption. And it's pretty obvious that the Russians and Ukranians wanted to get sanctions removed and felt they could get a whole lot back from these amoral mokes in TrumpWorld, so they used their pay-to-play status to get a foothold into the Trump campaign and the Trump Administration.

Now it's simply a matter of finding who knew about the pay-for-play, and what was being offered by both sides. And because the WMC-bought crooks at the Wisconsin Supreme Court aren't "judging" this case, today's
events are only the first shoes to drop, and there will be much more as the connections become more obvious.

4 comments:

  1. Yes, these are big revelations, and hopefully lead to justice.

    These accusations cover the years 2006 through 2016, so you have to wonder why the FBI wasn't concerned about all this illicit behavior, going back to Bush II, then Obama, and our current administrations.

    Putin is not the one being called into question here; did not the Clintons make a big deal to provide 20% of our uranium supply to Russia?
    They must not have been geopolitical enemies then, but now Russia is all so a threat to America?

    Corruption is terrible, so why should we have to depend on our media to be complicit with it any longer?

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    1. Nice try, dude. The story is about Manafort working for pro-Putin groups based put of Ukraine, and what deals were made to bring him into TrumpWorld.

      The uranium deal was signed off on by numerous countries, and it's a very lame deflection attempt to try to talk about ANYTHING but the Trump Admin being compromised and corrupt.

      Trump hit an all-time low of 33% and -29 in the Gallup poll today. People are rightfully seeing through the lame Faux News shrieking.

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  2. Just saying how politics has become a dishonest interest sportsrace, as our media has evolved into it's present lame self.

    I just altogether dislike Trump (me no, not a 262 GOP). It's interesting that you would have even heard of the uranium deal without admitting that you see independant media, because that's where thet actually talk about it. I'm not a Professor, yet I do know what's wrong and right.

    Call me "lame," but I'm just not so hooked into pop culture, which ignores what most people identify with. And noone has ever called me "dude" before.

    Maybe I'm just too old to be blogging.

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  3. The uranium deal was covered ad museum in mainstream media when Trumpublicans were flogging that (and now flogging it some more) as part of the Hillary-is the-real-puppet meme. But it's BS. The uranium by law stays in the US. Hillary didn't decide this deal, and it's been exhaustively investigated like anything deemed clintonesque. Benghazi 2.0 like the original went nowhere except right into the GOP fake news recycling machine.

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