Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

“TrumpGate” evidence mounts

By

The New York Times reports overnight that evidence has surfaced (this page does NOT include Mr. Manafort’s name) tying Paul Manafort, the chairman of the Donald Trump campaign, to corruption in the Ukraine (emphasis mine):

KIEV, Ukraine — On a leafy side street off Independence Square in Kiev is an office used for years by Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, when he consulted for Ukraine’s ruling political party. His furniture and personal items were still there as recently as May.

And Mr. Manafort’s presence remains elsewhere here in the capital, where government investigators examining secret records have found his name, as well as companies he sought business with, as they try to untangle a corrupt network they say was used to loot Ukrainian assets and influence elections during the administration of Mr. Manafort’s main client, former President Viktor F. Yanukovych.

Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.

That’s a blockbuster charge, even in this jaded environment, coming from the “gray lady”:
– $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012
– the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.

It appears to me that it’s time to start calling this “TrumpGate”, in no small part because this piece reminds me of the early Watergate pieces by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Looks like the New York Times has this scoop, rather than the Washington Post.

The Donald Trump campaign, of course, denies these charges.

Taken in the context of the increasingly compelling evidence of Russian involvement in the cyber attacks on the Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and Democratic party leaders, it begins to look more and more as though we are seeing a concerted Russian attack on our political system.

Is Donald Trump a Russian mole?

Please share widely!
fb-share-icon
Tweet
0

Comments

  1. I can’t believe the timidity of some progressives in responding to actual concrete evidence of foreign intelligence and illegal money from the political wing of Putin’s movement influencing one of our major party nominees and outright attacking the other. If Dukakis was called weak on defense due to an ill fitting helmet, surely the right would be lacerating our nominee if she had similar ties. Of course Fox News stays silent while this increasingly Manchurian Candidacy rears its head. Time to call a spade a spade, and a spy a spy.

  2. . . . is that this kind of corruption would go unreported and unnoticed if Manafort were not involved in a political campaign.
    Still, experience makes me skeptical when someone implies that it would be weak not to act on “concrete evidence” of foreign wrong doing.
    Do we really have all the evidence, Mr Conway? Have you checked under your bed for more Russian spies?

    • We may not have “all” the evidence. In cases like this, we may never get that far. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein did not have ALL the evidence at this stage of their Watergate reporting. They did, however, have enough to go to press.

      I don’t think ANY of us knows how much the CIA knows about any of this, just as we’ll never know the extent of that agency’s involvement in the Watergate conspiracy and subsequent coverup. What we DO know is that each and every one of the significant events that ultimately brought down Richard Nixon was initiated by the actions of a then-current or then-retired CIA agent. For example, the case broke open when “retired” CIA operative James McCord wrote his famous letter to judge John Sirica. Similarly, Alexander Butterfield, who revealed the existence of the White House taping system, was frequently mentioned as a CIA contact in the White House. Various sources at the time said that E. Howard Hunt, another CIA operative who was an active Watergate conspirator, named Mr. Butterfield as a CIA contact (Mr. Hunt denied those claims).

      We do not have all the evidence. There is clearly enough evidence to persuade the editors of the New York Times to put this story on the front page. That’s good enough for me to conclude that this story has legs and substance.

        • I suggest that the presence of the story on the front page means that SOMETHING is there. I suggest that it means it is worth pursuing.

          The story itself is clear enough about the murkiness of the situation — did you actually READ it? For example, are you alleging that THIS is untrue (emphasis mine):

          The National Anti-Corruption Bureau, which obtained the ledger, said in a statement that Mr. Manafort’s name appeared 22 times in the documents over five years, with payments totaling $12.7 million. The purpose of the payments is not clear. Nor is the outcome, since the handwritten entries cannot be cross-referenced against banking records, and the signatures for receipt have not yet been verified.

          Deeper in the article is this (emphasis mine):

          The bureau, whose government funding is mandated under American and European Union aid programs and which has an evidence-sharing agreement with the F.B.I., has investigatory powers but cannot indict suspects. Only if it passes its findings to prosecutors — which has not happened with Mr. Manafort — does a subject of its inquiry become part of a criminal case.

          It certainly appears to me that the NYT is telegraphing that the FBI already has this material.

          Or did you notice THIS (emphasis mine):

          While working in Ukraine, Mr. Manafort had also positioned himself to profit from business deals that benefited from connections he had gained through his political consulting. One of them, according to court filings, involved a network of offshore companies that government investigators and independent journalists in Ukraine have said was used to launder public money and assets purportedly stolen by cronies of the government.
          …
          The role of the offshore companies in business dealings involving Mr. Manafort came to light because of court filings in the Cayman Islands and in a federal court in Virginia related to an investment fund, Pericles Emerging Markets. Mr. Manafort and several partners started the fund in 2007, and its major backer was Mr. Deripaska, the Russian mogul, to whom the State Department has refused to issue a visa, apparently because of allegations linking him to Russian organized crime, a charge he has denied.

          This is a blockbuster story.

          Let me ask you again: are YOU serious, Bob?

          • and I am SERIOUSLY appalled at how quickly you, J Conway and Christopher resort to red baiting as a tactic to win this election.
            It’s completely superfluous. Like you believe that the only way to beat a bad guy with a conspiracy theory is with a good guy with a conspiracy theory. And that nutty comment about Watergate being a CIA put up job. . . I don’t know if anyone can out crazy Trump, but you’re sure giving that approach the old college try.

            • First and foremost, we’re having more fun with it than doing any red baiting.

              Second, there is a story in the New York Times — which is imperfect of course, but it aint Drudge.

              And third, we’re not talking about a Trump volunteer from Kansas or some obscure relative. Manafort is Trump’s campaign manager. He’s relevant.

            • …who go on a red-baiting trip just for the heck of it (and I’m not sure it’s an accurate term because we aren’t really talking about Communists anyway).

            • It doesn’t sound as if you know very much about Watergate. I chose my words about the CIA involvement in Watergate somewhat carefully, and I stand by them.

              I guess you’re one of those who believe that it’s just coincidence that so many of the participants of Watergate were then active or retired CIA personnel. If my comments are “nutty”, then they are shared by sources pretty much across the political spectrum.

              For example, here’s what Fox News said in a 2012 retrospective (emphasis mine):

              At the time, most of the authorities’ investigative energies were focused, not surprisingly, on the burglars’ ties to the Nixon re-election campaign: 1972 was, after all, an election year, and that seemed, on the face of things, the swiftest route to tying the president or his top aides to the crime. But the burglars’ ties to CIA, which Republicans on the Senate Watergate committee probed with only middling results, warrant continuing scrutiny.

              Prior to obtaining his job as chief of security for the Committee to Re-Elect, James W. McCord, the wiretapping expert who had hired Baldwin – and who had personally insisted the break-in move forward that night, even after the burglary team discovered that a Watergate security guard had detected their initial movements – had toiled for years at CIA’s shadowy Office of Security. It was this office, at the height of the Cold War, that spearheaded the U.S. government’s forays into mind control (Projects Bluebird and Artichoke); assassination attempts, with the aid of the Mafia, on a foreign head of state (Fidel Castro); the use of prostitutes to service and compromise, as needed, the state’s assets and enemies; and a vast array of domestic surveillance projects, undisclosed until Watergate, targeting antiwar and radical groups. James Jesus Angleton, the agency’s deputy director of counterintelligence, observed that McCord “was an operator, not merely a technician.” Similarly, an Air Force colonel who participated in CIA’s covert operations recalled in 1973: “McCord was just not somebody’s little wiretapper or debugging man…He’s a pro, he’s a master. [CIA Director] Allen Dulles introduced him to me…and said: ‘This man is the best man we have.’”
              …
              Hunt made it a point, while working for the Nixon White House, to keep in regular contact with his old chums at CIA, from which he had ostensibly retired in April 1970. In a sworn affidavit submitted to the House Judiciary Committee when it was investigating Nixon’s proposed impeachment, a career CIA officer who was detailed to the Executive Office Building described how Hunt in those days “frequently transmitted sealed envelopes via our office to the agency.”
              …
              There is persuasive evidence that Hunt and McCord, despite their disclaimers, first met each other long before Gordon Liddy supposedly introduced them in the spring of 1972. Enrique “Harry” Ruiz-Williams, a Cuban Bay of Pigs veteran, later recalled having met “dozens” of times with Hunt and McCord, together, in New York and Washington, in the years after the failed 1961 invasion. Despite Ruiz-Williams’s inherent credibility—he even remembered Hunt and McCord accidentally using each other’s aliases, a mistake repeated, but not widely reported, during Watergate—his account remained uncorroborated for nearly two decades.
              …
              There is more, much more: the fact, for example, that one of the Cuban-born burglars on the break-in team, Bay of Pigs veteran Eugenio R. Martinez, was still on the CIA payroll, and had been providing to his agency case officer regular updates on the progress of Liddy’s unfolding operation. At the moment the burglars were arrested – at gunpoint – Martinez struggled unsuccessfully to conceal an item on his person; the FBI laboratory later determined it to be a key that fit Ida Wells’s desk.

              Or, if you prefer a review of the material from the left side of the spectrum, consider a 2012 piece from Salon (emphasis mine):

              Woodward acknowledged as much in what is perhaps the single most interesting Watergate revelation of recent years. In June 2007, the CIA released most of the so-called “Family Jewels,” a long-suppressed internal report on the agency’s abuses of power. The newly declassified documents, Woodward wrote in the Post, showed in “telling detail” how the CIA, under the leadership of director Richard Helms, served as “the perfect Watergate enabler.”

              The Helms/Nixon relationship lies at the heart of the Watergate story. Nixon, of course, was a paranoid genius, a master of resentment politics at home and geopolitical maneuvering abroad. Helms, his long-serving director of Central Intelligence, was the epitome of a CIA man in the Cold War: correct, discreet and ruthless.

              Thanks to the release of the “Family Jewels” report and an extraordinary collection of 11 conversations between Helms and Nixon in 1971-73 (first published online in 2009) we can see (and hear) what Nixon and Helms had on each other: knowledge of the other guy’s record of “dirty tricks.”
              …
              Plenty of people suspected this at the time. The Agency’s fingerprints were evident in the botched burglary at the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate apartment complex. It was well known that five of the seven burglars had worked for the CIA. Four were Cuban-Americans from Miami involved in the Bay of Pigs operation. It was less well-known that the two ringleaders, James McCord and Howard Hunt, were career officers who had been personally close to Helms for more than a decade.

              What’s next from you? Will you now claim that the CIA involvement in the failed Bay of Pigs operation is also a “nutty” conspiracy theory? You do realize that the original Watergate burglars were Cuban veterans of that debacle, right?

              It is not “nutty” to acknowledge the significant role that the CIA played in Watergate — even if the participants successfully blocked our ability to ferret out “all” the evidence.

              I am frankly confused by your good-guy/bad-guy commentary.

              It is increasingly clear that there are close, inappropriate, and at least unsavory ties between the Donald Trump campaign and Russia. US government sources openly point to Russia as the source of the cyber attacks on the DNC, Ms. Clinton, and various Democratic Party players.

              Since you apparently still have your head in the sand about events that happened during the Nixon era, it is perhaps unsurprising that you apparently choose to continue that awkward position during the present campaign.

              • 1) The CIA enabled Nixon leading up to the Watergate scandal;
                2) The CIA was also deeply involved in Nixon’s downfall;
                therefore,
                3) We can take at face value anything that the NYT says about the Ukraine–because the CIA might (or might not) be involved.
                I fully endorse the idea that the CIA often does things for political reasons, and for reasons that we might not like. That’s exactly why your argument makes no sense, Unserious Tom. If anything, the side that Manafort is accused of helping in the Udraine was not the side the CIA might have been trying to help. That makes the NYT’s story more suspect, not less, if the CIA is behind it.
                Hopefully, the Manafort story will turn out to be true. But the effort on this blog to tie everything, ie. the DNC hacks, Wikilieaks, Assange, and now this Manafort thing into one big conspiracy run by the dastardly Putin is real tin-foil hat stuff.
                And it’s pathetic, just pathetic, that people on this blog who have spent over 10 years looking down their noses at anyone who believed the NYT and government sources about WMD’s in Iraq, now patronize anyone who does not go in for their latest conspiracy. After all, government sources say it’s true– and it’s in the NYT.

                • Where did I say your item 1?

                  I’ve already cited the facts about item 2. They aren’t in serious dispute any longer.

                  I didn’t say your item 3 AT ALL.

                  I did not say the CIA is behind TrumpGate, I said they were deeply involved in Watergate.

                  The rest of your comment is not worth responding to.

                • More precisely, why is it necessary that anyone either believe or subscribe to your theory of how Watergate came about? What does that have to do with the Ukraine, Paul Manafort, Donald Trump or anything?
                  Do you have a point or are you just trolling your own blog post?

            • I really can’t believe I’m repeating that for the sixth or seventh time here. Red baiting is lying about someone’s affiliation with communism or overstating the power and threat domestic communists poses during the Cold War.

              In this case we aren’t lying. All of these affiliations are true and well documented. And Putin is actually annexing European territory belonging to a sovereign democracy, something no Soviet leader ever did. If you don’t think that threat is real you’re welcome to vote for Trump, Stein or Johnson. Recognizing it’s real and recognizing NATOs role in containing it is the number one reason I am supporting Hillary Clinton.

              • . . . and Colin Powell pointed to pictures of WMD’s. And as Condileeza Rice said– Do you want to wait for all the evidence in the form of a mushroom cloud?
                It pains me to say this, but the Bush administration–even the Bush administration–was more transparent about WMD’s than you are if you suggest that the Russians were behind the Wikileaks release of DNC documents. But there you go again, JC “ALL of these affiliations are true. . .” as you say for the 6th or 7th time.
                But very few of these allegations have been demonstrated to any level of certainty. No one has made an persuasive case that the leaks were done by the Russians. Instead we have unnamed sources. There may be a connection between Manafort and the Russian government, or it may be that Manafort was simply greedy and corrupt. That should be enough of a story without adding an extra layer of paranoia.
                And the idea that Putin is running Trump as some kind of Manchurian Candidate . . . That would mean that Putin alone was right about the American electorate when every single American expert was sure that Trump would fizzle out. How stupid is that?
                Foreign policy is hard. And as George Higgins said “It’s harder when you’re stupid.” It will be hard enough for the next administration to deal with Russia, NATO, etc., without attaching this paranoid narrative about subversive Russians attacking our emails, and undermining our democracy.

                • And I hate to make tham cry, but my sources tell me that Guccifer is an American.)))))

                • I really don’t care what Guccifer’s nationality is, but a citation or two would be nice.

                • And only the FSB has the capabilities to carry it out. They’ve repeatedly conducted cyber attacks against neighboring states, including NATO allies like Estonia. The Republican nominee you’re defending insisted the attacks came from Russia and begged for me. That chain of events led to Michael Hayden and Michael Morell, two former CIA and NDI directors respectively, to publicly endorse Hillary Clinton and excoriate Trump.

                  It is not disputed that Paul Manafort accepted direct payments from the Russian government backed regime in Ukraine, as recently as two years ago, and was an unregistered lobbyist on its behalf. He was the one who insisted on removing the decades long GOP commitment to NATO in the platform and replaced it’s policy recommendations that were more hawkish than the Administration’s with ones that were substantially more deferential to Russia and her interests in the region.

                  You take these two facts along with Trump’s actually stated policies and you have a cocktail for severe retreat and abandonment of Eastern Europe to this growing neo-Soviet sphere of influence. Such a retreat would be tragic for the many nations that finally experiences free elections and enjoyed free markets after the Cold War, and it would be a retest for our strategic interests and exacerbate the “new” Cold War.

    • It’s the main reason former CIA Director Mike Morell endorsed Clinton, citing substantial evidence that the FSB had made a mark out of Mr. Trump. The FBI is sure the FSB hacked her accounts and those of the DNC and are deliberately publishing this. One of Putin’s key political theorists admires Trump and calls him the harbinger of a new age of illiberal government, and we have his campaign advisor literally taking kickbacks from one of Putin’s puppet governments.

      This matched with last minute platform changes that dramatically did 180s on the longstanding GOP consensus on NATO, defending Eastern Europe, and rolling back aggression in Ukraine at the direct suggest of Mr. Manafort, the advisor in question here. Do I think Trump is a Putin stooge? No, I think he has surrounded himself with Putin stooges and is getting foreign policy advice from the radical outcasts in government who think he is an ally against Islamix extremism and praise his unmitigated war fare on Chechnya and his involvement in Syria.

  3. ” The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

    Attention must be paid to what is happening here !

    Fred Rich LaRiccia

  4. This afternoon, the Washington Post reminds us that “10 years ago, Trump’s campaign manager warned of a rigged election — in Ukraine”:

    …
    There’s no demonstrated in-person voter fraud problem in Pennsylvania (or anywhere else, for that matter), and it’s not clear if Trump’s fraud-prevention effort is simply an attempt to collect voter contact information and boost GOP voter enthusiasm, or if it’s actually meant to combat a problem that doesn’t exist. But it’s not surprising that this is a part of Trump’s campaign in one sense: When Trump’s campaign director Paul Manafort was helping to coordinate the campaign effort of a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine in 2006, he used similar tools and rhetoric.

    In 2004, Ukraine held a presidential election that actually was riddled with fraud and abuse. This was the election in which one of the presidential candidates, Viktor Yushchenko, was poisoned with dioxin. The culprits remain undetermined, but Yushchenko’s opposition to the influence of Vladimir Putin and Russia during his campaign has prompted some finger-pointing at the Kremlin. Monitoring of the election by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe found a number of problems focused on the campaign of Viktor Yanukovych, who represented the Party of Regions and was friendlier to Moscow.

    Here’s a really fun part (emphasis mine):

    …
    In the same cable, one of Manafort’s employees describes an effort being undertaken by the party. “Catherine Barnes, Project Manager for the ‘Ukraine Election Integrity Project,’ a Manafort sub-project to train Regions’ poll watchers in the standards of the code of conduct adopted by the Party for the 2006 election cycle, briefly mentioned her efforts, which have trained over 1200 Regions’ members,” it reads. A separate cable describes the goal of the group as being to “prevent or detect fraud on election day.”

    Sound familiar?

  5. I find it appalling that Donald Trump will be given security briefings, given what it seems our government now knows about the apparently deep and long-lasting ties between the Donald Trump campaign (specifically Paul Manafort) and corrupt behavior in the Ukraine — including apparent ties to organized crime in Russia.

    What DOES the federal government do when a major party nominee is clearly unqualified to get the necessary security clearance for such briefings?

    • I believe the law provides for the two major nominees to get the briefings. If Trump were denied them we would start hearing calls again for Clinton to be denied them on the basis that she supposedly can’t be trusted with her infamous server. It would also be more evidence to Trump that the election is rigged. Maybe that’s the chance that should be taken. I honestly don’t know.

        • …without the pre-existing narrative that Trump is basically a Manchurian candidate, this would generate a huge yawn.

          • Be careful, especially Somerville Tom and JConway: there are practically no clean hands among any of the so-called political leaders there. This story may come back like a boomerang and involve some people that you on the left foolishly admire. I find it bizarre the that the leading lights of this blog have absolutely no direct experience with Eastern Europe. linguistically or culturally, And yet they are so quick to call those who disagree with them fascists)))). Christopher, kudos to you for being dispassionately rational!

            • …but I have unfortunately concluded there is something to the Manchurian candidate narrative. Trump has taken me to places I never thought I would go, wondering if a candidate were dangerous, a traitor, mentally unstable, etc. It does not take much more investigation than watching his rallies on C-SPAN to come to make these assessments and I am scared for our system in a way I haven’t been before. It’s about much more than disagreement and I doubt people we admire are engaging in the same, though if such evidence did come to light I would condemn it as well.

            • The only thing that is apparent so far is that there are deep connections between the Donald Trump campaign and corruption in the Ukraine. A variety of usually reliable sources cite compelling evidence that the recent spate of cyber attacks against various entities associated with the Democratic Party originated in Russia.

              Are you seriously arguing that these are fabricated?

              Where have I called anybody “fascist”?

              • I thought your more honest reply would be to say that “without deep pockets and YEARS of organization, you lose. I don’t know whether or not that means corrupt money from Ukraine, but the money MUST come from somewhere.”

                • You now apparently attempt to conflate Hillary Clinton with Donald Trump and Wall Street with organized crime in Russia. Meanwhile, you are so focused on imposing your unbridled animosity for any “Clinton” (Bill, Hillary, Chelsea) on every situation that you ignore the very real and unprecedented attempted manipulation of the American political process by dark forces in Russia.

                  You seem to live in a bizarre world.

                • Nope, not going to happen. You don’t mind dancing with the devil, selling out the Wall Street, just as long as “the money MUST come from somewhere”….those words will haunt you. I will “never ever” forget them.

                • Between this and HRC once surmising that single-payer was never going to happen in her analysis you seem to latch on to single out of context quotes and not let go. Time to move on.

                • and Tom’s attempts to make this about me. Honestly, I ought to start a newsletter to keep you two busy whining about me. It’s not “time to move on” and forget. That’s how we got here, by giving Dems a pass when they screwed labor, ignoring their votes in the house and senate that paid off their Wall Street pals. “Move on”, you say, “nothing to see here.”

                  Until HRC fully embraces health care as a right (not an “affordable right”) even with the microphones off , I’m not moving on. If I were of that mind, I might as well switch parties.

                • “a variety of usually reliable sources” . . .
                  You left out “our precious bodily fluids” General Ripper.

            • I worked with allied militaries from the region to obtain needed defense equipment to balance against Russia when I was at the State Department. I also witnessed the consequences of our failure to anticipate the Georgian incursion or the signal that sent to the Russians that other non-NATO satellite countries were fair game.

              Our failure to anticipate or respond to the Georgian crisis precipitated the Crimean crisis since it showed Putin we did not care about our allies in the region who weren’t formally part of NATO. Having a President who openly muses about leaving the organization and pledges not to uphold our obligations to the Baltic states means it’s open season on all of Eastern Europe. 30 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain it would be a shame for the West to lose these gains and preside over the erosion of liberal democracy in the East.

              • . . . that confrontation with Russia should be our foreign policy.
                Whatever the “merits” of a new cold war, we shouldn’t be manipulated into a confrontation on the basis of the current conspiracy theories.

                • He would’ve sent in American troops to retake the Crimea or to be embedded with Ukranian forces in the East. That’s rollback. That’s inviting a broader world war, one that can quickly escalate and threaten human civilization. I’m not supporting that.

                  I support the administrations use of sanctions, soft power, and shoring up the defense capabilities of our regional allies to contain and deter further Russian aggression. It was tragic but necessary to allow the Soviets to crush the Hungarian and Czech rebellions, but we were not going to let them take West Berlin. This is similar. Crimea and Eastern Ukraine are gone, but we will deter them from taking the Baltics. President Clinton will continue these policies, President Trump would say “come and get them! And let’s cut a beautiful deal”.

                • Seems like you forgot the YUUUGE gambling and golf resort Mr. Trump will build in the newly-occupied Russian territory — no doubt using concrete supplied by Russian organized crime.

                  Just saying. 🙂

                • The very existence of NATO is an embodiment of seventy years of American foreign policy dedicated to “confrontation” with Russia. The organization exists, explicitly, in order to block Russian (originally “Soviet”) expansionism in the region. Which part of jconway’s argument do you argue is incorrect?

                  What you claim is a “current conspiracy [theory]” is the reality of current facts. Do you disagree with virtually the entire security community that Russian entities were behind the cyber attacks on the DNC, the Hillary Clinton campaign, and high-profile Democratic Party members? Do you dispute the facts reported by the NYT in the thread-starter? Do you dispute the reality of Donald Trump’s long history of attempted business contacts within Russia? Do you dispute the reality of Donald Trump’s unsavory dealings with organized crime in New York city?

                  Are you sanguine about flagrant attempts to manipulate the US electoral process by Russia? Are you sanguine handing our nuclear codes to a man who is both dangerously ignorant and incompetent and ALSO apparently beholding to organized crime in Russia?

                  What is YOUR agenda here?

                • When was the last time that these bureaucrats were right about anything? You have become a paper pushing patriot?)))

                • Seriously, Edgar … “shilling” for the “security establishment”?

                  Get real, seriously.

                • Q. Do you disagree with virtually the entire security community that Russian entities were behind the cyber attacks on the DNC, the Hillary Clinton campaign, and high-profile Democratic Party members?
                  A. Yes I do. There is no reason to trust the security community on this. The entire security community lied about WMD’s in Iraq. One of the highest ranking intelligence officials, General Clapper, was caught lying to Congress, and suffered no consequences. The entire security community hates Wikileaks, and has ample motivation to smear Assange. A serious person would learn to be skeptical of the security community after the run up to the Iraq War, but un-serious people never learn, apparently.

                  Q.Are you sanguine about flagrant attempts to manipulate the US electoral process by Russia?
                  A. I think it is unproven that Russia made such an attempt. In any case, I’m used to flagrant attempts to manipulate the US electoral process. If the worst thing Russia ever does turns out to be releasing true information about the effects of big money on elections, I confess I won’t be hysterical. On the other hand, if they start flying over members of Congress each summer to indoctrinate them on the wonders of Putin’s Russia, I won’t be sanguine.

                  Q.Do you dispute the facts reported by the NYT in the thread-starter?
                  A. Yes. See my first answer. Remember Judith Miller? I hope the facts the NYT reported turn out to be true, but that’s different from believing everything the Times publishes.

                  Q. Are you sanguine handing our nuclear codes to a man who is both dangerously ignorant and incompetent and ALSO apparently beholding to organized crime in Russia?
                  A. No I’m not. I think we need a serious approach to defeating him.

                  Q. Do you dispute the reality of Donald Trump’s long history of attempted business contacts within Russia?
                  A. Not for a second.

                  Q. Do you dispute the reality of Donald Trump’s unsavory dealings with organized crime in New York city?
                  A. Not at all. I read David Cay Johnston’s “21 Questions for Donald Trump.” I wish the media had been more diligent pursuing those 21 questions.

                  But that’s just it. There’s a big difference between between serious journalists like Johnston and their serious questions, and unserious bloggers weaving conspiracy theories. I admit it would be fun to find out that Trump is a Russian mole, just like it would be fun to find that planet out in the Kuiper Belt and expose the space aliens who operate Trump like a muppet. Fun, but not a serious way to win this election.

  8. I am surprised Manafort’s past contracts with other dictators are being overlooked at this time. Contracts with Jonas Savimbi in Angola when he was hired to help overthrow the Marzist government in Angola, his work with Kenya during the early 1990s, the brutal Mobutu Sese Seko of then Zaire, the famously corrupt Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines in the 1980s, Sani Abacha of Nigeria in the 1990s, Saudi Arabia and Siad Barre’s dictatorship in Somalia were just some of Manafort’s clients.

    The Center for Public Integrity said Manafort led the “torturers’ lobby” in the US Congress.

    Here is an article from April 2016 in the Daily Beast
    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/13/top-trump-aide-led-the-torturers-lobby.html

    and another from Slate:
    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/04/paul_manafort_isn_t_a_gop_retread_he_s_made_a_career_of_reinventing_tyrants.html

Archives