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?

.Gov Scott Walker's PAC took $1 Million from Ukrainian businessman linked to oil co in #TrumpRussia dossier#resist #theresistance #amjoy pic.twitter.com/sIZvyxNNan

— Scott Dworkin (@funder) February 19, 2017

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.