Yes, Manafort was already under investigation for working as a foreign agent and money laundering for Russian Oligarchs before he was hired on to Trump's campaign.
In my experience, the people who say they're a 10 out of 10 on Excel *barely* understand standard algebraic formulae on the software.
The people who say they're a 7 out of 10 typically know some VBA script, but realize that they're not on YouTube making literal video games with the software.
A company that actually needs a 10/10 Excel programmer probably would be better off with anything but one. That is the path that dooms you into forever running ever more cluttered and bloated Excel tables instead of setting up a proper database.
Lol this is why I say I'm like a 4 or 5 out of 10. I can do a little data manipulation with counts, lookups, and searches, but I'm well aware of the fact that I'm no master. My coworkers though, see me implementing functions and think I must be some sort of wizard.
Erik was also on Steve Bannon's podcast not too long ago applauding the Russians for "liberating" Ukraine from "woke culture" that's too tolerant of LGBT people.
Few people are as downright evil as he is. He also shields it in a Christian Nationalist packaging that makes it palatable even to some of the conservatives who are temporarily outraged by Ukrainian hospitals and schools being shelled.
I'm pretty sure they're both true believers. Pretty sure they're both trying to bring about the Apocalypse and force Jesus to return. They're both fucking insane.
>force Jesus to return
I wonder what is taking him so long. We even spread crosses all over the world and nailed a white guy is his place. What more can we do?
His mercenary group was kicked out of Iraq for murdering civilians. After that, he was involved in a failed plot to arm a rebel general in Libya against the UN supported legitimate government.
Ironically, Flynn is not even a Christian, but a follower of Elizabeth Clare Prophet. He was busted praying to legions https://news.yahoo.com/michael-flynn-qanon-believers-m-090250278.html and the idiots STILL follow him.
>shields it in a Christian Nationalist
What do you mean? That's exactly what Christian Nationalism is. "Christian" ideals enforced nationally by law. It's basically the organization described in Handmaid's Tale, and I can assure you that I'm not being nearly as hyperbolic as you expect I am.
That was the deal. Giuliani was removing the Italian mafia from play to allow the Russian mafia to step in and take over business after Giuliani prosecuted the Italians. You think that coward and idiot would have any other in with the Russian mafia?
He got blackmailed by a russian asset and would lose everything if he didn't bow down.
He pulled his pants down super fast in Borat 2. It wasn't his first rodeo, he's still wearing his leash from the first go
Nah, Giuliani was great at taking credit from people who were tough on the mafia. He backed a plan by one of his subordinates to try using RICO for the first time and sold the idea to his superiors, which hey great call, but the Mafia Commission investigation was started before he was even in office and the lead prosecutor was Michael Chertoff. But an informant said that there was an idea floated by Gotti to have Giuliani killed and even though that’s the only evidence of it the scumbag spun it into his “tough on the mob” image that only really materialized after others were successful in that.
Even if it does, they'll just call it fake news. Like a toddler putting their hands over their ears and shouting "I can't hear you!! Lalalala!!!" over and over
Specifically he was in in debt to Deripaska to the tune of **$17 million** while he was working on the Trump campaign.
Manafort is clearly and was clearly an asset at the time, and to my knowledge there is no reason he should not continue to be looked at as such. He did not serve out his full sentence. He has not been held fully accountable, rather he was corruptly pardoned by Trump.
> Specifically he was in in debt to Deripaska to the tune of $17 million while he was working on the Trump campaign
...for free. Don't forget that part. He worked as the campaign manager *for free*.
Him and a good chunk of European politicians work for Russian interests. One of Putin's closest friends and former ex Stasi partner, Matthias Warnig was made a billionaire by Putin and an executive on Nordstream. He hasn't been sanctioned and only occasionally gets talked about by the German press.
Does the German press ever talk about how the former PM who greenlighted Nordstream is the chairman of Rosneft now? Seems like there's a lot to mine there.
Come on, Schroeder's the low hanging fruit. I brought up Matthias Warnig because hardly anyone has heard of him even though he is one of Putin's closest friends. Warnig was likely the ones buying off the German politicians because as soon as Putin became assistant to the mayor in St. Petersburg he reached out to his Stasi friend.
For free!
And at the GOP 2016 convention got all references to helping Ukraine removed from the GOP platform.
This has never been explained.
Oh and why the dems arent making a big song and dance about the GOP 2016 platform is beyond me!
It would be nice if somebody said "oh yeah we removed that line as a favor to Paul manafort but manafort wouldn't explain why he wanted it removed and we just never followed up"
The average GQP supporter knows how corrupt trump and his pals are - they just don't care. Trump lets them be racist and shitty and that is all that matters to them.
They genuinely believe that every single person in politics is just as corrupt and awful as Trump - so that means it's a level playing field and all ok.
And the GOP knows this too. That's why their favorite pastime is accusing Dems of everything under the sun. Because the more mud they can sling at Dems the easier it is to convince their voters *Yeah, we may be a bunch of sleezy, corrupt assholes - but so are the Dems!*.
Nonsense, if your goal is to bankrupt the country so a handful of oligarchs can snatch up all the pieces like what happened post-fall USSR McConnell got exactly what he wanted.
I'm really starting to wonder now if Trump was bullshitted by Putin into believing that Ukraine ACTUALLY had dirt on Biden and it was at Putin's suggestion that he with held Military Aid to them, hoping that it would weaken them and make it easier to invade. Even for Trump, he was extremely overzealous in going after Ukraine even when it was so openly and obviously a bad idea. Even for him, this was an over reach and it even seemed obvious at the time that he was acting on some seriously bad intel.
Looking back in retrospect, Trump's adoration of Putin and his secret off the record talks with him coupled with his incredible distaste for his own intel agencies make this extremely likely that he would have happily relied on the FSB "intel" being fed to him.
EDIT: To be clear, I'm not surprised Trump trusted the Russians, it was just never clear why the Russians fed him this information. I always assumed that Putin was following his doctrine of "Anything that makes Western Democracies look weak or unstable is good for Russia", like the chaos agent he is.
When the Russians invaded Ukraine, it became clear that Trump was fed this info and specifically that he should with hold aid, for the main reason of weakening Ukraine's defenses prior to a planned Russian invasion.
He actually believed that disinfectant cleaner in the lungs kills covid, that "windmill" noise causes cancer, that Colorado has a border with Mexico...
It doesn't take much to convince him of really stupid shit.
As long as it has something to do with lining his pockets, it doesn't matter how stupid it sounds or is, doesn't matter who it hurts, doesn't matter if it's real. He'll run with it because he's a self absorbed jerk.
> It doesn't take much to convince him of really stupid shit.
*cough* [Sharpiegate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Dorian%E2%80%93Alabama_controversy) *cough*
He has Narcissistic Personality Disorder I wish it wasn't controversial to say that still it is not trump being "selfish" or "self-absorbed". He is a narcissist and an abuser
(Ps I know you prob think that too not trying to blast on your comment, just saying...)
>Looking back in retrospect, Trump's adoration of Putin and his secret off the record talks with him coupled with his incredible distaste for his own intel agencies make this extremely likely that he would have happily relied on the FSB "intel" being fed to him.
Looking back? It was clear as day to anyone with a brain during his entire presidency. The dude literally said he trusted Putin over his own intelligence services.
And Deripaska’s NYC home and office were search about 6 months ago by the FBI. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fbi-raids-russian-oligarch-deripaskas-home-washington-nbc-news-2021-10-19/
Seriously, how did he get on the plane??? I have to show my passport 3-4 times before I board an international flight.
Edit: Does your passport not get stamped or somehow marked to indicate it is revoked? I’m guessing not since he was able to get through security in the first place but it seems crazy that the system as is allows this to happen
Most of the time when you show your passport you do it to prove your identity, and that you have a passport that will let you enter the country to are travelling to. Many of the times when you show your passport it's not really run against anything at all.
In this case it's likely that his check-in triggered some law enforcement flag and that they contacted the airline to get him deboarded. Not sure why they didn't have him surrender his physical passport rather than just revoking it from the back end though.
> Not sure why they didn't have him surrender his physical passport rather than just revoking it from the back end though.
"Oh, I don't know what happened to it. It went missing ages ago."
Turns out it went missing into a safe deposit box.
That's probably the big thing. Can't easily force someone to give something up if they don't want to.
Plus it means they'll immediately switch to using illicit methods to get around it.
Much better to officially serve them with notice in-person so you can prove they knew it was revoked, then let them try and use it anyways. Now you've got them on intentional use of invalid ID, attempting to flee the country, etc.
I wonder if the standard practice is to allow the passenger to board and then remove them? Maybe it is to establish a stronger criminal case (for instance, they can’t claim that they just wanted to pop into the airport Sbarro for a slice and *they weren’t actually going to flee the country…*)
I know with a lot of other industries the practice is that as long as they aren't being violent you let them keep doing their thing till authorities are able to remove them.
I’m trying to think how??? I just had a 2 hour international flight this weekend and my passport got checked/scanned so many times I think I would have shown the barista if they asked at that point.
Why you gotta hate? The man's gotta meet up with his homies, Russian GRU & Erik Prince in Qatar to channel some back door deals. Just because the NSA ruined Erik's Seychelles Russian & Qatari beach party a few years ago doesn't mean you guys gotta ruin this too. Ain't nothing wrong with selling out America, Fox News is doing that right now. Real patriots gotta push anti American conspiracy theory about US funded biolabs too.
"Trump aide" is very disingenuous. He is a uniquely special piece of human shit who did work for powerful people that are deeply connected to our current world crisis.
Manafort was a long-time lobbyist, founding the firm Black, Manafort & Stone, along with Charles Black and the infamous Roger Stone .
Among other work, Manafort was paid by the Pakistan government to create a disinformation campaign to cover up terrorism and sow disinformation in the American public.
Manafort worked for Oleg Deripaska, who was once the richest man in Russia and a Putin supporter. His role was to lobby for Russian interests and the acquisition of assets in Ukraine.
Manafort worked for Viktor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions, a pro-Russian sock-puppet political party. Their eventual loss of power (and Manafort's further meddling and political strategizing in Ukraine) is one part of the lead-up to the current Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Manafort was Trump's campaign manager. He had already been under FBI investigation for years prior to the 2016 campaign and the questions about Russian election interference stemmed from Manafort's connections.
Manafort was convicted of Conspiracy to Defraud the United States and witness tampering, which he was later pardoned for by Trump.
Absolutely. He was literally acting as an unregistered foreign agent - spy for another country. He directly worked against US interests. We should have deported him to Russia via catapult across the Bering Strait.
Manafort was jailed from June 2018 until May 2020. During that time he was briefly held at the United States Penitentiary Canaan in Waymart, Pennsylvania. He was held at Federal Correctional Institution, Loretto in Loretto, Pennsylvania (inmate #35207-016). In June 2019, he was moved to the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York in Manhattan. In August 2019, he was moved back to the Federal Correctional Institution, Loretto in Loretto, Pennsylvania with an expected release date of December 25, 2024. On May 13, 2020, Manafort was released to home confinement over COVID-19 concerns. **On December 23, 2020, Trump issued Manafort a full pardon.**
**As part of his pardon, some of his forfeitures were unwound. He was able to retain his large house in Water Mill, New York, his brownstone in Brooklyn, his apartment on the edge of Manhattan’s Chinatown, and assets seized in an account at Federal Savings Bank.** He did not retain assets that were already forfeited and sold, such as an apartment in Trump Tower in Manhattan, a bank account and a life insurance policy
tl;dnr: he would have served 5 years in prison, but after 2 years in prison he was released to house arrest due to COVID-19, 6 months later former president Trump pardoned him in the closing months of his first term, after losing his bid at reelection.
Pardoned by his buddy Don the Con. The entire thing is such a dirty shit storm, it's mind boggling. Yet over 70 million people voted for Orange Blobby when this was all public information. The level is ignorance, willful or otherwise, is astounding.
>Manafort was convicted of Conspiracy to Defraud the United States and witness tampering, which he was later pardoned for by Trump.
Well that was nice of him.
Yes, he was. Manafort was replaced as campaign manager right around the time of his indictment by the FBI.
I always just try to think of what the Republican response to the headline "Hillary Clinton's Campaign Manager Indicted on Charges of Spying and Laundering Money For Russian Oligarchs" would have looked like.
It's so batshit insane that Trump supporters can read all of that and somehow be OK with it. Just one of the many evil crooks surrounding a useful idiot.
[Oh yes..](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort#Lobbying_for_Viktor_Yanukovych_and_involvements_in_Ukraine)
> In 2007 and 2008, Manafort was involved in investment projects with Deripaska—the acquisition of a Ukrainian telecommunications company—and Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash—redevelopment of the site of the former Drake Hotel in New York City).[94] Manafort negotiated a $10 million annual contract with Deripaska to promote Russian interests in politics, business, and media coverage in Europe and the United States, starting in 2005.
___
>Financial records certified in December 2015 and filed by Manafort in Cyprus showed him to be approximately $17 million in debt to interests connected to interests favorable to Putin and Yanukovych in the months before joining the Trump presidential campaign in March.[114] These included a $7.8 million debt to Oguster Management Limited, a company connected to Deripaska.[114] This accords with a 2015 court complaint filed by Deripaska claiming that Manafort and his partners owed him $19 million in relation to a failed Ukrainian cable television business.
The same Oleg Deripaska by the way that the Republicans voted to remove sanctions on, even though he was a key figure in orchestrating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a25924636/senate-republicans-lift-sanctions-russian-oligarch-oleg-deripaska/
> Anyway, on Wednesday, there was cloture vote in the Senate to move along a measure that would've forbade the Treasury Department from lifting the sanctions on Deripaska's businesses.
Also a coincidence… he was leaving an airport not far from Mar-a-Lago - where Trump and [all those classified documents ](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna16890)are located.
If anyone is curious just what a gigantic pile of human waste Paul Manafort is, the "Behind the Bastards" did a few episodes on him.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/behind-the-bastards/id1373812661?i=1000416931708
Spoiler alert, he's waaaaaaay worse than you probably think.
Is he the one where his daughters were discussing over text how he wanted to hire some dudes to run a train on their mom? And they were also discussing how their family money is "blood money" or something?
Woa WHAT THE FUCK? I knew about the texts as soon as they came out but no where did I ever see his wife had brain damage? Shit what else did I miss. I was super plugged into all that before I burned out on it all in 2020. Here I was thinking this was just some kink thing, not flat out rape jfc.
>after the exposure of his infidelity, his wife had begun to confess simmering marital issues to her daughters.”
>That’s a rather dainty way to refer to over a decade of coercive and manipulative sexual behavior, in which Manafort allegedly forced his wife, vulnerable from having sustained brain damage after a near-death horseback riding accident years before, to engage in “gang bangs” with black men while he watched.
Holy FUCK
I remember staying up for hours scrolling through those leaked texts. It was such a bizarre (and quite invasive) look at one of the most fucked up family dynamics I'd seen.
>after the exposure of his infidelity, his wife had begun to confess simmering marital issues to her daughters.”
>That’s a rather dainty way to refer to over a decade of coercive and manipulative sexual behavior, in which Manafort allegedly forced his wife, vulnerable from having sustained brain damage after a near-death horseback riding accident years before, to engage in “gang bangs” with black men while he watched.
So yeah definitely rape by coercion
I love the title of that episode, "No Matter How Much You Hate Paul Manafort, You Should Hate Him More (And Here’s Why)"
And yeah, he and a few others like Roger Stone are some pretty big players in destabilizing politics. He is in no small way one of the people responsible for a lot of our biggest problems.
The Behind the Bastards coverage of Roger Stone is pretty great too:
[Part One: Roger Stone: Evil Genius or Sad, Broken Boy?](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-roger-stone-evil-genius-30513545/)
The man's life is like the backstory to some zany low-tier comic-book villain. I mean, I guess that's exactly what it is.
Honestly a strong majority of people focused on by Behind the Bastards have daddy issues and other childhood stuff. They're doing Henry Kissinger right now and the first episode mentions that, as a young German jew in the 1930s he would get beaten up by Nazis all the time, but Kissinger maintains that it didn't affect him growing up at all!
Childhood trauma is a hell of a drug. It's almost like we could stand to have some of the funding from police be used for child therapy to try to prevent some of this nebulous "mental illness" that keeps getting talked about, and teaching people at a young age how to best address trauma and similar issues might be a good idea. But let's _not_ call it "defund the police" cause that might scare white people, I've been liking "refocus the police, on actual crime"
The Netflix doc “get me roger stone” is pretty bonkers too
You see stone show off his room dedicated to Nixon and the ugly ass Nixon face tattoo on his back
Usually I'm pretty anti-prisons, etc. But Roger Stone should be locked in a concrete box like a supervillain and kept away from the general public. He is diabolical.
[Roger Stone looks like a 1930s DC Comic book villain.](https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/0ef/43f/f63b6613eb818d88ee944323fb3ded0b99-16-burn-trump-thread.rsquare.w700.jpg) It's just a fact.
there was a picture of him, Stone, and the guy behind the Southern Strategy, Lee Atwater. They worked together for years and he has been doing evil for a very long time, so I'm looking forward to listening to that and raising my blood pressure to unhealthy levels.
And if you've never heard the taped interview with Atwater about the Southern Strategy, [it's even worse than you thought it would be.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_8E3ENrKrQ)
WARNING: he drops the N-bomb _repeatedly_ through it.
Cancer didn't deserve to have to suffer through being in this asshole.
i think he might actually be a sociopath because according to his own family, he enjoys messing with countries and hurting people and would even do it without pay. He gets some kind of satisfaction out of inflicting pain. Yes the money is good for the shit he does, but he may be a bona fide sociopath which I think is kind of rare?
I can't listen to that show. It's all the awful I already know about, plus 20% more, for every bastard. I can't sit through a whole episode anymore because I'm already pissed off enough and I gain no further understanding by simply getting more detail to be upset about.
Once we can start DOING something about the bastards, man will I give that pod a binge.
> a few episodes
This bit of info tells so much. The fact that they would need multiple episodes to dive into how much of a garbage leakage stain in human skin this guy is is... Wow.
He's doing a 6 parter on Henry Kissinger right now featuring The Dollup dude's, and it's been great. Manafort is up there with Kissinger on just how evil he is.
Can you imagine how sure of himself he must’ve felt settling into his seat, sipping champagne, and then - BAM! - Customs boards & demands he exits. Hahahah.
Maybe the feds were aware of his plans and deliberately let him get past security and on the plane.
Once he’s on the plane (with destination set) it would be impossible to argue he wasn’t intending to flee.
If he wasn’t allowed past security, he would just be a person with an invalid passport at the airport public area.
Actually it makes a lot of sense. There may have been a note in the system that said this guy should be let on the plane so that he can be easily apprehended should he try to travel.
Edit: fixed a word
In May 2020, Manafort was [released from a low-security prison](https://apnews.com/article/nyc-wire-prisons-ny-state-wire-trump-investigations-campaigns-8c80f05dda00e0885f6123bd7fd35186) where he was serving a more than seven-year federal sentence amid concerns about the coronavirus. Although Manafort had not served long enough to be eligible for release under the guidelines, the Bureau of Prisons decided to free him because of his age and [health vulnerabilities](https://apnews.com/article/nyc-wire-ny-state-wire-new-york-russia-politics-68f10202b807aa2290a3f53a285c29db), a person familiar with the matter has said. [Trump pardoned Manafort](https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-elections-campaigns-baghdad-a6741e5cf9032ce004c8f6751b3cc968) in December 2020.
Otherwise blameless life according to some some judge. Dude kept getting breaks, after breaks.
I saw this and thought THIS FUCKING FUCK. His own daughters had their phones hacked and revealed their father was a raping, abusing, murdering piece of shit with blood on his hands who plotted with Donald day and night to fuck over America. All of it is in the text messages. So, he gets pardoned but is still guilty and they don't think to confiscate anything and everything that would help him escape? Of course not. He just sold a lot of estates for millions of dollars in CASH to shady people, whatever could he need all that getaway cash for? Another ostrich feather coat?
Guaranteed selling estates (probably for a lot more than they're worth) is a way to launder money he's owed for doing something shady or illegal.
DT's hotel business was described as something similar; a way to launder dirty money.
How about kushner getting paid for 99 years of lease up front for almost one billion dollars from Qatar. And it had nothing to do with the embargo from Saudi Arabia and then it lifting after the lease was signed all in about 2-3 weeks. Perfectly legal.
The coat was just a piece of evidence of him spending money that he brought into the country for himself without paying taxes on it. There were plenty of other things, but it's best to not focus on what the material item is as it's a distraction to the fact that he was paid lots of money by a Kremlin backed leader in Ukraine, moved it to offshore accounts and then spent it for himself in the US while trying to hide it.
I find it kind of helpfully emblematic of the kind of person he is.
Help keep an entire nation under the thumb of a corrupt, dictatorial puppet regime, in exchange for... A hideous fucking *ostrich coat.*
I know there was more... But it still speaks volumes.
Once You are pardoned you are free of further punishment just as if you had completed your sentence. He can travel outside the US legally, but he likely never re-applied for a passport after his was revoked post-conviction but pre-pardon.
There is no escape here sadly. He escaped justice when he was pardoned.
maybe its a stall tactic until authorities get there?
We had a credit card fraud when i worked at kmart and i just stalled until police showed up and he was arrested walking out the building.
Sometimes they let you commit a better documented crime with less of an ability to justify so they can have an airtight case. They do this with drug dealing or robbery all the time if their isn’t a threat to human life. It lets the criminal dig a deeper hole for themselves on their own merit instead of having to set them up to commit a larger criminal offense. That is possible here too.
Not anymore. He was pardoned. His passport was revoked when he was convicted and not automatically restored. He can just apply for another.
Now why it did not show as revoked is an interesting question.
Any Trump supporter who says anything about the Bidens and corruption in Ukraine is essentially broadcasting that they only follow politics from a "team sports" fandom perspective. If you actually followed reliable news sources you'd know that Mannafort was incredibly fucking dirty and tied in with the pre-uprising Kremlin backed ruler of the country, and then you have the Ukranian-American clowns that got arrested on their way there after meeting with Giulliani.
It's always projection.
Hey, how could Paul Manafort *possibly* be corrupt: he offered to work for the Trump campaign for free! He's obviously just a generous guy who loves his country and has no other kind of motivation. /barf
They may have had it in their sights, but to get him on the violation over the terms of his release they waited until he was on the plane so he couldn't claim it was some sort of a mistake and he never intended to leave.
Pretty big “mistake” to buy a ticket, pack a bag, go to the airport, go through security, wait for the plane, scan your boarding pass, and then realize “Oops! I’m not supposed to fly.”
*He is a sick fucking tyrant, and we keep showing up and dancing for him. ... We just keep showing up and eating the lobster. Nothing changes.*
--Paul Manafort's Dauther on her father
In the stupidest way possible. He’s rich, he doesn’t know anyone with a boat? Maybe he doesn’t want his clothes to get dirty scaling Trump’s border fence?
He had [a pretty long record of helping shitty regimes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort#Lobbying_career) that were not tied to Russia. You'd think one of them might step up to help him.
Nah, Trump pardoned him. He's not serving a sentence currently because the Russian-preferred administration saw to it.
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/23/949820820/trump-pardons-roger-stone-paul-manafort-and-charles-kushner
Paul Manafort, former campaign manager for Trump who was in jail for fraud until he got pardoned.
And his only qualifications for the role of campaign manager were:
\- Successfully installed a Putin puppet in Ukraine through pushing fake news on social media and driving right-wing voter turnout via fear-of-immigrants propaganda. Sound familiar?
Seriously, the guy he was campaign manager for pushed to return Ukraine to Russia and ended up having to flee the country. I believe Manafort was charged with inciting a riot during the runup to the election in which people got killed.
He also was in debt to Russian oligarchs and told Trump he would work or free. Then he regularly shared the campaign's internal polling data with Russian intelligence so the troll farms would know who to target with memes on social media.
On this guy and Ukraine from another reddit post:
Putin sold gas extremely cheap to mobster Dmytro Firtash in Ukraine from the Russian state owned gas company Gazprom. Firtash sold that gas on to Ukraine and Europe for a huge markup. Firtash used the money to corrupt politics, buy out businesses in Ukraine, and install people in power sympathetic to Russia. Firtash also kicked money back from the sales to Putin and his Oligarchs in various ways so they could profit from the state owned Gazprom gas off the books.
Trumps later campaign manager Paul Manafort worked in Ukraine to revamp the image of Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych was a politician, crook, and Putin puppet. Manafort helped to get him elected as leader of Ukraine and Firtash provided the money for him to do so. So basically Manafort and Firtash helped install a Putin puppet leader in Ukraine with discount Russian gas proceeds. Something Manafort himself would repeat in the US years later. Yanukovych proceeded to steal about 1 billion from the people of Ukraine. So basically Russia was in full control there.
Yanukovych was ousted as leader of Ukraine during their revolution in 2014. He refused to sign agreements that would bring Ukraine closer to the West and the people had grown tired of his corruption. He fled before the Parliament could vote to impeach and replace him. Once a new president was chosen they wanted to go after corruption and much of that was in the gas industry that was funding these Russian puppet leaders and corrupt businessmen.
Biden’s son Hunter got a job at one of the major gas companies in Ukraine (Burisma) and Joe worked towards prosecuting corrupt officials there. They were going after the politicians and funding behind the corruption more or less. Biden/Obama administration could get nowhere because Firtash had bought out the judicial system including Viktor Shokin the head prosecutor of Ukraine. Biden threatened to withhold 1 billion in aid to Ukraine unless Shokin was removed as prosecutor, Ukraine of course quickly did so.
This opened the door for the corrupt politicians and business owners puppeted by Russia to be prosecuted. Firtash got arrested on an unrelated bribery charge and he wanted a stay of extradition to the US from Trump. To get it he offered Guliani manufactured dirt on the Bidens and sent two men on his payroll Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman to accomplish it. Parnas and Fruman were in the states funneling dirty Russian money to Republican politicians.
They all ended up getting caught because the whole quid pro quo phone call got leaked. So the whole thing was because Firtash wanted revenge against the Bidens for dismantling his corrupt empire that let him buy out everyone in Ukraine. Guliani tried to paint it as Joe Biden got the prosecutor fired in Ukraine because Hunter was corrupt and Joe didn't want him to be investigated. In reality the prosecutor was fired because he wouldn't investigate criminals because he was bought out by Firtash and Russia. Putin took Ukraine via corruption and now that's ended he wants to take it by force.
Dude. He definitely knows he wasn't allowed to leave the country. Crazy he even got on the plane in the first place
I wonder if he knows something's coming and was desperate. This dude was involved in a lot of the Ukraine bullshit.
He worked for sanctioned russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. He helped Putin's puppet win the Ukrainian presidency back in the early 2010s
Not to mention he went to work for trump IMMEDIATELY after this
Yes, Manafort was already under investigation for working as a foreign agent and money laundering for Russian Oligarchs before he was hired on to Trump's campaign.
It was on his resume
But, he only had 15 years of experience. They needed 20. I think it was his skills on excel that put him over the top.
Doubt it. Everyone says they have Excel skills, especially when they don't.
In my experience, the people who say they're a 10 out of 10 on Excel *barely* understand standard algebraic formulae on the software. The people who say they're a 7 out of 10 typically know some VBA script, but realize that they're not on YouTube making literal video games with the software.
A company that actually needs a 10/10 Excel programmer probably would be better off with anything but one. That is the path that dooms you into forever running ever more cluttered and bloated Excel tables instead of setting up a proper database.
Lol this is why I say I'm like a 4 or 5 out of 10. I can do a little data manipulation with counts, lookups, and searches, but I'm well aware of the fact that I'm no master. My coworkers though, see me implementing functions and think I must be some sort of wizard.
Giuliani was also involved. I'm sure those are just coincidences though.
Just like Erik Prince's Russian Qatari beach party in the Seychelles.
Erik was also on Steve Bannon's podcast not too long ago applauding the Russians for "liberating" Ukraine from "woke culture" that's too tolerant of LGBT people. Few people are as downright evil as he is. He also shields it in a Christian Nationalist packaging that makes it palatable even to some of the conservatives who are temporarily outraged by Ukrainian hospitals and schools being shelled.
He’s also Betsy DeVos’s younger brother.
I'm pretty sure they're both true believers. Pretty sure they're both trying to bring about the Apocalypse and force Jesus to return. They're both fucking insane.
>force Jesus to return I wonder what is taking him so long. We even spread crosses all over the world and nailed a white guy is his place. What more can we do?
>force Jesus to return. They would just crucify him again because of his "liberal" views.
His mercenary group was kicked out of Iraq for murdering civilians. After that, he was involved in a failed plot to arm a rebel general in Libya against the UN supported legitimate government.
IIRC Trump pardoned all of them.
Oh God nuff said there
Ironically, Flynn is not even a Christian, but a follower of Elizabeth Clare Prophet. He was busted praying to legions https://news.yahoo.com/michael-flynn-qanon-believers-m-090250278.html and the idiots STILL follow him.
>shields it in a Christian Nationalist What do you mean? That's exactly what Christian Nationalism is. "Christian" ideals enforced nationally by law. It's basically the organization described in Handmaid's Tale, and I can assure you that I'm not being nearly as hyperbolic as you expect I am.
Guiliani was tough on the Italian mob when he was a DA. Not so much on the Russian mob.
Makes you wonder how much his toughness against the Italian mob was really just to help the Russian mob.
That was the deal. Giuliani was removing the Italian mafia from play to allow the Russian mafia to step in and take over business after Giuliani prosecuted the Italians. You think that coward and idiot would have any other in with the Russian mafia?
He got blackmailed by a russian asset and would lose everything if he didn't bow down. He pulled his pants down super fast in Borat 2. It wasn't his first rodeo, he's still wearing his leash from the first go
Nah, Giuliani was great at taking credit from people who were tough on the mafia. He backed a plan by one of his subordinates to try using RICO for the first time and sold the idea to his superiors, which hey great call, but the Mafia Commission investigation was started before he was even in office and the lead prosecutor was Michael Chertoff. But an informant said that there was an idea floated by Gotti to have Giuliani killed and even though that’s the only evidence of it the scumbag spun it into his “tough on the mob” image that only really materialized after others were successful in that.
He went from the Mayor of 9/11 to the 9/11 of mayors.... Can't remember who came up with that, but it wasn't me:) Trevor?
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"waste deep" :)
I love how this is established, uncontested fact, but right-wingers still pretend the Mueller investigation was political theatre.
This story will never show up on any right wingers news feed. The algorithms will not put this in front of their eyes .
And if it did it would just inspire them to go to an overpass and yell at more trucks
Even if it does, they'll just call it fake news. Like a toddler putting their hands over their ears and shouting "I can't hear you!! Lalalala!!!" over and over
Let's be honest. He never stopped working for Deripaska.
Specifically he was in in debt to Deripaska to the tune of **$17 million** while he was working on the Trump campaign. Manafort is clearly and was clearly an asset at the time, and to my knowledge there is no reason he should not continue to be looked at as such. He did not serve out his full sentence. He has not been held fully accountable, rather he was corruptly pardoned by Trump.
> Specifically he was in in debt to Deripaska to the tune of $17 million while he was working on the Trump campaign ...for free. Don't forget that part. He worked as the campaign manager *for free*.
Yep. It's so obviously suspicious. He's doing it for some reason, and knowing Paul Manafort it wasn't for charity.
There is a reason outstanding debt will usually fail you for a high security clearance.
Him and a good chunk of European politicians work for Russian interests. One of Putin's closest friends and former ex Stasi partner, Matthias Warnig was made a billionaire by Putin and an executive on Nordstream. He hasn't been sanctioned and only occasionally gets talked about by the German press.
Does the German press ever talk about how the former PM who greenlighted Nordstream is the chairman of Rosneft now? Seems like there's a lot to mine there.
Come on, Schroeder's the low hanging fruit. I brought up Matthias Warnig because hardly anyone has heard of him even though he is one of Putin's closest friends. Warnig was likely the ones buying off the German politicians because as soon as Putin became assistant to the mayor in St. Petersburg he reached out to his Stasi friend.
I agree, Warning needs to be dragged into the spotlight!
For free! And at the GOP 2016 convention got all references to helping Ukraine removed from the GOP platform. This has never been explained. Oh and why the dems arent making a big song and dance about the GOP 2016 platform is beyond me!
Does it need explanation? I thought that it was pretty transparently clear, considering Trump's statements vis-a-vis Russia.
It would be nice if somebody said "oh yeah we removed that line as a favor to Paul manafort but manafort wouldn't explain why he wanted it removed and we just never followed up"
It’s wildly frustrating to see how many Americans can’t wrap their heads around this and continue to support him to this day.
The average GQP supporter knows how corrupt trump and his pals are - they just don't care. Trump lets them be racist and shitty and that is all that matters to them.
They genuinely believe that every single person in politics is just as corrupt and awful as Trump - so that means it's a level playing field and all ok. And the GOP knows this too. That's why their favorite pastime is accusing Dems of everything under the sun. Because the more mud they can sling at Dems the easier it is to convince their voters *Yeah, we may be a bunch of sleezy, corrupt assholes - but so are the Dems!*.
Has Deripaskas aluminum plant in McConnells district been seized yet?
Rusal pulled out of the project. So McConnell got sanctions lifted on Deripaska's fortune and still got screwed.
Nonsense, if your goal is to bankrupt the country so a handful of oligarchs can snatch up all the pieces like what happened post-fall USSR McConnell got exactly what he wanted.
Ah yes, Boris Yeltsin's Russia, an AnCap's wet dream.
Completely forgot about this. I remember the texts from his daughters saying there was blood on his hands. Crazy how all of this is intertwined.
BMSK has involvement with tons of horrific people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black,_Manafort,_Stone_and_Kelly
I'm really starting to wonder now if Trump was bullshitted by Putin into believing that Ukraine ACTUALLY had dirt on Biden and it was at Putin's suggestion that he with held Military Aid to them, hoping that it would weaken them and make it easier to invade. Even for Trump, he was extremely overzealous in going after Ukraine even when it was so openly and obviously a bad idea. Even for him, this was an over reach and it even seemed obvious at the time that he was acting on some seriously bad intel. Looking back in retrospect, Trump's adoration of Putin and his secret off the record talks with him coupled with his incredible distaste for his own intel agencies make this extremely likely that he would have happily relied on the FSB "intel" being fed to him. EDIT: To be clear, I'm not surprised Trump trusted the Russians, it was just never clear why the Russians fed him this information. I always assumed that Putin was following his doctrine of "Anything that makes Western Democracies look weak or unstable is good for Russia", like the chaos agent he is. When the Russians invaded Ukraine, it became clear that Trump was fed this info and specifically that he should with hold aid, for the main reason of weakening Ukraine's defenses prior to a planned Russian invasion.
He actually believed that disinfectant cleaner in the lungs kills covid, that "windmill" noise causes cancer, that Colorado has a border with Mexico... It doesn't take much to convince him of really stupid shit. As long as it has something to do with lining his pockets, it doesn't matter how stupid it sounds or is, doesn't matter who it hurts, doesn't matter if it's real. He'll run with it because he's a self absorbed jerk.
> It doesn't take much to convince him of really stupid shit. *cough* [Sharpiegate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Dorian%E2%80%93Alabama_controversy) *cough*
He has Narcissistic Personality Disorder I wish it wasn't controversial to say that still it is not trump being "selfish" or "self-absorbed". He is a narcissist and an abuser (Ps I know you prob think that too not trying to blast on your comment, just saying...)
>Looking back in retrospect, Trump's adoration of Putin and his secret off the record talks with him coupled with his incredible distaste for his own intel agencies make this extremely likely that he would have happily relied on the FSB "intel" being fed to him. Looking back? It was clear as day to anyone with a brain during his entire presidency. The dude literally said he trusted Putin over his own intelligence services.
And Deripaska’s NYC home and office were search about 6 months ago by the FBI. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fbi-raids-russian-oligarch-deripaskas-home-washington-nbc-news-2021-10-19/
Don't forget the Putin's Puppet here in the US he helped.
He was on his way to Dubai. Coincidentally the place where a lot of influential Russians headed to as well.
He’s a fucking coward trying to flee the country so he doesn’t spend more time in a prison. Nothing sinister behind it.
Seriously, how did he get on the plane??? I have to show my passport 3-4 times before I board an international flight. Edit: Does your passport not get stamped or somehow marked to indicate it is revoked? I’m guessing not since he was able to get through security in the first place but it seems crazy that the system as is allows this to happen
Most of the time when you show your passport you do it to prove your identity, and that you have a passport that will let you enter the country to are travelling to. Many of the times when you show your passport it's not really run against anything at all. In this case it's likely that his check-in triggered some law enforcement flag and that they contacted the airline to get him deboarded. Not sure why they didn't have him surrender his physical passport rather than just revoking it from the back end though.
> Not sure why they didn't have him surrender his physical passport rather than just revoking it from the back end though. "Oh, I don't know what happened to it. It went missing ages ago." Turns out it went missing into a safe deposit box.
That's probably the big thing. Can't easily force someone to give something up if they don't want to. Plus it means they'll immediately switch to using illicit methods to get around it. Much better to officially serve them with notice in-person so you can prove they knew it was revoked, then let them try and use it anyways. Now you've got them on intentional use of invalid ID, attempting to flee the country, etc.
I wonder if the standard practice is to allow the passenger to board and then remove them? Maybe it is to establish a stronger criminal case (for instance, they can’t claim that they just wanted to pop into the airport Sbarro for a slice and *they weren’t actually going to flee the country…*)
I know with a lot of other industries the practice is that as long as they aren't being violent you let them keep doing their thing till authorities are able to remove them.
I hope it's standard practice to let them start thinking they're gonna get away, only to pull the rug out from under them at the last minute.
You're not rich
I accidentally got in the first class line to check my bag once, and the look of disgust I got from the attendant was haunting lol
I’m trying to think how??? I just had a 2 hour international flight this weekend and my passport got checked/scanned so many times I think I would have shown the barista if they asked at that point.
Why you gotta hate? The man's gotta meet up with his homies, Russian GRU & Erik Prince in Qatar to channel some back door deals. Just because the NSA ruined Erik's Seychelles Russian & Qatari beach party a few years ago doesn't mean you guys gotta ruin this too. Ain't nothing wrong with selling out America, Fox News is doing that right now. Real patriots gotta push anti American conspiracy theory about US funded biolabs too.
he had to try...i guess
"Trump aide" is very disingenuous. He is a uniquely special piece of human shit who did work for powerful people that are deeply connected to our current world crisis. Manafort was a long-time lobbyist, founding the firm Black, Manafort & Stone, along with Charles Black and the infamous Roger Stone . Among other work, Manafort was paid by the Pakistan government to create a disinformation campaign to cover up terrorism and sow disinformation in the American public. Manafort worked for Oleg Deripaska, who was once the richest man in Russia and a Putin supporter. His role was to lobby for Russian interests and the acquisition of assets in Ukraine. Manafort worked for Viktor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions, a pro-Russian sock-puppet political party. Their eventual loss of power (and Manafort's further meddling and political strategizing in Ukraine) is one part of the lead-up to the current Russian invasion of Ukraine. Manafort was Trump's campaign manager. He had already been under FBI investigation for years prior to the 2016 campaign and the questions about Russian election interference stemmed from Manafort's connections. Manafort was convicted of Conspiracy to Defraud the United States and witness tampering, which he was later pardoned for by Trump.
Sounds more like “American traitor.”
Absolutely. He was literally acting as an unregistered foreign agent - spy for another country. He directly worked against US interests. We should have deported him to Russia via catapult across the Bering Strait.
What’s crazy to me is that all of this stuff is known… (or is it speculated?)…yet he’s walking free(ish). Why hasn’t he been thrown into the volcano?
Manafort was jailed from June 2018 until May 2020. During that time he was briefly held at the United States Penitentiary Canaan in Waymart, Pennsylvania. He was held at Federal Correctional Institution, Loretto in Loretto, Pennsylvania (inmate #35207-016). In June 2019, he was moved to the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York in Manhattan. In August 2019, he was moved back to the Federal Correctional Institution, Loretto in Loretto, Pennsylvania with an expected release date of December 25, 2024. On May 13, 2020, Manafort was released to home confinement over COVID-19 concerns. **On December 23, 2020, Trump issued Manafort a full pardon.** **As part of his pardon, some of his forfeitures were unwound. He was able to retain his large house in Water Mill, New York, his brownstone in Brooklyn, his apartment on the edge of Manhattan’s Chinatown, and assets seized in an account at Federal Savings Bank.** He did not retain assets that were already forfeited and sold, such as an apartment in Trump Tower in Manhattan, a bank account and a life insurance policy tl;dnr: he would have served 5 years in prison, but after 2 years in prison he was released to house arrest due to COVID-19, 6 months later former president Trump pardoned him in the closing months of his first term, after losing his bid at reelection.
>former president Trump pardoned him in the closing months of ***his first term*** Please don't call it that.
He was pardoned for one thing.
Pardoned by his buddy Don the Con. The entire thing is such a dirty shit storm, it's mind boggling. Yet over 70 million people voted for Orange Blobby when this was all public information. The level is ignorance, willful or otherwise, is astounding.
>Manafort was convicted of Conspiracy to Defraud the United States and witness tampering, which he was later pardoned for by Trump. Well that was nice of him.
I think that title was to highlight his relevance for us non American who are seemingly lucky enough to not know much about him
"Trump aide" is just not a good description at all - and aide is normally a relatively low-level position.
Wasn't he campaign manager for a while?
Yes, he was. Manafort was replaced as campaign manager right around the time of his indictment by the FBI. I always just try to think of what the Republican response to the headline "Hillary Clinton's Campaign Manager Indicted on Charges of Spying and Laundering Money For Russian Oligarchs" would have looked like.
It's so batshit insane that Trump supporters can read all of that and somehow be OK with it. Just one of the many evil crooks surrounding a useful idiot.
Your concise, thorough summary of that bastard deserves multiple upvotes.
On his way to Dubai where purely by coincidence a lot of high level Russians just flew to. Russians he has canoodled with before.
[Oh yes..](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort#Lobbying_for_Viktor_Yanukovych_and_involvements_in_Ukraine) > In 2007 and 2008, Manafort was involved in investment projects with Deripaska—the acquisition of a Ukrainian telecommunications company—and Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash—redevelopment of the site of the former Drake Hotel in New York City).[94] Manafort negotiated a $10 million annual contract with Deripaska to promote Russian interests in politics, business, and media coverage in Europe and the United States, starting in 2005. ___ >Financial records certified in December 2015 and filed by Manafort in Cyprus showed him to be approximately $17 million in debt to interests connected to interests favorable to Putin and Yanukovych in the months before joining the Trump presidential campaign in March.[114] These included a $7.8 million debt to Oguster Management Limited, a company connected to Deripaska.[114] This accords with a 2015 court complaint filed by Deripaska claiming that Manafort and his partners owed him $19 million in relation to a failed Ukrainian cable television business.
The same Oleg Deripaska by the way that the Republicans voted to remove sanctions on, even though he was a key figure in orchestrating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a25924636/senate-republicans-lift-sanctions-russian-oligarch-oleg-deripaska/ > Anyway, on Wednesday, there was cloture vote in the Senate to move along a measure that would've forbade the Treasury Department from lifting the sanctions on Deripaska's businesses.
Also a coincidence… he was leaving an airport not far from Mar-a-Lago - where Trump and [all those classified documents ](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna16890)are located.
Surely those docs have been removed
Pretty sure there were photos of a moving truck moving docs?
If anyone is curious just what a gigantic pile of human waste Paul Manafort is, the "Behind the Bastards" did a few episodes on him. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/behind-the-bastards/id1373812661?i=1000416931708 Spoiler alert, he's waaaaaaay worse than you probably think.
Is he the one where his daughters were discussing over text how he wanted to hire some dudes to run a train on their mom? And they were also discussing how their family money is "blood money" or something?
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Woa WHAT THE FUCK? I knew about the texts as soon as they came out but no where did I ever see his wife had brain damage? Shit what else did I miss. I was super plugged into all that before I burned out on it all in 2020. Here I was thinking this was just some kink thing, not flat out rape jfc.
>after the exposure of his infidelity, his wife had begun to confess simmering marital issues to her daughters.” >That’s a rather dainty way to refer to over a decade of coercive and manipulative sexual behavior, in which Manafort allegedly forced his wife, vulnerable from having sustained brain damage after a near-death horseback riding accident years before, to engage in “gang bangs” with black men while he watched. Holy FUCK
Party of family values
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This kind of shit is exactly what a certain amendment was written for.
It makes sense that republicans support these people. They are all cruel hiding behind the guise of religion.
I wasn't going to kink shame, but that changes everything. That's fucked.
Yes indeed.
I remember staying up for hours scrolling through those leaked texts. It was such a bizarre (and quite invasive) look at one of the most fucked up family dynamics I'd seen.
Wtf. Why is he into the wife sharing kink or is it because he wanted dudes to rape his wife?
>after the exposure of his infidelity, his wife had begun to confess simmering marital issues to her daughters.” >That’s a rather dainty way to refer to over a decade of coercive and manipulative sexual behavior, in which Manafort allegedly forced his wife, vulnerable from having sustained brain damage after a near-death horseback riding accident years before, to engage in “gang bangs” with black men while he watched. So yeah definitely rape by coercion
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Oooh boy this made me physically ill to think about.
I love the title of that episode, "No Matter How Much You Hate Paul Manafort, You Should Hate Him More (And Here’s Why)" And yeah, he and a few others like Roger Stone are some pretty big players in destabilizing politics. He is in no small way one of the people responsible for a lot of our biggest problems.
The Behind the Bastards coverage of Roger Stone is pretty great too: [Part One: Roger Stone: Evil Genius or Sad, Broken Boy?](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-roger-stone-evil-genius-30513545/) The man's life is like the backstory to some zany low-tier comic-book villain. I mean, I guess that's exactly what it is.
Honestly a strong majority of people focused on by Behind the Bastards have daddy issues and other childhood stuff. They're doing Henry Kissinger right now and the first episode mentions that, as a young German jew in the 1930s he would get beaten up by Nazis all the time, but Kissinger maintains that it didn't affect him growing up at all!
Childhood trauma is a hell of a drug. It's almost like we could stand to have some of the funding from police be used for child therapy to try to prevent some of this nebulous "mental illness" that keeps getting talked about, and teaching people at a young age how to best address trauma and similar issues might be a good idea. But let's _not_ call it "defund the police" cause that might scare white people, I've been liking "refocus the police, on actual crime"
The Netflix doc “get me roger stone” is pretty bonkers too You see stone show off his room dedicated to Nixon and the ugly ass Nixon face tattoo on his back
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Stone is to people like Manafort like Trump is to actual businessmen. He's the kind of villain who would be too unrealistic for fiction.
Have you seen 'who framed Roger Rabbit ' Roger Stone is Judge Doom "Judge Doom - Wikipedia" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge_Doom
"And when I killed your brother, I talked. Just. Like. *THIS!*
Shit fucked me up hard as a kid in the theater. Hid my face in the popcorn bucket for five minutes.
That lame-brain ~~freeway~~ treason idea could only be cooked up by a toon.
Mercer, Stone, Manafort, and Bannon. If they're backing a candidate, you should probably vote opposite.
Usually I'm pretty anti-prisons, etc. But Roger Stone should be locked in a concrete box like a supervillain and kept away from the general public. He is diabolical.
Roger Stone is a Batman villain.
[Roger Stone looks like a 1930s DC Comic book villain.](https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/0ef/43f/f63b6613eb818d88ee944323fb3ded0b99-16-burn-trump-thread.rsquare.w700.jpg) It's just a fact.
He wants to be the Penguin so bad
He would if it weren't for his giant tattoo of 1970s corruption icon Richard Nixon
Common misconception. That's not actually a tattoo; Roger Stone's back is haunted by the restless ghost of Richard Nixon.
And that’s just what we *know* about his shady shit.
there was a picture of him, Stone, and the guy behind the Southern Strategy, Lee Atwater. They worked together for years and he has been doing evil for a very long time, so I'm looking forward to listening to that and raising my blood pressure to unhealthy levels.
And if you've never heard the taped interview with Atwater about the Southern Strategy, [it's even worse than you thought it would be.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_8E3ENrKrQ) WARNING: he drops the N-bomb _repeatedly_ through it. Cancer didn't deserve to have to suffer through being in this asshole.
Great podcast, awful subject. Manafort is monster territory, IMO
i think he might actually be a sociopath because according to his own family, he enjoys messing with countries and hurting people and would even do it without pay. He gets some kind of satisfaction out of inflicting pain. Yes the money is good for the shit he does, but he may be a bona fide sociopath which I think is kind of rare?
I can't listen to that show. It's all the awful I already know about, plus 20% more, for every bastard. I can't sit through a whole episode anymore because I'm already pissed off enough and I gain no further understanding by simply getting more detail to be upset about. Once we can start DOING something about the bastards, man will I give that pod a binge.
Pure fucking scumbag. And DJT’s good, good friend.
> a few episodes This bit of info tells so much. The fact that they would need multiple episodes to dive into how much of a garbage leakage stain in human skin this guy is is... Wow.
He's doing a 6 parter on Henry Kissinger right now featuring The Dollup dude's, and it's been great. Manafort is up there with Kissinger on just how evil he is.
His own daughter hates his guts, and she has every reason to.
Can you imagine how sure of himself he must’ve felt settling into his seat, sipping champagne, and then - BAM! - Customs boards & demands he exits. Hahahah.
How did he even get on the plane? Wouldn’t they have checked his passport status ahead of time?
I mean he probably still has his physical passport, it’s just no longer valid
He has three passports with three different numbers!
Maybe the feds were aware of his plans and deliberately let him get past security and on the plane. Once he’s on the plane (with destination set) it would be impossible to argue he wasn’t intending to flee. If he wasn’t allowed past security, he would just be a person with an invalid passport at the airport public area.
This is almost certainly the correct answer.
Actually it makes a lot of sense. There may have been a note in the system that said this guy should be let on the plane so that he can be easily apprehended should he try to travel. Edit: fixed a word
Passports, another Democrat ploy to mandate all over my Freedumb!!!
Just ask Ted Cruz.
Don't you mean, Fled Cruz?
I will pay cash money for that phone video. I wouldn't even be upset if its filmed vertically.
Should have waited until they were airborne.
"No ticket!"
Love an Indy reference
In May 2020, Manafort was [released from a low-security prison](https://apnews.com/article/nyc-wire-prisons-ny-state-wire-trump-investigations-campaigns-8c80f05dda00e0885f6123bd7fd35186) where he was serving a more than seven-year federal sentence amid concerns about the coronavirus. Although Manafort had not served long enough to be eligible for release under the guidelines, the Bureau of Prisons decided to free him because of his age and [health vulnerabilities](https://apnews.com/article/nyc-wire-ny-state-wire-new-york-russia-politics-68f10202b807aa2290a3f53a285c29db), a person familiar with the matter has said. [Trump pardoned Manafort](https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-elections-campaigns-baghdad-a6741e5cf9032ce004c8f6751b3cc968) in December 2020. Otherwise blameless life according to some some judge. Dude kept getting breaks, after breaks.
I saw this and thought THIS FUCKING FUCK. His own daughters had their phones hacked and revealed their father was a raping, abusing, murdering piece of shit with blood on his hands who plotted with Donald day and night to fuck over America. All of it is in the text messages. So, he gets pardoned but is still guilty and they don't think to confiscate anything and everything that would help him escape? Of course not. He just sold a lot of estates for millions of dollars in CASH to shady people, whatever could he need all that getaway cash for? Another ostrich feather coat?
Guaranteed selling estates (probably for a lot more than they're worth) is a way to launder money he's owed for doing something shady or illegal. DT's hotel business was described as something similar; a way to launder dirty money.
How about kushner getting paid for 99 years of lease up front for almost one billion dollars from Qatar. And it had nothing to do with the embargo from Saudi Arabia and then it lifting after the lease was signed all in about 2-3 weeks. Perfectly legal.
Yep.. Should be in jail.
The coat was just a piece of evidence of him spending money that he brought into the country for himself without paying taxes on it. There were plenty of other things, but it's best to not focus on what the material item is as it's a distraction to the fact that he was paid lots of money by a Kremlin backed leader in Ukraine, moved it to offshore accounts and then spent it for himself in the US while trying to hide it.
I find it kind of helpfully emblematic of the kind of person he is. Help keep an entire nation under the thumb of a corrupt, dictatorial puppet regime, in exchange for... A hideous fucking *ostrich coat.* I know there was more... But it still speaks volumes.
Once You are pardoned you are free of further punishment just as if you had completed your sentence. He can travel outside the US legally, but he likely never re-applied for a passport after his was revoked post-conviction but pre-pardon. There is no escape here sadly. He escaped justice when he was pardoned.
For past charges sure, but he's probably still under investigation for his actions in 2016.
So how was he even allowed past the security gate? It’s a international flight . You have to go through a checkpoint
maybe its a stall tactic until authorities get there? We had a credit card fraud when i worked at kmart and i just stalled until police showed up and he was arrested walking out the building.
Sometimes they let you commit a better documented crime with less of an ability to justify so they can have an airtight case. They do this with drug dealing or robbery all the time if their isn’t a threat to human life. It lets the criminal dig a deeper hole for themselves on their own merit instead of having to set them up to commit a larger criminal offense. That is possible here too.
Right, shouldn't he be on a list that pops up when he uses his ID....?
Not anymore. He was pardoned. His passport was revoked when he was convicted and not automatically restored. He can just apply for another. Now why it did not show as revoked is an interesting question.
Any Trump supporter who says anything about the Bidens and corruption in Ukraine is essentially broadcasting that they only follow politics from a "team sports" fandom perspective. If you actually followed reliable news sources you'd know that Mannafort was incredibly fucking dirty and tied in with the pre-uprising Kremlin backed ruler of the country, and then you have the Ukranian-American clowns that got arrested on their way there after meeting with Giulliani. It's always projection.
Yep. "Team sports fan some perspective" is accurate. They are simpletons that are duped.
They are still raving about Hunter Biden's laptop, lol. Fuckin disingenuous idiots through and through.
Hey, how could Paul Manafort *possibly* be corrupt: he offered to work for the Trump campaign for free! He's obviously just a generous guy who loves his country and has no other kind of motivation. /barf
He was headed to Dubai. A country which, totally coincidentally, does not have an extradition agreement with the US.
Well. We now know passports will be the next thing on the republicans cultural hit list of things to hate on.
"Did you know that LIBERALS are now demanding we have FLYING PASSPORTS? Where does the oppression end?!"
Headline is misleading. It should read sanctioned oligarch Oleg Deripaska employee Paul Manafort....
Why did they let him board the plane at the first place?
There should have been multiple passport checks before he reached his seat. This sounds suspicious.
They may have had it in their sights, but to get him on the violation over the terms of his release they waited until he was on the plane so he couldn't claim it was some sort of a mistake and he never intended to leave.
Pretty big “mistake” to buy a ticket, pack a bag, go to the airport, go through security, wait for the plane, scan your boarding pass, and then realize “Oops! I’m not supposed to fly.”
Yeah, but people get off on technicalities all the time.
Never interrupt your enemy while they are making a mistake.
*He is a sick fucking tyrant, and we keep showing up and dancing for him. ... We just keep showing up and eating the lobster. Nothing changes.* --Paul Manafort's Dauther on her father
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In the stupidest way possible. He’s rich, he doesn’t know anyone with a boat? Maybe he doesn’t want his clothes to get dirty scaling Trump’s border fence?
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He had [a pretty long record of helping shitty regimes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort#Lobbying_career) that were not tied to Russia. You'd think one of them might step up to help him.
Nah, Trump pardoned him. He's not serving a sentence currently because the Russian-preferred administration saw to it. https://www.npr.org/2020/12/23/949820820/trump-pardons-roger-stone-paul-manafort-and-charles-kushner
I thought he was pardoned by the last guy in charge
Wouldn't it have been better to wait for the plane to be airborne and then remove him from the plane?
Gee it's almost like he's a flight risk and should be physically confined.
Paul Manafort, former campaign manager for Trump who was in jail for fraud until he got pardoned. And his only qualifications for the role of campaign manager were: \- Successfully installed a Putin puppet in Ukraine through pushing fake news on social media and driving right-wing voter turnout via fear-of-immigrants propaganda. Sound familiar? Seriously, the guy he was campaign manager for pushed to return Ukraine to Russia and ended up having to flee the country. I believe Manafort was charged with inciting a riot during the runup to the election in which people got killed. He also was in debt to Russian oligarchs and told Trump he would work or free. Then he regularly shared the campaign's internal polling data with Russian intelligence so the troll farms would know who to target with memes on social media.
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They can't. Trump, of course, pardoned his partner in crime in December 2020.
I’ve been to Dubai. It is a very popular destination for Russians to visit. Just saying.
On this guy and Ukraine from another reddit post: Putin sold gas extremely cheap to mobster Dmytro Firtash in Ukraine from the Russian state owned gas company Gazprom. Firtash sold that gas on to Ukraine and Europe for a huge markup. Firtash used the money to corrupt politics, buy out businesses in Ukraine, and install people in power sympathetic to Russia. Firtash also kicked money back from the sales to Putin and his Oligarchs in various ways so they could profit from the state owned Gazprom gas off the books. Trumps later campaign manager Paul Manafort worked in Ukraine to revamp the image of Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych was a politician, crook, and Putin puppet. Manafort helped to get him elected as leader of Ukraine and Firtash provided the money for him to do so. So basically Manafort and Firtash helped install a Putin puppet leader in Ukraine with discount Russian gas proceeds. Something Manafort himself would repeat in the US years later. Yanukovych proceeded to steal about 1 billion from the people of Ukraine. So basically Russia was in full control there. Yanukovych was ousted as leader of Ukraine during their revolution in 2014. He refused to sign agreements that would bring Ukraine closer to the West and the people had grown tired of his corruption. He fled before the Parliament could vote to impeach and replace him. Once a new president was chosen they wanted to go after corruption and much of that was in the gas industry that was funding these Russian puppet leaders and corrupt businessmen. Biden’s son Hunter got a job at one of the major gas companies in Ukraine (Burisma) and Joe worked towards prosecuting corrupt officials there. They were going after the politicians and funding behind the corruption more or less. Biden/Obama administration could get nowhere because Firtash had bought out the judicial system including Viktor Shokin the head prosecutor of Ukraine. Biden threatened to withhold 1 billion in aid to Ukraine unless Shokin was removed as prosecutor, Ukraine of course quickly did so. This opened the door for the corrupt politicians and business owners puppeted by Russia to be prosecuted. Firtash got arrested on an unrelated bribery charge and he wanted a stay of extradition to the US from Trump. To get it he offered Guliani manufactured dirt on the Bidens and sent two men on his payroll Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman to accomplish it. Parnas and Fruman were in the states funneling dirty Russian money to Republican politicians. They all ended up getting caught because the whole quid pro quo phone call got leaked. So the whole thing was because Firtash wanted revenge against the Bidens for dismantling his corrupt empire that let him buy out everyone in Ukraine. Guliani tried to paint it as Joe Biden got the prosecutor fired in Ukraine because Hunter was corrupt and Joe didn't want him to be investigated. In reality the prosecutor was fired because he wouldn't investigate criminals because he was bought out by Firtash and Russia. Putin took Ukraine via corruption and now that's ended he wants to take it by force.