Payback for being on the Wrong Side of the Coup in Ukraine

I've read all the NYT coverage of the ongoing Manafort trial. It's easier to get a sense of the government's case against Manafort from reading this mornings NPR story "4 Insights As Manafort Trial Enters Week 2" than anything published so far by "the newspaper of record."

Basically Manafort is being prosecuted for disclosure violations. He didn't disclose overseas bank accounts that he used to pay for his luxury items, and he cooked his books to both lower his income (to pay less tax) and raise his income (to qualify for bank loans).

The heart of the prosecution's case is about Ukraine. Manafort made millions working for Viktor Yanukovych, and those millions dried up following the coup in February 2014 that sent Yanukovych scurrying out of Kiev.

The whole thing seems like payback for being on the wrong side of the coup; that, and working for Trump. As one NYT story concludes:

Mr. Manafort’s lawyers say he almost certainly would not have faced charges if not for his brief, unpaid stint with the Trump campaign.

Remember, Democrat Lobbyists Worked for Manafort and Yanukovych

Look past the latest front-page Facebook Russiagate bombshell ("Facebook Identifies an Active Political Influence Campaign Using Fake Accounts"), the import of which, incidentally, is based on an enormous suspension of disbelief that "eight Facebook pages, 17 Facebook profiles and seven Instagram accounts" created in the last year or so could have any measurable impact on the U.S. body politic, and focus instead on "Mueller Passes 3 Cases Focused on Illicit Foreign Lobbying to Prosecutors in New York," by Matthew Rosenberg, Kenneth P. Vogel and Katie Benner.

As Jeffrey St. Clair commented some months ago when the Manafort indictment was announced, if the laws on foreign lobbying were truly enforced the D.C. gravy train would come to a halt. Now Mueller has referred cases involving three big names --Tony Podesta, Vin Weber and Greg Craig (two of whom are prominent Democrat lobbyists) -- to the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan:

Under American law, anyone who lobbies or conducts public relations on behalf of a foreign interest in the United States must register with the Justice Department. The law carries stiff penalties, including up to five years in prison. But it had rarely been enforced, and thus widely ignored, until recently.

Now, it appears to have become a weapon for prosecutors. Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, was facing possible charges of violating the law over his secret work for the Turkey during the campaign before he agreed to cooperate with Mr. Mueller last year.

The three cases referred to prosecutors in New York appear to be another sign that the Justice Department intends to more strenuously enforce the law.

Yet, as the cases show, such investigations often confront prosecutors with interlaced financial arrangements that can prove difficult to untangle.

The Podesta Group, Mr. Podesta’s firm; Mercury Public Affairs, where Mr. Weber worked; and Skadden, where Mr. Craig practiced, were all recruited by Mr. Manafort to assist with his work in Ukraine on behalf of that country’s president at the time, Viktor F. Yanukovych, who was considered a Kremlin ally.

But two of the firms — the Podesta Group and Mercury Public Affairs — were retained through a nonprofit group in Brussels, the European Center for a Modern Ukraine. The nonprofit was directed by Mr. Manafort, and the firms lobbied in Washington on behalf of the nonprofit for what Mr. Manafort billed as Mr. Yanukovych’s efforts to move Ukraine into the West.

The firms were paid more than $1.1 million each for the work. But they did not initially register to lobby with the Justice Department as foreign agents. Doing so would have required them to make detailed disclosures of the lobbying activity they had performed.

They instead had filed less detailed lobbying reports with Congress, based at least partly on misleading characterizations that Mr. Manafort’s deputy later admitted to providing. The firms retroactively registered to lobby for foreigners with the Justice Department in 2017. The Podesta Group collapsed in part because of the scrutiny from the case.

Skadden was hired directly by Mr. Yanukovych’s government to analyze the prosecution of one of Mr. Yanukovych’s leading political rivals, former Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko. Led by Mr. Craig, the firm published a report in 2012 that was used — mostly without success — to try to allay concerns about Mr. Yanukovych’s leadership in Washington.

Skadden also did not register its activity under lobbying rules, despite Mr. Craig himself being involved in promoting the report to journalists and members of Congress — activity that experts said should have prompted registration requirements.

Mr. Craig left Skadden in April as investigators made inquiries about his work with Mr. Manafort. While the departure was presented as voluntary, a lawyer familiar with the situation said that Mr. Craig was forced out.

Mr. Mueller’s team repeatedly referenced the work of the firms in his filings in Mr. Manafort’s case, including accusing Mr. Manafort and his longtime deputy of using an offshore account to “funnel $4 million to pay for the report” from Skadden.

Mr. Mueller’s team also indicted a Skadden lawyer who worked with Mr. Manafort on the report. The lawyer pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his communications with a former Trump campaign aide, and has already completed a jail sentence.

Russophobia Part of Hillary's Strategy to Secure the White House

Autumn is little more than a month away, and so far it has been a bizarre summer. The national conventions of the duopoly proved to be non-events. If not for WikiLeaks' release of DNC emails, the only news would have been Bernie's abject surrender to the forces against which he had led his electoral revolt. (Jeffrey St. Clair had a hilarious piece over the weekend, "Roaming Charges: the Return of Assassination Politics," about Sanders purchasing a new waterfront house in Vermont.)

Since the close of the Democratic convention, each day Trump has been relentlessly attacked on the frontpage of The New York Times. This morning it is a story about how Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort received over $12 million from ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych's Party of Regions. This seems more like the junta in Kiev doing a solid for the U.S. permanent government that approved the 2014 coup, a permanent government that is all in for Hillary, than anything particularly illuminating about Manafort. U.S. politicos, both Democratic and Republican, sell their services abroad for top dollar. There was even a Hollywood movie starring Sandra Bullock, Our Brand is Crisis (2015), about it.

Bob Miller was good enough to provide some links in his comments yesterday: a terrific interview with author Russ Bellant, "Seven Decades of Nazi Collaboration: America’s Dirty Little Ukraine Secret," that appeared in The Nation shortly after the coup in Kiev, and a PDF of an old issue of Covert Action Information Bulletin, "Friendly Enemies: The CIA in Eastern Europe."

It is a sordid story, but a vital one to understand. After World War Two -- Mae Brussell says negotiations were underway before Germany's surrender -- the U.S. recruited Nazi spymaster Reinhard Gehlen to run its anti-Soviet operation in Eastern Europe. Bellant says that Nixon after his election as president actually brought the old Gehlen organization out of the shadows and into the sunshine of Republican National Committee. There were no frontpagers about that, were there?

In an environment where the duopoly is splintering, a great deal of energy is being expended to reanimate old shibboleths, chief among them is Russophobia. It seems wasteful and pitiful to me, and time will tell if it actually works. One thing seems certain. Hillary appears to be home free. A foolproof rule of thumb is that the candidate who leads two weeks following the last national party convention always wins. Unless we want to argue that 2016 is a black swan, Trump loses.

Anything more of substance about Clinton Foundation influence peddling at Hillary's State Department will be drowned out by the rising Russophobia noise blared by the deep state.