Paul Manafort, Who Once Ran Trump Campaign, Indicted on Money Laundering and Tax Charges

[Suzanimal]

Paul Manafort, Who Once Ran Trump Campaign, Indicted on Money Laundering and Tax Charges


WASHINGTON — Paul Manafort and his former business associate were indicted on Monday on money laundering, tax and foreign lobbying charges, a significant escalation in a special counsel investigation that has cast a shadow over President Trump’s first year in office.

Mr. Manafort, the president’s former campaign chairman, and his longtime associate Rick Gates, surrendered to the FBI on Monday. The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, said Mr. Manafort laundered more than $18 million to buy properties and services.

“Manafort used his hidden overseas wealth to enjoy a lavish lifestyle in the United States without paying taxes on that income,” the indictment reads.

Mr. Gates is accused of transferring more than $3 million from offshore accounts. The two are also charged with making false statements.

“As part of the scheme, Manafort and Gates repeatedly provided false information to financial bookkeepers, tax accountants and legal counsel, among others,” the indictment read.

...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/us/politics/paul-manafort-indicted.html

If you go to Twitter you can see all the pages of the indictment.

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[oyarde]

Well , if I had millions stashed in a foreign country I would not be surrendering to the FBI for tax evasion .

[Suzanimal]

LIVE UPDATES: Latest developments in Mueller investigation

...


10:20 am – There is more happening today in the Russia investigation. A former Trump foreign policy aide, George Papadopoulos has plead guilty to making false statements to the feds in the Russia investigation.

https://cmgwsbradiojamiedupree.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/russia209.jpg?w=518&zoom=2

...

http://jamiedupree.blog.palmbeachpost.com/2017/10/30/24216/

[Suzanimal]

Well , if I had millions stashed in a foreign country I would not be surrendering to the FBI for tax evasion .

Danke would be flying me somewhere warm.

[Raginfridus]

Their crime was keeping their money.

Another victory for freedom.

[Suzanimal]

Their crime was keeping their money.

Another victory for freedom.

I was hoping to see Hillary on the perp walk this morning.:(

[pcgame]

If Trump wanted to, could he pardon them? Also, just because he does not pardon them now, could he pardon them at the end of his term?

[phill4paul]

I was hoping to see Hillary on the perp walk this morning.:(

Lol. Yeah, that's not gonna happen. They know too much.

[timosman]

I was hoping to see Hillary on the perp walk this morning.:(

Not yet. She is still circling the drain. :cool:

[Raginfridus]

Yes, Bill has suffered long enough. He's learned to appreciate the cheaper hos in his twilight years. All of em got the claps, rich or poor, black or white, teeth or dentures, but down home lovin is still better than Hildabeast and big city blues.

[Suzanimal]

If Trump wanted to, could he pardon them? Also, just because he does not pardon them now, could he pardon them at the end of his term?

I'm not completely sure. This is according to Newsweek...


...

The Constitution allows the president broad powers to pardon people for “Offenses against the United States." There is no precedent for a sitting president pardoning people tied to his campaign, as will likely be the case for Mueller’s debut indictment.

The Constitution contains no language barring such a pardon, but with the Trump administration, it probably wouldn’t pass without a fight.

For example, the only limit in the Constitution is that presidents can’t issue pardons for offenses relating to their impeachment. If Mueller issues charges that could be tied to a potentially impeachment offense for Trump, Congress could swiftly enact impeachment proceeding — thus stripping Trump of his powers.

Such an unprecedented pardon would also lead to inevitable legal battles, which could reach the Supreme Court, giving the justices final say on whether Trump’s pardons can stand.

Beyond this, presidents only have the power to pardon federal offenses — but state offenses are out of their jurisdiction.

Trump has no power to quash state charges, which can only be pardoned by state officials. So if a state attorney general takes up any of the federal charges from Mueller — for instance, charges related to Trump business practices in New York — Trump’s troubles would continue.

Reports have circulated for months that Trump has been wondering about the reach of his pardoning powers, and even asked about the possibility of a self-pardon, which is also not barred by the Constitution.

Trump has also been publicly boasting about his abilities to pardon. He wrote in a July tweet that “ all agree the U.S. President has the complete power to pardon,” showing a mistaken understanding of how far his powers can go.

...

http://www.newsweek.com/trump-pardon-powers-limit-mueller-indictment-695780

[EBounding]

Trump's tweet raises new question marks:

925005659569041409

[timosman]

Trump's tweet raises new question marks:

Trump creating outrage before turning things around - Manafort is connected to Podesta :cool:

[Suzanimal]

Trump creating outrage before turning things around - Manafort is connected to Podesta :cool:



...
A thus-far-reliable source who used to be involved with Clinton allies John and Tony Podesta told Tucker Carlson that press reports appearing to implicate President Trump in Russian collusion are exaggerated.

The source, who Carlson said he would not yet name, said he worked for the brothers' Podesta Group and was privy to some information from Robert Mueller's special investigation.

While media reports describe former "Black, Manafort & Stone" principal Paul Manafort as Trump's main tie to the investigation, the source said it is Manafort's role as a liaison between Russia and the Podesta Group that is drawing the scrutiny.
The "vehicle" Manafort worked for was what Carlson called a "sham" company with a headquarters listed in Belgium but whose contact information was linked to Kiev, the Ukrainian capital.

Manafort was, at the time, representing Russian business and political interests during the Obama era.

The source said the Podesta Group was in regular contact with Manafort while Hillary Clinton was America's chief diplomat.

In 2013, the group hired away one of Clinton's deputies, David Adams, effectively establishing contact between the Washington firm and Clinton's office in Foggy Bottom, D.C.

http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/10/24/tucker-carlson-source-says-podesta-group-and-paul-manafort-subject-mueller-russia-probe

[Suzanimal]

http://jamiedupree.blog.palmbeachpost.com/2017/10/30/24216/



Papadopoulos lied to FBI agents “about the timing, extent and nature of his relationships and interactions with certain foreign nationals whom he understood to have close connections with senior Russian government officials,” according to the criminal complaint unsealed on Monday.

The Washington Post reported in August that Papadopoulos had offered to set up meetings between Russian officials and top Trump campaign officials.


Link to the indictment

https://www.scribd.com/document/363012273/Former-Trump-campaign-aide-lied-to-FBI-agents-DOJ-indictment#from_embed

[CaptUSA]

http://jamiedupree.blog.palmbeachpost.com/2017/10/30/24216/

Wait a minute... George Papadopoulos?!!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/95/Webster_Season_1.jpg

???

[Suzanimal]

Wait a minute... George Papadopoulos?!!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/95/Webster_Season_1.jpg

???

Poor Webster.

[milgram]

False statements, wow. Who could have predicted that.

[Brian4Liberty]

Good. Now when are all of the other indictments coming down for everyone else guilty of the same thing? And how is someone like Mueller who is implicated in crimes still acting as a special prosecutor?

[Suzanimal]

The plot thickens....


Brother of Clinton campaign chair steps down from lobbying firm amid reports of scrutiny from special counsel

Tony Podesta, the brother of Hillary Clinton's former campaign chairman, John Podesta, has resigned from his lobbying firm amid reports he is under scrutiny from Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/10/30/brother-clinton-campaign-chair-steps-down-from-lobbying-firm-amid-reports-scrutiny-from-special-counsel.html

[Jamesiv1]

I was hoping to see Hillary on the perp walk this morning.:(
this might be just a little something to provide cover for indicting Hillary next. To prevent the "witch hunt" accusations.

If they nab a couple on the Trump side, they can avoid appearing to be partisan about it.

just a theory.

But then again, Mueller seems to be an enemy of the Trumpmeister, so who knows.

[Suzanimal]

925055106487324674

[Suzanimal]

this might be just a little something to provide cover for indicting Hillary next. To prevent the "witch hunt" accusations.

If they nab a couple on the Trump side, they can avoid appearing to be partisan about it.

just a theory.

But then again, Mueller seems to be an enemy of the Trumpmeister, so who know.


It would be poetic if they arrested her tomorrow. It is her day, after all.

[Zippyjuan]

False statements, wow. Who could have predicted that.

Clinton was only guilty of lying to Congress in his impeachment.

[Mordan]

Clinton used a private server.

[Suzanimal]

The cockroaches are scurrying...


Tony Podesta stepping down from lobbying giant amid Mueller probe

Democratic power lobbyist Tony Podesta, founder of the Podesta Group, is stepping down from the firm that bears his name after coming under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Podesta announced his decision during a firm-wide meeting Monday morning and is alerting clients of his impending departure.

...

Podesta Group did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Podesta’s decision to leave the firm came on the same day that former Donald Trump campaign aides Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were indicted on multiple charges, including money laundering, operating as federal agents of the Ukrainian government, failing to disclose overseas bank accounts and making false statements to federal authorities. Trump campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty earlier this month for lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials, according to court records.

The investigation into Podesta and his firm grew out of investigators’ examination of Manafort’s finances. Manafort organized a PR campaign on behalf of a nonprofit called the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine. Podesta Group was one of several firms that were paid to do work on the PR campaign to promote Ukraine in the U.S.

Podesta Group filed paperwork with the Justice Department in April stating that it had done work for the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine that also benefited the same Ukrainian political party that Manafort once advised. Podesta Group said at the time it believed its client was a European think tank untethered to a political party.

...

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/30/tony-podesta-stepping-down-from-lobbying-giant-amid-mueller-probe-244314

[Suzanimal]

925064480391876613

[Jamesiv1]

The cockroaches are scurrying...

Podesta Group filed paperwork with the Justice Department in April stating that it had done work for the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine that also benefited the same Ukrainian political party that Manafort once advised.
whoa.... interesting.

Sounds like Podesta and Manafort were playing in the same sandbox.

Manafort going to make a deal for turning state's evidence?

[Madison320]

How much you want to bet the headlines will mention Trump more than Manafort.

Damn, first article I found:


Trump campaign adviser admitted to lying about Russian contacts

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-campaign-adviser-pleaded-guilty-to-lying-about-russian-contacts/2017/10/30/d525e712-bd7d-11e7-97d9-bdab5a0ab381_story.html?utm_term=.708e7b68ecfc

[Jamesiv1]

Live feed of Manafort hearing thingy:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G67LlhKhiNQ

[Jamesiv1]

haha

comment on the live feed:

MAGA = "many are getting arrested"

[parocks]

Trump's tweet raises new question marks:

925005659569041409

Trump acts like it's his job to tweet. Tweeter in chief. Other people, those are the ones who do the government stuff, Trump just tweets about it.

Trump: "I hope the Government does a good job"
People: "Yes, Trump I do too. Who is charge of the executive branch of the government?"

[Brian4Liberty]

"Manafort used his hidden overseas wealth to enjoy a lavish lifestyle in the United States without paying taxes on that income,” the indictment reads.

Translation: "There was no evidence of Russia collusion, so we went on a fishing expedition to indict the people we want to indict. Five felonies a day, you are all guilty."

[Suzanimal]

Statement from Paul Manafort attorney: "There is no evidence the Trump Campaign colluded with the Russia government."

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DNackb0W0AEQO6s.jpg:large

[phill4paul]

Sooo..when will Uranium One indictments be forthcoming. My bet is never.

[spudea]

wow the biggest witch hunt in our nations history caught a witch. We shall see if the witch floats or sinks.

[Zippyjuan]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/30/politics/george-papadopolous-trump-guilty/index.html


Why George Papadopoulos' guilty plea is a much bigger problem for Trump than the Manafort indictment


Even as President Trump was on Twitter insisting that the indictment of former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was meaningless because it involved activities unrelated to Trump or the campaign came news that former Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos had pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with, wait for it, Russia.

The Manafort news drew the bigger headlines Monday morning -- understandable given his high-profile role at the top of the Trump campaign. But, the Papadopoulos guilty plea -- and the fact that he has been cooperating with the special counsel investigation since his July arrest -- strikes me as significantly more problematic for Trump and his White House in the medium-to-long term.

This paragraph from the FBI's guilty plea agreement with Papadopoulos :


"In truth and in fact, however, and as set forth above, defendant PAPADOPOULOS met the Professor for the first time on or about March 14, 2016, after defendant PAPADOPOULOS had already learned he would be a foreign policy advisor for the Campaign; the Professor showed interest in defendant PAPADOPOULOS only after learning of his role on the Campaign; and the Professor told defendant PAPADOPOULOS about the Russians possessing" dirt" on then-candidate Clinton in late April 2016, more than a month after defendant PAPADOPOULOS had joined the Campaign."







"On or about April 26, 2016, defendant PAPADOPOULOS met the Professor for breakfast at a London hotel. During this meeting, the Professor told defendant PAPADOPOULOS that he had just returned from a trip to Moscow where he had met with high-level Russian government officials. The Professor told defendant PAPADOPOULOS that on that trip he (the Professor) learned that the Russians had obtained "dirt" on then-candidate Clinton. The Professor told defendant PAPADOPOULOS, as defendant PAPADOPOULOS later described to the FBI, that "They [the Russians] have dirt on her"; "the Russians had emails of Clinton"; "they have thousands of emails."

More at link.

[oyarde]

Translation: "There was no evidence of Russia collusion, so we went on a fishing expedition to indict the people we want to indict. Five felonies a day, you are all guilty."

I am living pretty lavish here too . I have peanuts AND beer.

[milgram]

Clinton was only guilty of lying to Congress in his impeachment.
I think "lying" to the FBI is an even more ridiculous charge. Given the way it's used to target people - interview them again and again until they change any part of their story - it shouldn't even be a crime.

http://jimbovard.com/blog/2010/08/18/the-crime-of-lying-to-the-fbi/

Playboy May 1999
BEYOND PERJURY by James Bovard

Perhaps the greatest irony of the national debate over who should go to prison for lying has gone largely unreported: Even while President Bill Clinton fought for his reputation and job, his administration aggressively argued that Americans who make even the most offhand false comments to practically any government worker deserve harsh punishment.

Under Clinton’s watch, Congress amended the false statements statute in 1996 to ensure that people who make false statements during congressional testimony could be prosecuted.

The FBI academy in 1997 added a full training course on ethics for new recruits. According to the academy’s official syllabus, subjects of the bureau’s investigations have “forfeited their right to the truth.”

Federal agents have the right to lie to you-and to put you in prison if you lie to them. Any citizen who makes even a single-word false utterance (“no,” “yes”) to a federal agent faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The false statements law conveys so much power that, according to Solicitor General Seth Waxman, it could allow federal agents to “escalate completely innocent conduct into a felony.” One federal judge condemned the law for encouraging “inquisition as a method of criminal investigation.”

[Raginfridus]

Good. Now when are all of the other indictments coming down for everyone else guilty of the same thing? And how is someone like Mueller who is implicated in crimes still acting as a special prosecutor?do-doo-doo-do-do-doo that's DeeCee!

[phill4paul]

I think "lying" to the FBI is an even more ridiculous charge. Given the way it's used to target people - interview them again and again until they change any part of their story - it shouldn't even be a crime.

http://jimbovard.com/blog/2010/08/18/the-crime-of-lying-to-the-fbi/

Pro-Tip: STFU.

[bunklocoempire]

FRN laundering and theft evasion. That little brier patch will do nicely.

Imran Awan who?

[Brian4Liberty]

Pro-Tip: STFU.

Which will be liberally used against a person in the court of public opinion. Good news is it can't be used in a real court.

[Suzanimal]

On the Chicago leg of her book tour promoting "What Happened," former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton addressed the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, amid a series of indictments that were brought forward by a grand jury as part of special counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing Russia probe.

"I'll leave it to the investigators to decide whether or not there was collusion, or conspiracy but we don't need a lengthy investigation to tell us that Trump is ignoring the intelligence community about an urgent threat, refusing to stand up to an adversary who has already attacked us, and abdicating his responsibility to preserve, protect and defend our national security interests."

She added, "We know everything we need to know, we just have to make sure that members of Congress do their jobs and hold the president accountable."

...

The former secretary of state said that the facts Americans are now learning about Russian interference in the presidential election is "more than alarming, it's a clear and present danger to Western democracy."

She added, touching on the recent troves of data released by social media sites on targeted ads purchased on their platforms, "we now know Russian agents, both human and robotic agents, bots, used Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube and even Pinterest to place targeted attack ads and negative stories," she says were used to "fan the flames of division in our society."

As social media representatives are set to testify on Capitol Hill on Tuesday as part of congressional investigators separate probe into Russian interference, Clinton said if she were elected president, she would have led her own investigation into just how these political ads got there in the first place.

"If I had ended up in the White House I would've said, 'look we need an independent commission to investigate this, to get to bottom of it, we need to make it clear to these incredible tech companies that they've got to be part of the solution and not part of the problem and not buy ads in rubles for heaven's sake,'" she added.

...

During a lighter point of supporters' questions, when asked what Clinton was thinking about being for any upcoming Halloween festivities Tuesday, she remarked, "I'll maybe come as the president.":rolleyes:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/clinton-on-russia-investigation-we-know-everything-we-need-to-know/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab7e&linkId=44133507


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cmc-BibWcAA9NRV.jpg

[Suzanimal]

Kremlin Responds To Mueller Indictment: "No Accusations Against Russia"

...

This irony wasn't lost on Russia, and on Tuesday the Kremlin commented on Monday's news, stressing that the indictment handed down in the special counsel’s investigation did not include accusations against Russia for meddling in the U.S. presidential election. Quoted by Reuters, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said during a call with reporters that Russia has always said that it did not interfere in the election.



“Russia does not feature in the charges that were leveled in any way. Other countries and other people feature (in the charges),” Peskov said, according to the news service adding that “Moscow never felt itself guilty so as to feel exonerated now,” when asked whether the Kremlin interpreted the indictment as proof that its denials about meddling in the U.S. presidential election had been confirmed.

Peskov said the investigation was an internal matter for the United States which Russia was not involved in, but was following with interest from afar.
Peskov also commented on details of a case against George Papadopoulos who pleaded guilty in early October to lying to the FBI. Papadopoulos told investigators about his efforts to set up a meeting between the Trump campaign and the Russian leadership during which he said he met a London-based professor boasting of contacts with Russian officials and a Russian woman whom he described as a relative of President Vladimir Putin. The case against Papadopoulos also mentions his contacts with someone with links to the Russian Foreign Ministry.

When asked what the Kremlin made of the details about someone linked to the Russian Foreign Ministry being cited in the Papadopoulos case, Peskov said the accusation was totally unsubstantiated.

“It’s an absolutely laughable allegation,” Peskov told reporters.

...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-31/kremlin-responds-mueller-indictment-no-accusations-against-russia

[Suzanimal]

Sooo..when will Uranium One indictments be forthcoming. My bet is never.

We'll see. I'm not holding my breath, though.

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?516404-White-House-chief-of-staff-calls-for-special-counsel-to-probe-Democrats

[Murray N Rothbard]

Sooo..when will Uranium One indictments be forthcoming. My bet is never.

HA.... do we really already have yet another partisan buzzword for the purposes of distraction from a real issue? "Benghazi," "emails," now "UraniumOne." OK, we have established Hillary Clinton is corrupt and bad. This is nothing new. What IS new is that she is no longer a sitting, nor viable future, political figure.

So...Why are we still talking about her?

Oh, right... "our" supposed guy is in much hotter water himself.

Well I say stop trying to drive the narrative away from this Russia scandal and let em get absolutely soaked because Trump is NOT our guy and is NOT any better than Bill and Hillary, and most importantly he is the fucking President of the United States. If that does not concern you or fail to attract your attention from fake diversions like "Uranium One" then you are on the wrong forum.

[Suzanimal]

HA.... do we really already have yet another partisan buzzword for the purposes of distraction from a real issue? "Benghazi," "emails," now "UraniumOne." OK, we have established Hillary Clinton is corrupt and bad. This is nothing new. What IS new is that she is no longer a sitting, nor viable future, political figure.

So...Why are we still talking about her?

Because, although she no longer holds office, the Clintons are still major power players. The Bushes no longer in office either and I'd like to see them face justice.



Oh, right... "our" supposed guy is in much hotter water himself.

He's not my guy and if I'm recalling phill's posts correctly, he's not his either.

Here's a thread where he specifically went after Trump supporters.
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?491257-Thumphumpers-get-excoriated-by-actual-Liberty-adherents-Operation-Rep-burn-goes-into-effect&highlight=trump


Well I say stop trying to drive the narrative away from this Russia scandal and let em get absolutely soaked because Trump is NOT our guy and is NOT any better than Bill and Hillary, and most importantly he is the fucking President of the United States. If that does not concern you or fail to attract your attention from fake diversions like "Uranium One" then you are on the wrong forum.

Why not go after both? :confused:

From what I've read so far, I'm starting to think the list of who hasn't colluded with the Russians or Ukrainians is shorter.

[spudea]

HA.... do we really already have yet another partisan buzzword for the purposes of distraction from a real issue? "Benghazi," "emails," now "UraniumOne." OK, we have established Hillary Clinton is corrupt and bad. This is nothing new. What IS new is that she is no longer a sitting, nor viable future, political figure.

So...Why are we still talking about her?

Oh, right... "our" supposed guy is in much hotter water himself.

Well I say stop trying to drive the narrative away from this Russia scandal and let em get absolutely soaked because Trump is NOT our guy and is NOT any better than Bill and Hillary, and most importantly he is the $#@!ing President of the United States. If that does not concern you or fail to attract your attention from fake diversions like "Uranium One" then you are on the wrong forum.

That's the dumbest thing I've ever read. So we should ignore corruption and illegal activities because Hillary lost? It's not a binary choice, one or the other. We can pursue both issues at the same time.

In the pursuit of justice, whether your name is Hillary Clinton or Hillary Jones, the same laws apply.

[Firestarter]

Finally the “special prosecutor” has indicted 2 partners in crime of Donald Trump – Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. This looks more like “Ukrainegate” than “Russiagate” to me...
The trail also leads to the Podesta Group of Tony and John Podesta.
Where have I heard about FBI investigations before…

I’ve quickly scanned the full indictment, but didn’t read that Paul Manafort used property in the Trump Tower, to launder money.
I wouldn’t claim that Robert Mueller is nothing but a “special” cover-up artist, or that this is the most interesting in this scandal, but it's strange that Mueller “forgot” this...

Between 2006 and 2013, Paul J. Manafort bought 3 homes in New York — one in Trump Tower, one in Soho, and one in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Using shell companies, Manafort paid for them in full, and then transferred the properties into his own name for no money.
In 2005, Manafort and Davis began pursuing work with Oleg Deripaska, one of the richest “businessmen” in Russia, CEO of RUSAL and close to Vladimir Putin.
Manafort’s 2006 purchase of a Trump Tower apartment coincided with signing a $10 million contract with Deripaska.

In 2012, one of Manafort’s shell companies, MC Soho Holdings LLC, purchased a fourth floor loft on Howard Street (on the border of Soho and Chinatown), for $2.85 million. In April 2016, when he was becoming Trump’s campaign manager, Manafort transferred the unit into his own name and borrowed $3.4 million against it.
In 2013, another Manafort-linked shell company, MC Brooklyn Holdings, purchased a townhouse at 377 Union Street in Carroll Gardens for $2,995,000. This transaction followed the same pattern: the home was paid in full without a mortgage. On 9 February 2016, after Trump’s victories in Michigan and Mississippi, Manafort took out $5.3 million in loans on the property.
This looks like a scheme to keep the source of the (dirty) money hidden.

Between April 2015 and January 2017 – including time that he worked on the Trump campaign – Manafort borrowed about $12 million against his 3 New York homes (including the apartment in Trump Tower). That was more than he had paid for them, and more than they’re worth.
Days before Trump was sworn in as President, Manafort transferred the Carroll Gardens brownstone from MC Brooklyn Holdings to his own name and refinanced the loans with The Federal Savings Bank, taking on more debt. He now has $6.8 million in loans on a building he bought for $3 million (in March 2017). According to David Reiss, a professor real estate law, it’s extremely unusual for a home loan to exceed the value of the property.

In August 2016, The New York Times published an article on Manafort, claiming he’d accepted $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments from a pro-Putin, Ukrainian political party between 2007 and 2012. Then Manafort had to resign as campaign manager: http://www.wnyc.org/story/paul-manaforts-puzzling-new-york-real-estate-purchases/
(archived here: http://archive.is/okldW)


Even more interesting is the “lobbying” for the European Center for Modern Ukraine (ECFMU) by Mercury LLC (of Manafort and his employee Rick Gates) and the Podesta Group from 2012 to 2014. ECFMU was affiliated with Viktor Yanukovych, who was the president of Ukraine from 2010 to 2014. Yanukovych is pro-Putin and had to flee the country after protesters overthrew his government. He was reportedly helped by Putin to escape to Russia.
Reportedly Podesta and Manafort had to lobby the message that Ukraine’s 2012 election was really democratic and that the country’s leaders wanted to move further away from Putin and closer to the West.

The Podesta Group has in the past lobbied for foreign government clients with abysmal human rights records, like Vietnam, Azerbaijan and South Sudan.

Mercury LLC’s filings with the Justice Department show that its lobbyists, including Ed Kutler (an ally of Newt Gingrich), spent time setting up meetings related to Ukraine issues. One person they introduced to numerous Hill offices and to a senior official at the Export-Import Bank was Sergiy Klyuyev.
Less than a year after Mercury LLC introduced Klyuyev around the Hill, the EU froze his assets in the wake of the collapse of the Yanukovych regime. Klyuyev was one of more than a dozen Yanukovych allies the EU suspected of embezzling state money. Klyuyev and his brother reportedly also fled to Russia. Sergiy’s brother has been accused of orchestrating mass killings of Euromaidan protesters: http://www.thedailybeast.com/how-dc-lobbyists-helped-paul-manafort-prop-up-a-putin-puppet
(archived here: http://archive.is/lRJm1)


Over $1.5 million has been paid by the Party of Regions to American politicians in 2012 and 2013 alone. The founders of the ECFMU, at that time, were 3 Members of the Parliament from the Party of Regions, who in 2 years since have moved considerably up the power ladder — the current Foreign Minister Leonid Kozhara, the current head of the Budget Committee of Parliament Ievgenii Hiellier and the current head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Verkhovna Rada Vitaliy Kahlyushnyy.
The reported budget of the ECFMU (located in Brussels, Belgium) is only €10,000. In 2012, the Belgian mediator paid the American lobbyists 80 times that amount — $800,000. In 2013 they have paid American lobbyists 79 times their budget — $790,000.
The Podesta Group, was founded by brothers Tony and John Podesta. John headed the office of President Bill Clinton in 1998-2001, since December 2013 was a senior adviser to President Obama and then campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton. In 2012, 2013 the Podesta Group received $1.02 million from the ECFMU.

The second company that was hired by ECFMU, is Mercury/Clark & Weinstock, of Manafort and Rick Gates. Mercury is affiliated with ex-Republican congressman John Vincent "Vin" Weber, who was involved in the last presidential election campaign of Mitt Romney. Mercury received $570,000 from Brussels in 2012, 2013.

What’s bizarre about the ECFMU is that it was first reported to be founded by acting Members of Parliament in the Ukraine: Leonid Kozhara, Ievgenii Hiellier and Vitaliy Kahlyushnyy.
The surnames of Kozhara, Hiellier and Kahlyushnyy were taken out of the registry, and replaced by former MP Oleg Nadosha, ex-MP Oleksiy Plotnikov and Kseniya Solovyova (born in 1987).

German Ina Kirsch Van de Vater, was also among the founders for the ECFMU. Ina Kirsch claimed that the ECFMU has no relation to the Klyuyev Foundation (suspected of embezzling state money):

U.S. companies that cooperate with the ‘European Centre for Modern Ukraine’ have no relation to the Party of Regions. They work exclusively in support of the Center (...) The Center has nothing to do, directly or indirectly, to Klyuyev’s fund.
Strangely Ina Kirsch “forgot” to mention that her husband Robert Van de Vater in 2014 was a Deputy Board Chairman of the Klyuyev Foundation: http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2014/02/5/7012902/
(archived here: http://archive.is/GhInS)

The following graph explains this in short.
http://img.pravda.com/images/doc/0/f/0f99f4c-scheme-podesta-eng-new.jpg


Possibly the most interesting from the official document...
Prosecutors say in:

total, more than $75 million flowed through the offshore accounts. MANAFORT laundered more than $18 million
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4163372/pages/Paul-Manafort-Rick-Gates-Indictment-p3-normal.gif
Manafort spent the money extravagantly, including more than $1.3 million to clothing stores in New York and Beverly Hills.

[Firestarter]

In this post are both FARA filings from last April, by the Podesta Group and Manafort’s Mercury, and another publication that’s mostly about the Podesta Group’s connection to the ECFMU.

I suspect that Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were indicted by Robert Mueller, because the trail (also) leads to Podesta (thus Clinton and Obama). In this way Donald Trump can insinuate that he’s the victim (and claiming that this was years ago, in 2012, 2013), while he can continue to play the “crooked” Hillary Clinton game…

According to the laws in the USA it’s a criminal offence to violate FARA and not register as a foreign agent. In practice this means that when lobbyists “forget” to put this in their filing, and this comes out, they simply retro-actively register as a foreign lobbyist, and they’re off the hook.
Manafort’s associate, Rick Gates, continued to work for Trump after Manafort's resignation, but in March 2017 (also) had to resign.

Here’s the 12 April 2017 FARA lobbying registration form by Podesta, Kimberley Fritts. The contract was signed between Ina Kirsch and Anthony (Tony) Podesta: https://www.fara.gov/docs/5926-Exhibit-AB-20170412-101.pdf
This form doesn’t have sufficient information. It doesn’t specify any of the activities.
It only contains a general description of the activities, which includes the following (interesting names):
former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi;
former Chancellor of Austria Alfred Gusenbauer;
former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewksi;
former Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko.
The Podesta Group claims that they didn’t register as a foreign agent, because they didn’t understand they were working for the Ukraine…


Here’s the 28 April 2017 FARA lobbying registration form by Mercury, John Vincent Weber: https://www.fara.gov/docs/6170-Amendment-20170428-29.pdf

The most interesting from this filing is the table with a description of the activities (meetings) arranged by Mercury (mostly) in May, June 2013.
The names include Sergiy Klyuyev, while Ina Kirsch has denied the relation between ECFMU and the Klyuyev Foundation...
http://www.lawfulpath.com/forum/download/file.php?id=554

Some of the interesting names that were in meetings arranged by Mercury:
Alfred Gusenbauer (former Chancellor of Austria);
John Schuster (US Export-Import Bank);
Caleb McCarry and Jason Bruder (Senate Foreign relations);
Andrew Palace (Center for Sustainable Shale Development);
The Macellus Shale Chamber of Commerce;
The Brookings Institution;
Representative Tim Murphy;
Representative Marino;
Representative Aderholt;
Representative Gardner;
Representative Ed Royce.

Ed Royce is an honorary chairman of the Nowruz Commission, for more information on the ties of Nowruz to Michael Flynn: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?513623-Michael-Flynn-Inovo-and-Erdogan&p=6513779&viewfull=1#post6513779
Ed Royce was also present at the 23 May conference with the FDD of the largest campaign contributor to Donald Trump, Sheldon Adelson. For more information on Sheldon Adelson: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?515638-Sheldon-Adelson-Donald-Trump-and-Metal-detectors


The European Centre for a Modern Ukraine (ECFMU) was formed in 2012 by 3 senior members of the Party of Regions, a pro-Russia party led by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and advised by Paul Manafort.

The Podesta Group arranged meetings with unnamed "Ukrainian officials".
In one of those meetings, Ukraine's foreign minister Leonid Kozhara met Senator Christopher Murphy, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Europe subcommittee. Kozhara was a founder of the ECFMU and close adviser to President Yanukovych.

The Podesta Group, did not disclose at least 32 contacts with the State Department in a 2012 lobbying report to Congress. At that time, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was scrutinising Ukraine's upcoming election.
In April of this year, the Podesta Group filed new lobbying disclosures to augment lobbying reports from 2012 to 2014.
Both the Podesta Group and Mercury have claimed that they believed the ECFMU was an independent group that was not funded or directed by Ukraine's government.

According to David Marin, Podesta’s spokesman, the Podesta Group’s work for the ECFMU was supervised by Manafort's associate Rick Gates: http://edition.cnn.com/2017/05/09/politics/podesta-manafort-lobbying/index.html

[Firestarter]

I suspect that Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were indicted by Robert Mueller, because the trail (also) leads to Podesta (thus Clinton and Obama). In this way Donald Trump can insinuate that he’s the victim (and claiming that this was years ago, in 2012, 2013), while he can continue to play the “crooked” Hillary Clinton game… Kimberley Fritts, CEO of the Podesta Group after Tony Podesta resigned, told that the firm will cease to exist by the end of the year.
Tony and his brother, John Podesta (who left the firm in 1993), founded the company almost three decades ago: http://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/11/politics/podesta-group-mueller-investigation/index.html

This “news” looks like another obvious ploy to cover-up “Russiagate” to keep us pacified while the corruption and genocide continue…

[Firestarter]

I haven’t found out yet who funnelled money through the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine (ECFMU)...
It appears that Dmytro “Dmitry” Firtash had lots of money to spend. Firtash effectively controlled the Party of Regions of Viktor Yanukovych, and has a long standing relationship with Paul Manafort.
Firtash in turn was an associate of Oleg Deripaska.

Paul Manafort has previously acted as a consultant to Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole, before becoming (and resigning as) the campaign chairman for Donald Trump.
Manafort has also represented amongst others Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos and Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, to improve their public reputations.
In the summer of 2005, Manafort and his team – including Rick Gates - was recruited to work for the Party of Regions in Ukraine by the oligarch Rinat Akhmetov.

In 2007, Manafort set up a private equity firm called Pericles Emerging Partners LP, based offshore in the Cayman Islands. Pericles had 3 American partners – Manafort, Rick Gates and Rick Davis. Davis was cofounder of Davis Manafort, Manafort’s lobbying company in Delaware.
Pericles was set up to make investments in the Ukrainian cities of Kiev, Odessa and Mariupol. It would acquire small companies, consolidate them into larger enterprises, and then sell them for a profit. One of the investors in Pericles was the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, an aluminium baron and close friend of Putin, who invested almost $19 million.
Pericles ever only made a single investment, in a Ukrainian telecoms company called Black Sea Cable. The money was funnelled through offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands. The cash went through other opaque shell firms, including Cascado AG, set up by the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.
After the global financial crisis hit in 2008, Deripaska wanted his cash back. In 2011, the Americans emailed to say that it was difficult to sell his stake because of “market conditions”. Deripaska claimed that he didn’t get his money back, and filed a 2014 petition against Manafort’s firm. Maybe this was just another charade, because later Manafort introduced Deripaska to Senator John McCain, over problems travelling to the US, after the US in 2006 had revoked Deripaska’s visa.

In February 2014, riot police shot dead 100 people in downtown Kiev. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych had to flee, and escaped to Russia.
Putin exploited this crisis to seize Crimea and launch a covert military invasion of eastern Ukraine – which resulted in 10,000 dead.

Also in 2014, Firtash was arrested on a US warrant in Vienna, accused of bribing Indian officials over a titanium deal. But an Austrian judge denied a US extradition request (later the Austrian court granted the request, but Firtash still fights extradition): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/16/donald-trump-campaign-paul-manafort-ukraine-yanukovich
(archived here: http://archive.is/qP78c)


According to a writ filed in 2011 by former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the Group DF (of Dmytro Firtash) never had any intention to purchase the Drake property for $850 million, but instead used the real estate project as a vehicle to “invest” $25 million in New York bank accounts, for the purpose of money laundering, racketeering and bribes.
Firtash even acquired his own bank, Nadra Bank: http://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/manafort-complaint-2.pdf
1. This case concerns the arbitrary prosecutions, arrests, and detentions of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and other political opposition members in violation of international law, which have been carried out by or with the assistance of Defendants, representing a collection of private and public figures that stand to benefit politically and/or financially by eliminating Ukraine’s political opposition.
(…)
7. From 2004 to early 2009, Defendant RosUkrEnergo AG (“RUE”) received substantial profits for serving as a middleman in natural gas dealings between Naftogaz, a Ukrainian state-owned gas company, and Gazprom, a Russian company. Ukrainian billionaire Defendant Dmytro Firtash a/k/a Dmitry Firtash (“Firtash”), who largely controls RUE, was able to secure profits from the Russia-Ukraine gas deals due to his close relationship with, and payment of illegal kickbacks to, Ukrainian government officials, including then Naftogaz Chairman Yuriy Boyko and Deputy Chairman Ihor Voronin, both of whom were nominated to RUE’s Coordination Committee after securing RUE’s initial brokerage contract.
(…)
35. (…) Manafort played a key role in the defendants’ conspiracy and racketeering enterprise by assisting Firtash to become a major “investor” and silent partner in defendants CMZ Ventures (sometimes referred to as “ZMC Investors”), Group DF and their affiliated companies, through which Firtash and his associates were able to money launder a large portion of the funds that Firtash, Group DF and RUE were skimming from numerous Gazpron/Naftogaz natural gas transactions, as well as the windfall payments and profits worth approximately $3.5 billion that they received as a result of the corrupt transactions and breaches of fiduciary duties that resulted in the Stockholm Arbitration award, as described below in greater detail. These monies were then laundered through various New York based bank accounts under the guise of otherwise legitimate real estate and other investment activities in New York and elsewhere in the United States, and the contracts, agreements, meetings, discussions and electronic communications (e.g., computer, email and fax transmissions) relating to said money laundering and investment activities were primarily conducted through defendants’ offices located at 1501 Broadway, 25th floor.
(…)
83. RUE is owned by Russian state-owned energy company, Gazprom (owning a 50% share of RUE), Firtash (owning a 45% share of RUE through holding company Centragas), and Ukrainian businessman and Firtash associate Ivan Fursin (owning a 5% share of RUE also through holding company Centragas, which is almost wholly owned by Firtash through Group DF).
(…)
100. Firtash, Mogilevich, and their affiliated companies used three U.S. companies in particular—CMZ Ventures LLC, Kallista Investments LLC, and the Dynamic Fund (which were sometimes referred to collectively as “The Dynamic Group)—to launder money in the United States and abroad under the guise of investing in legitimate business ventures.
(…)
136. As of June 2011, Nadra Bank had approximately $500 million on deposit in New York bank accounts at JP Morgan Chase (Acct No. 762804508), BNY Mellon (formerly Bank of New York) (Acct. No. 8900341629); and Standard Chartered Bank (Acct No. 3582021684001).


According to Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, handwritten ledgers found in the Ukraine show $12.7 million in undisclosed payments to Manafort from the Party of Regions from 2007 to 2012.
Investigators assert that the cash was part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.
The network comprised shell companies whose ultimate owners were shielded by the secrecy laws of the offshore jurisdictions where they were registered, including the British Virgin Islands, Belize and the Seychelles.
Oleg Deripaska claimed he had also paid about $7.3 million in management fees to the Pericles fund in over two years: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/politics/paul-manafort-ukraine-donald-trump.html?_r=0


Peter Mandelson is a member of the Bilderberg Group and appointed “life peer” by Queen Elizabeth. Mandelson is director of the Russian defense firm Sistema, which supplies Putin with early warning missile systems.

Oleg Deripaska is CEO of RUSAL and friends with Roman Abramovich.
Abramovich is Putin’s close confidant, and a joint shareholder along with the Russian government in Gazprom, Aeroflot, and RUSAL.

Sir Evelyn de Rothschild has been knighted by Queen Elizabeth and is also her financial adviser. Evelyn de Rothschild lives in the same New York building as Henry Kissinger and Wilbur Ross Jr. Wilbur Ross is the current US Secretary of Commerce, and has previously worked for the Rothschild family.
Nat Rothschild, son of Baron Jacob Rothschild, is business partners and close personal friends with Peter Mandelson, Roman Abramovich and also Oleg Deripaska: http://www.dzig.de/sites/default/files/Putin-Rothschild-Rockefeller.htm

[Firestarter]

Another of Trump’s foreign policy advisers, Carter Page, is an investment banker with close links to Gazprom, the Kremlin-controlled gas company, and an outspoken supporter of Putin.
Frank Mermoud, a former state department official with business ties in the Ukraine by Cub Energy, also has longstanding ties to Paul Manafort.
Manafort’s relationship with Dmytro Firtash was first exposed in a 2011 racketeering lawsuit that was later dismissed. Paul Manafort has been closely tied to Ukraine over the past decade, making millions from consulting work. He worked as an adviser for Rinat Akhmetov, Firtash and Oleg Deripaska: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/30/donald-trump-paul-manafort-ukraine-russia-putin-ties


Months after an Austrian court ruled that Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash can be extradited to the USA, wanted in Chicago since 2013, it’s still not certain if he'll ever show.
Austrian Justice Minister Wolfgang Brandstetter said in February that he would not extradite Firtash until the Austrian courts have ruled on the Spanish claim on Firtash.

Paul Manafort has arranged an all-star legal team to keep Firtash out of the USA, including former US Attorney Dan Webb, Clinton White House counsel Lanny Davis and former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.
Webb wrote:
The Indictment fails to allege a single illicit act by Firtash that either occurred in the United States or affected the United States.
Never mind that Firtash was involved in a scheme to sell titanium to Chicago-based Boeing: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chicagoinc/ct-dimitri-firtash-dan-webb-0511-chicago-inc-20170509-story.html
(archived here: http://archive.is/SpgCj)

For more on Michael Chertoff’s expected profits from the 1 October Las Vegas “mass shooting”: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?515638-Sheldon-Adelson-Donald-Trump-and-Metal-detectors


Firtash once confided to the US ambassador in the Ukraine that he had made use of the organised crime boss Semion Mogilevich to protect his business from attacks by competitors, and had to ask Mogilevich’s permission to make business deals.
See the 10 December 2008 Wikileaks cable:
He acknowledged ties to Russian organized crime figure Seymon Mogilevich, stating he needed Mogilevich's approval to get into business in the first place. He was adamant that he had not committed a single crime when building his business empire, and argued that outsiders still failed to understand the period of lawlessness that reigned in Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
(…)
In the meeting, which lasted two and a half hours, Firtash told the Ambassador that he was not a public person, but had recently been pulled deeper into Ukrainian politics. He admitted that he has "loyally served" as an unofficial advisor to President Yushchenko during tense gas negotiations with Russia and political crises dating back to the Orange Revolution in 2004. He reported that he met with the Yushchenko at his dacha (cottage residence) three times in the last week at the President's request. He described himself as a close friend and confidante of the President -- someone the President can trust totally.
(…)
Firtash also recounted that Makarov invited him to dinner in Kyiv in January 2002, shortly after Firtash had signed the gas deals with Central Asia. Firtash added he went to that dinner not knowing if he would be beaten up or even killed for having taken Makarov's business from him. According to Firtash, Makarov was there with his head of security, Semyon Mogilevich, Sergei Mikhas, from the Solnstevo Brotherhood, and a Mr. Overin when Makarov told Firtash he would regain his gas business as easily as Firtash had taken it away. https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08KYIV2414_a.html

[Firestarter]

Here’s some more on Dmytro Firtash...

On 21 February 2017, Austrian police detained Dmytro Firtash after an EU arrest warrant issued by Spain. In Spain, Firtash was accused of money laundering $10 million through companies on Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands.
Firtash also has a residence in London’s Knightsbridge: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/dmitry-firtash-spain-seeks-extradition-for-ukrainian-oligarch-linked-to-senior-tories-for-alleged-a7439621.html


The US criminal investigation against Firtash is based on the FBI’s charge of bribing Indian public officials to obtain licences for the mining of ilmenite, to manufacture titanium for Boeing. The investigators claim that he paid $18.5 million in kickbacks to Indian officials.
Lanny Davis represents Firtash for a fee of $60,000 dollars per month.
Michael Chertoff was recruited by Paul Manafort as Firtash’s defence lawyer.

Austria is the headquarters of Firtash’s Centragas Holding GmbH, a company that holds 50% of RosUkrEnergo (RUE) shares.
Firtash main lawyer in Austria is Dieter Böhmdorfer, who was Austrian Justice Minister from 2000 to 2004 for the FPÖ party.
Firtash’s media advisor Daniel Kapp is almost as illustrious. Kapp’s boss, former Austrian vice-chancellor Josef Pröll of the ÖVP party, is closely linked to the same Raiffeisen group that acted as a front for Firtash when he was still hiding his involvement with RUE.

Dmytro Firtash has his own public relation group in the Agency for the Modernization of Ukraine, which has boasted names of famous politicians, including EU Commissioners Günter Verheugen, Stefan Füle and Peter Mandelson (member of Bilderberg and life peer), Germany’s former finance minister Peer Steinbrück, and former French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner.
Three celebrity names were announced as the Agency’s founding fathers: the French writer Bernard-Henri Lévy; the German MP and chair of the Bundestag’s Ukrainian-German group Karl-Georg Wellmann; and Richard Risby (member of the British House of Lords).

Ukrainian Modernization Agency has a “sister” organisation in the UK - the British Ukrainian Society (BUS). BUS was founded in February 2007 with 2 directors: Robert Shetler-Jones and Richard Spring. Spring is also known as Lord Risby and is a life peer.
Robert Shetler-Jones is very close to Firtash. From its inception until August 2012, he was CEO of Firtash’s parent company Group DF: http://www.eurozine.com/the-firtash-octopus/
(archived here: http://archive.is/E6XMt)

[Firestarter]

It looks to me like the (war against) Ukraine (is that Russiagate?) is mainly over (shale) gas…

According to AP, Paul Manafort didn’t get a mere $10 million, from close associate of Nat Rothschild and Vladimir Putin - Oleg Deripaska. This was his annual pay check beginning in 2006 through to at least 2009. It’s not clear how many millions Manafort received in total.

In June 2005, Paul Manafort wrote a memo about a plan that would improve the image of President Vladimir Putin in the US, Europe and former Soviet republics. Manafort proposed that Deripaska and Putin would lobby Western governments, to achieve the result that oligarchs could keep their formerly state-owned assets in Ukraine.
Manafort proposed building “long term relationships” with Western journalists. According to legal filings by Deripaska’s representatives, he gave Manafort nearly $19 million to invest in Ukrainian TV company Black Sea Cable.

Manafort promised that the plan:
will be offering a great service that can re-focus, both internally and externally, the policies of the Putin government.
(…)
We are now of the belief that this model can greatly benefit the Putin Government if employed at the correct levels with the appropriate commitment to success. https://apnews.com/122ae0b5848345faa88108a03de40c5a/Manafort%27s-plan-to-%27greatly-benefit-the-Putin-Government%27


Gazprom has sold more than 20 billion cubic metres of gas below market prices to Dmitry Firtash in 4 years - about 4 times more than the Russian government has publicly acknowledged. Because of the low price, companies controlled by Firtash made more than $3 billion. Gazprom missed out on about $2 billion in revenue it could have made by selling that gas at “normal” prices.

In 2012, Moscow sold the gas to Firtash for $230 per 1,000 cubic metres; and in 2013, for $267 per unit on average. This is at least $100 per unit below the market price in Western Europe.
The gas was sold to Firtash for at least one-third less than what Ukraine’s Naftogaz had to pay.
Firtash’s Ostchem companies in Cyprus and Switzerland resold the gas to his chemical plants in Ukraine for $430 per unit. The 2 offshore Ostchem companies made an estimated profit of $3.7 billion in 2 years.

Kremlin spokesman Peskov said Putin has met Firtash but that they are not close. He said Russia supplied gas at “lower prices” to Ukraine because Ukrainian President Yanukovich had asked for it and Russia wanted to help Ukraine’s petrochemical industry.
According to sources in the energy industry, every major deal that Gazprom signs, is approved by Putin.
The deals were financed by the Russian Gazprombank, which is not directly controlled by Gazprom (that holds only a minority share). It is overseen by people linked to Putin, including Yuri Kovalchuk, a banker, who until March 2014 controlled an investment firm that manages a majority stake in Gazprombank.

Starting in 2002, Eural Trans Gas (registered in Hungary) was transporting gas from Turkmenistan through Russia to Ukraine. Its ownership was unclear, but Firtash represented it.
In July 2004, RosUkrEnergo became the new intermediary for gas deals between Russia and Ukraine. Most of RUE was owned by Firtash and Gazprom.
Firtash imported the Russian gas through a Cypriot company of which he is sole director, and a Swiss one set up by Group DF (Group Dmytro Firtash).

In June 2010, Firtash started Ostchem Investments in Cyprus. A month later, Gazprombank lent the company $815 million. By March 2011, Gazprombank had lent up to $11.15 billion to Firtash companies.
A Gazprombank manager said that the Russian bank had led a consortium of lenders which in 2011 lend about $7 billion to Firtash (I don’t know who the other lenders were…).

In September 2010, Ostchem Investments bought a 90% stake in the Stirol fertiliser plant in Ukraine (gas is needed to produce fertilizer). In 2011, Firtash acquired 2 more fertiliser plants in Ukraine - Severodonetsk Azot and Rivne Azot.
Firtash also bought the Nika Tera sea port, through which amongst others fertiliser is shipped. He also acquired the Nadra Bank and invested in the titanium industry: http://www.reuters.com/article/russia-capitalism-gas-special-report-pix-idUSL3N0TF4QD20141126
(archived here: http://web.archive.org/article/russia-capitalism-gas-special-report-pix/special-report-putins-allies-channelled-billions-to-ukraine-oligarch-idUSL3N0TF4QD20141126)


Apparently Gazprom and Gazprombank do everything they can to help Firtash…

On the other hand, in May 2014 (after Yanukovich had fled to Russia) Gazprom told Ukraine's Naftogaz (a competitor to Firtash) that the company has to pay in advance for the gas or it will stop delivering by 2 June 2014, because:
The debt of Naftogaz amounts to $3.505 billion, so there is a good reason to require prepayment from the Ukrainian company.

This only sounds unreasonable to me, because Firtash is treated so sweet by the same Gazprom.
Naftogaz has to pay $1.659 billion (for 3.42 billion cubic meters of gas) in advance, based on a price of $485 per 1000 cubic meters of gas: https://sputniknews.com/voiceofrussia/news/2014_05_13/Gazprom-needs-Ukraines-Naftogaz-to-pay-1-66-bln-in-advance-as-part-of-new-billing-method-1425/


In July 2014, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, located in The Hague, Netherlands, ruled that the Russian government must reimburse $50 billion to former shareholders of Russian oil company Yukos. The tribunal said that the government, starting in 2003, had violated “due process” in dismantling and seizing the assets of Yukos and transferring them to Gazprom and state-run oil company Rosneft.

In 2014, Gazprombank hired former US senators Trent Lott and John Breaux, to lobby against the US sanctions imposed on it by the Obama administration over the Ukraine crisis: https://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/09/02/15450/russian-bank-hires-two-former-us-senators

[Swordsmyth]

Some have suggested that the FBI losing five months of text messages between anti-Trump investigators is a coverup of an "insurance policy" to smear Donald Trump with claims of Russian collusion in the event of a win. Others have suggested it's simply bureaucratic incompetence. Paul Manafort's attorneys, on the other hand, are likely chomping at the bit see if they can argue for a dismissal of the federal charges against their client due to Robert Mueller's increasingly tainted probe.
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/robert-mueller-paul-manafort-search-warrant-special-counsel-trump-russia-investigation_0.jpg

Look for Paul Manafort to jump all over this. He’s already fighting his indictment (https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-manaforts-lawsuit-against-mueller-doj/), claiming that Mueller is overstepping his authority and shouldn’t be running the investigation. Throw in this evidence that the investigation may have been tainted before Mueller even took over, and that the DOJ could be covering up damaging information, and a motion to dismiss alleging prosecutorial misconduct is a near certainty.
FBI Agent Strzok was reportedly heading up the Manafort investigation before he was taken off the Mueller probe. Manafort’s attorney might try to say that the missing text messages could contain exculpatory evidence (or evidence favorable to the defendant) and therefore the court should get to the bottom of what the two said. However, two former federal prosecutors who spoke to Law&Crime both contend it would be difficult to get the entire indictment dismissed based on the text messages alone. -LawandCrime.com (https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/lost-fbi-texts-could-form-basis-for-motion-to-dismiss-in-trump-team-fight-against-russia-probe/)
“It depends on what FBI’s retention policy is for text messages. It does certainly raise questions as to how these five months came up missing,” explained former federal prosecutor Bill Thomas, adding “However, the court is not going to just dismiss the case. If it comes to it, the judge may hold a hearing to get to that information through calling witnesses. Dismissal is the nuclear option, it would have to be something very very egregious for a court to dismiss the case.”

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-22/will-missing-texts-save-manafort-muellers-probe

[goldenequity]

Some have suggested that the FBI losing five months of text messages between anti-Trump investigators is a coverup of an "insurance policy" to smear Donald Trump with claims of Russian collusion in the event of a win. Others have suggested it's simply bureaucratic incompetence. Paul Manafort's attorneys, on the other hand, are likely chomping at the bit see if they can argue for a dismissal of the federal charges against their client due to Robert Mueller's increasingly tainted probe.
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/robert-mueller-paul-manafort-search-warrant-special-counsel-trump-russia-investigation_0.jpg

Look for Paul Manafort to jump all over this. He’s already fighting his indictment (https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-manaforts-lawsuit-against-mueller-doj/), claiming that Mueller is overstepping his authority and shouldn’t be running the investigation. Throw in this evidence that the investigation may have been tainted before Mueller even took over, and that the DOJ could be covering up damaging information, and a motion to dismiss alleging prosecutorial misconduct is a near certainty.
FBI Agent Strzok was reportedly heading up the Manafort investigation before he was taken off the Mueller probe. Manafort’s attorney might try to say that the missing text messages could contain exculpatory evidence (or evidence favorable to the defendant) and therefore the court should get to the bottom of what the two said. However, two former federal prosecutors who spoke to Law&Crime both contend it would be difficult to get the entire indictment dismissed based on the text messages alone. -LawandCrime.com (https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/lost-fbi-texts-could-form-basis-for-motion-to-dismiss-in-trump-team-fight-against-russia-probe/)
“It depends on what FBI’s retention policy is for text messages. It does certainly raise questions as to how these five months came up missing,” explained former federal prosecutor Bill Thomas, adding “However, the court is not going to just dismiss the case. If it comes to it, the judge may hold a hearing to get to that information through calling witnesses. Dismissal is the nuclear option, it would have to be something very very egregious for a court to dismiss the case.”

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-22/will-missing-texts-save-manafort-muellers-probe

I disagree.. Manafort WILL be able to get the charges dismissed (but not because of the 'missing 5 months of text mssgs')...
It will/must be overturned because the 'case' constructed by the prosecution is built WITH 'fruit' from 'the poisonous tree' aka the illicit wire taps and attempted entrapment of a HOST of individuals w/ Manafort being just ONE of them.
Read through this.

The FISA Abuse Memo Unveiled; What Exactly Is In the Memo, According to Intel Insiders (https://truepundit.com/fisa-abuse-memo-unveiled-exactly-memo-according-intel-insiders/)

If all or most of these points are 'true' (and I believe they are... with more coming) then Manafort's 'case' is irretrievably tainted and 'poisoned'.

[Firestarter]

The FISA Abuse Memo Unveiled; What Exactly Is In the Memo, According to Intel Insiders (https://truepundit.com/fisa-abuse-memo-unveiled-exactly-memo-according-intel-insiders/)

If all or most of these points are 'true' (and I believe they are... with more coming) then Manafort's 'case' is irretrievably tainted and 'poisoned'.
Everybody is systematically spied upon - Big Brother is watching you. As nobody seems to care (even walking around with a cell phone), it's very unlikely that this will be used for an argument.
Special cover-up artist Robert Mueller will simply compile one or several very thick reports that hide the most damaging info, and will conclude something like Manafort's behaviour gave the impression of wrongful conduct, but he didn't violate any laws...


I’ve found a story that involves Oleg Deripaska, a high Russian government offiicial and a prostitute locked up in a Thai prison.
It could be a cover-up story, but it's a good one (I think better than Stormy Daniels).

In early August 2016, during the US presidential campaign, Oleg Deripaska and the deputy Russian prime minister, Sergei Prikhodko, took a pleasure yacht trip off the coast of Norway.
To increase their enjoyment, they invited several prostitutes, including Anastasia Vashukevich of Belarus (a.k.a. Nastya Rybka).

Vashukevich posted a video on her Instagram account showing Deripaska and Prikhodko.
It includes a snippet where Deripaska says the following (according to the Russian translator):
We’ve got bad relations with America, because the friend of Sergey Eduardovich [Prikhodko], Nuland’s her name, is responsible for them. When she was your age, she’s spent a month on a Russian whaling boat. She hates our country after this. Why is that?
This includes a reference to President Obama’s State Department official overseeing Russian relations - Victoria Nuland.

The video finally got the attention it didn’t deserve, when Russian lawyer, and wannabee politician, Alexei Navalny, posted the video with his Russian commentary with English subtitles on Youtube.
Navalny tried to challenge Putin for president in 2018, but was blocked by electoral authorities.

Vashukevich and her group of “sex workers” in the meantime have been jailed in Thailand, for working without a work permit. Vashukevich does just about anything to get publicity and has posted videos and photos on Instagram detailing being locked up.
An earlier stunt in which Vashukevich was involved was a nude demonstration for Harvey Weinstein in front of the US Embassy in Moscow.
Vashukevich now claims that she has more than 16 hours of audio recordings from her trip with Deripaska and Prikhodko, including conversations with 3 people who were probably Americans, and:
They were discussing elections. Deripaska had a plan about elections.

Vashukevich claims to have evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election. I don’t believe this: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/6/17083720/trump-russia-news-nastya-rybka

Vashukevich says she fears for her life, if she will be returned to Russia.
Russia reportedly shut down most of Navalny’s online presence and blocked his Youtube video on Vashukevich, Deripaska and Prikhodko.
Information was also deleted from Vashukevich’s Instagram account.

For more information on the affairs of Anastasia Vashukevich, her friend Aleksandr Kirillov, (a.k.a. Alexander Lesley) and 5 other Russian “sex workers” in custody in Thailand: http://www.hotties-pattaya.com/2018/02/russians-in-thai-jail-offer-secrets-on.html


The fact that Alexei Navalny’s video has not been deleted by Youtube makes it more probable that this isn’t the “bombshell” that some “alternative” media wants us to believe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQZr2NgKPiU

[timosman]

1023936149830742016

Mueller Hoping Manafort Will Choose to Testify Against Trump Rather Than 'Die in Prison' - http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/07/30/paul-manafort-trial-robert-mueller-hoping-he-will-choose-testify-against-trump-rather-die

[Firestarter]

Mueller Hoping Manafort Will Choose to Testify Against Trump Rather Than 'Die in Prison' - http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/07/30/paul-manafort-trial-robert-mueller-hoping-he-will-choose-testify-against-trump-rather-die
Please not Alan Dershowitz again?!?

Alan Dershowitz was introduced to Jeffrey Epstein by his, Trump’s, Kissinger’s and Clinton’s friend Lynn Forester (these days “lady” De Rothschild).
Jeffrey Epstein is of course the well-connected paedophile and (also) a long-time friend of Trump: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?499034-Boycott-the-elections&p=6356329&viewfull=1#post6356329

[devil21]

Because, although she no longer holds office, the Clintons are still major power players. The Bushes no longer in office either and I'd like to see them face justice.



He's not my guy and if I'm recalling phill's posts correctly, he's not his either.

Here's a thread where he specifically went after Trump supporters.
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?491257-Thumphumpers-get-excoriated-by-actual-Liberty-adherents-Operation-Rep-burn-goes-into-effect&highlight=trump



Why not go after both? :confused:

From what I've read so far, I'm starting to think the list of who hasn't colluded with the Russians or Ukrainians is shorter.

Isn't history funny? Seems phil is now a 'Trumphumper' only a few months later.

[Swordsmyth]

Q
!CbboFOtcZs
ID: 0fdb2c
No.2373384
(https://8ch.net/qresearch/res/2373315.html#2373384)
Jul 31 2018 13:28:47 (EST)

(https://qanon.pub/?#t1533061727) FINALLY.
Public DOMAIN.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaknV3FMGow
[RR] exonerated Manafort FOR THE SAME CHARGES (8) years ago.
>https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/03/mueller-paul-manafort-probe-rosenstein-approves-497701
Can you locate the orig court docs?
[RR][RR][RR]
[RR][RR]
[RR]

Q

[Firestarter]

Yesterday, 31 July, the “first” trial of special cover-up artist Robert Mueller has started.

Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, earned more than $60 million from 2006 to 2015 as a political consultant for former President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions and its Opposition Bloc successor in the Ukraine.
Mueller has accused Manafort (in the first trial) of:
1) Laundering $30 million through a web of offshore accounts into the US to evade taxes, especially through foreign accounts located in Cyprus;
2) Defraud several US banks to get more than $20 million in loans.

It is expected that the government’s star witness will be Rick Gates, who worked with Manafort for Ukraine and on the Trump campaign (even after Manafort resigned as campaign manager). Gates was charged alongside Manafort but he made a deal with Mueller.
The only other “big name” on the witness list is Tad Devine, who’s probably best known for advising on Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. Before that Devine had worked with Manafort for the Ukraine.

Mueller had indicted Manafort in September 2017 for his lobbying for the Ukraine (this will be the “second” trial). The charges include not registering as a foreign agent in his Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) statements.

The first (Virginia) trial is expected to last about 3 weeks and will be followed by the second (of another 3 weeks).
Manafort has pleaded not guilty.

None of the charges brought against Manafort have anything to do with Russia interfering in the US presidential election (all of the charges date from before he worked on Trump’s campaign): https://www.vox.com/2018/7/31/17590846/paul-manafort-trial-mueller-trump-russia

Mueller has cut the charges up in 2 trials to confuse the public. It would be “easier” to judge Manafort if all the charges would be evaluated in one trial…


Can you locate the orig court docs? Of course "Q" is great at cryptic writings, but not in finding "evidence" (Miles Mathis is even worse)...

Here’s the 30 pages indictment of February (the first trial, fraud and tax evasion): https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.383106/gov.uscourts.vaed.383106.14.0_4.pdf

Here’s the 31 pages indictment of October 2017 (the second trial, including not registering as a foreign agent): https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.190597/gov.uscourts.dcd.190597.13.0.pdf

I don’t think I exaggerate that I found more interesting information in a single day searching the internet. Some of the interesting information Robert Mueller “forgot”:
- The Russian Alfa Bank that was communicating with the Trump Organization and the Spectrum Health of DeVos family during the election: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?521494-Giuliani-to-Join-Trump%92s-Legal-Team&p=6620071&viewfull=1#post6620071

- The British SCL Group and its Cambridge Analytica subsidiary and its connections to major Trump funder, Robert Mercer: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?520558-Trump-Election-Consultant-Firm-Cambridge-Analytica-Execs-Caught-Discussing-Extortion-Fake-News&p=6634728&viewfull=1#post6634728

- Wilbur Ross, who controlled the Bank of Cyprus, which was used to funnel money to Manafort.
- Oleg Deripaska, for a time Manafort’s most important client, who’s close to Vladimir Putin and even closer to Ivanka’s one-time boyfriend Nat Rothschild.
- That from 2012 to 2014 Mercury (of Manafort and Gates) and the Podesta Group were jointly working for the Ukraine.

[AuH20]

Ron Paul is right. At a certain point, the truth is irrelevant in the sheep's eyes.

1027652094784929792

[timosman]

Ron Paul is right. At a certain point, the truth is irrelevant in the sheep's eyes.

The good thing is we are a republic. :cool:

[Firestarter]

Bronfman’s and Oliver North’s Saudi partner in crime, Adnan Khashoggi, has been involved in a bunch of scandals. There are stories about: Iran-Contra, money laundering for Ferdinand Marcos and 9/11.

Paul Manafort has also been in business with Marcos:
Manafort has also represented amongst others Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos and Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, to improve their public reputations.

There is an even closer connection between Manafort and Khashoggi through his representative in Spain - Abdul Rahman Al Assir from Lebanon. Al Assir was once brother-in-law of Adnan Khashoggi. He arranged big weapons sales to African armies.
The London-based Sourakia once wrote:
The miracle of Al Assir is that he will have lunch with Don Juan Carlos [king of Spain], dinner with Hassan II [king of Morocco], and breakfast the next day with Felipe González [prime minister of Spain].
In the late 1980s, Manafort became friends with Al Assir. In 1989, Manafort took Al Assir as his guest to George H.W. Bush’s inauguration.
In the ’90s, Manafort and Al Assir were putting together big deals. Including an arms sale from France to Pakistan, that involved bribes and kickbacks to high-level officials in both countries. Manafort and Al Assir were not only business partners but even “very brotherly”. Manafort became the godfather of Al Assir’s child. They went on a holiday together near Cannes.

In 2003, Manafort’s partner Rick Davis was invited to a meeting in Manhattan with Nathaniel “Nat” Philip Victor James Rothschild, heir apparent to the Rothschild trillions: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/paul-manafort-american-hustler/550925/
(archived here: http://archive.is/xZp9Z)

[goldenequity]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvMvXmrOnnI

[Firestarter]

Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been found guilty on 8 fraud charges: 5 counts of tax fraud, 2 of bank fraud and 1 of failure to report a foreign bank account. He could be sentenced to decades in prison. The jury could not reach a consensus on 10 of the total of 18 charges.
Former Manafort protégé Rick Gates testified that Manafort asked him to falsify banking and tax records and that he knowingly submitted those records.
Manafort could yet avoid prison, if Judge Ellis determined that the evidence against Manafort is insufficient, despite the jury verdict. Manafort could also be pardoned by President Trump.

The Virginia trial had nothing to do with the Trump campaign or Manafort’s contacts with Russia.
In September in Washington DC Manafort will go to trial on charges of conspiracy to launder tens of millions of dollars, failing to register as a foreign agent and lying.
Manafort’s conviction brought the tally of former Trump advisers who have pleaded or found guilty of crimes in the Mueller cover-up to 4. A California man and a London-based lawyer have also pleaded guilty.

Trump responded:
This has nothing to do with Russian collusion. These are witch hunts and it’s a disgrace ... It had nothing to do with Russian collusion, we continue the witch hunt. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/21/paul-manafort-convicted-of-tax-in-virginia-federal-court


I think that the Guardian “forgot” Michael Flynn (I think he's not from California...) and this also doesn’t include Michael Cohen...


On Tuesday, former long-time Trump attorney Michael Cohen suddenly pleaded guilty to 8 counts — Cohen pleaded guilty to 5 counts of tax evasion; 1 count of making false statements to a financial institution; 1 of wilfully causing an unlawful corporation contribution; and 1 count of making an excessive campaign contribution at the request of a candidate.
The “excessive campaign contribution” involves paying $280,000 to silence 2 women, Stephanie Clifford (Stormy Daniels) and Playboy bunny Karen McDougal, at the request of Donald Trump.

Cohen was part of Mr Trump's inner circle for more than a decade; he was his personal lawyer at the Trump Organisation and continued to advise President Donald after the election.
Cohen's sentencing is scheduled for 12 December; he is expected to be sentenced to between 46 and 63 months in prison.
Federal prosecutors claim that Cohen also concealed more than $4 million from the IRS (that he can keep?): https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/21/trumps-former-lawyer-michael-cohen-plea-deal-fraud-charges/

[Firestarter]

A couple of days ago, another associate of Paul Manafort, Sam Patten, has pleaded guilty to failing to register as a foreign agent for lobbying on behalf of a Ukrainian political party. It’s not quite clear if “forgetting” to register as a foreign agent is actually considered a “crime”...

Patten worked with Manafort and Gates (when they were working with the Podesta Group?) on Ukrainian campaigns.
Patten also suggested that the Trump Inaugural Committee improperly accepted funds from a Ukrainian oligarch. Patten admitted that he illegally helped the Ukrainian buy a ticket to Trump’s swearing-in through a straw-man donor.
Patten has also worked for Cambridge Analytica (part of the British SCL Group) during the 2014 election cycle (I guess in the Ukraine).

In 2015, Patten formed consulting firm Begemot Ventures International with Konstantin Kilimnik. Kilimnik has worked for Russian military intelligence GRU. Kilimnik also worked as a fixer for Manafort in Ukraine.
Kilimnik has been indicted in absentia alongside Manafort on obstruction of justice charges: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-31/manafort-associate-sam-patten-is-charged-with-fara-violation

In March 2007, when Manafort was forming an alliance with Dmytro Firtash, he founded the private equity fund Pericles Emerging Market Partners in the Cayman Islands. Paul Manafort ran the firm with political consultant Rick Davis and lobbyist Rick Gates.

Konstantin Kilimnik was also involved in Pericles, along with Ukraine political consultant Philip Griffin and Party of Regions flack Alexander Balanutsa: https://www.kyivpost.com/article/content/ukraine-politics/trumps-campaign-manager-haunted-by-past-business-418137.html

[Firestarter]

I guess that by now public has lost interest in “special” cover-up artist Robert Mueller, who in 16 months of “investigating” couldn’t even discover the ties of Wilbur Ross to Russian oligarchs or the connection between Manafort and FBI asset Oleg Deripaska…

So it was announced that, after spending 3 months in jail, as part of a plea deal Paul Manafort pleaded guilty to 2 criminal charges, conspiring to: 1) defraud the US and 2) obstruct justice.
Manafort signed a 17-page plea agreement including that he will assist prosecutors with “any and all” matters, inform them on “his participation in and knowledge of all criminal activities” and testify in other cases.
Manafort also agreed to forfeit homes in Virginia and New York (including an apartment in Trump Tower) and the funds from several bank accounts.

The earlier conviction of Manafort on 8 counts in Virginia and the other case will be dropped by Mueller.
Mueller’s team indicated that Manafort could get a maximum of 10 years in prison.

Trump’s lawyer, former New York Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, wrote on Thursday that the president’s team remained in “open communication” with Manafort as part of an agreement to share information: “There’s no fear that Paul Manafort would cooperate against the president because there’s nothing to cooperate about and we long ago evaluated him as an honorable man”: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?526457-Paul-Manafort-Pleads-Guilty-Agrees-To-Cooperate-With-Prosecutors

Are there any American “suspects” left that didn’t sign a plea deal?
Will they sentence all arrested Russians to prison instead?

[Firestarter]

Serial liar Robert Mueller has found a new way to give his “investigation” the attention it doesn’t deserve by taking the deal with pathological liar Paul Manafort off the table, because he has lied to the FBI “on a variety of subject matters".
Is it surprising that pathological liar Manafort lied? Does Mueller keep these lies unspecified, so he can later come with a new press statement bringing our hopes up that he will finally have something interesting to reveal?

Manafort's (lying) lawyers claim that he provided “truthful information”.
Both sides now agree that there is no reason to delay sentencing (do we get the verdict in the first case, in which Manafort was already found guilty, or do we get the second trial first?): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46353111


I regularly see stories with similar “keywords” as the posts I make (which buries them in the internet “search” results). I don’t think that any of the Trump, Infowars an FOX fans will see how ridiculous this story really is.
Dan Bongino wrote a preposterous book that he was allowed to advertise at the David Horowitz Freedom Center last month and that “they” are all against Donald Trump. He says something like that we should all read the book because he actually has reference and we should read the footnotes (or something like that)...
For more on David Horowitz’s connection to the Gatestone Institiute that’s associated with the SCL Group: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?520558-Trump-Election-Consultant-Firm-Cambridge-Analytica-Execs-Caught-Discussing-Extortion-Fake-News&p=6694624&viewfull=1#post6694624


It's written right here in the Wall Street Journal, on April 17, 2007. Who's the author of this critical Wall Street Journal piece? Glen Simpson and Mary Jacobi, his wife. Glen Simpson, the purveyor of Fusion GPS. The article is called, How Lobbyists Help Ex-Soviets Woo Washington. Folks, I dare you to take a moment and read that piece, put it next to the dossier. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. It's the same story. It was written 11 years ago. Glen Simpson clearly had this information about Russian influence in Washington he wrote 10 years ago. Read the names in the article. Do you know who appears in this article? Paul Manafort, all of these players. So what likely happened after Plan A collapses is, they say listen, let's go to the FISA Court and do this legally, but we need evidence. We don't have evidence. Don't worry, Hillary Clinton's got a guy at Fusion GPS, says he's got a story to tell.
(…)
The names never stop coming up again. Ever. Oleg Deripaska connected to Vladimir Putin who's connected to Adam Waldman, a lobbyist who's emailing and texting Mark Warner, a democrat on the senate committee. Who's Waldman working for too? Christopher Steele, the guy working for Hillary. They're connected to the Russians. The people that show up at the Trump Tower meeting. Veselnitskaya with Don, Jr. and Rinat Akhmetshin. Veselnitskaya works for Fusion GPS on a separate case and Akhmetshin, the other guy, the Russian intel guy that shows up at the Trump Tower meeting, you know who his lawyer is? Edward Lieberman. You know who Lieberman's wife is? Evelyn Lieberman. Bill Clinton's old chief of staff. Read the book folks; it's all laid out for you. So, thanks for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/11/25/dan_bongino_on_spygate_obama_mueller__the_biggest_ spy_scandal_in_american_history.html

If I understand Bongino, he calls the following Wall Street Journal article from April 2017, of the WSJ of Jared Kushner’s and Jacob Rothschild’s good friend Rupert Murdoch, a movie script that they (Robert Mueller) are imitating in “Russiagate”, but changed some names...
The story’s main Russian is Nat Rothschild’s good friend Oleg Deripaska, with a nice supporting role for Dimytro Firtash: http://archive.is/bsiiE

All of the following names - Oleg Deripaska, Adam Waldman, Mark Warner, Mueller – from the transcript of Bongino’s silly talk are in the following post: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?523768-Bad-Boys-of-Brexit-had-ties-to-Trump-and-of-course-Russia&p=6647254&viewfull=1#post6647254

[Firestarter]

After Paul Manafort, 69, was found guilty in August 2018 on 8 counts of tax and bank fraud, he made a deal. Then Robert Mueller announced that the deal was withdrawn because Manafort “lied”.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson has now explained why she agreed that Manafort had breached the plea deal. Jackson said Manafort had lied repeatedly about his interactions with Kilimnik.
Manafort has been in jail since June 2018, when he and Konstantin Kilimnik were charged with witness tampering.

The second planned trial has still not been finished...
As part of the plea deal Manafort admitted crimes. This will be used to sentence him in the second trial next month in Washington.

Mueller’s team demanded that Manafort will be locked up in prison for 235 to 292 months (19 1/2 to 24 1/2 years), for “serious, longstanding, and bold” financial crimes.
Mueller’s prosecutors also demanded that Manafort will be fined more than $50 million.
Manafort had “hidden” more than $16 million in income from US authorities, by which he avoided $6 million in taxes. He also hid tens of millions of dollars in foreign bank accounts and secured a $25 million loan by fraud.

The court filing says Manafort was the ringleader of a financial criminal operation that also involved his accountants, Kilimnik and Rick Gates (Manafort’s long-time deputy that pleaded guilty and continued to work on the Trump campaign): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/15/paul-manafort-sentencing-mueller-trump-russia

[Firestarter]

Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen and his one-time campaign manager Paul Manafort have been sentenced to prison.

In March, Manafort was sentenced to serve 47 months in prison of which he is expected to serve only 38 more months because he has already been incarcerated for some time.
Judge Ellis ordered Manafort to also pay a $50,000 fine and $24 million in restitution, for amongst others hiding $55 million in offshore bank accounts in Cyprus to avoid $6 million in taxes.

Mueller’s prosecutors demanded that Manafort would be fined more than $50 million and locked up in prison for 19 1/2 to 24 1/2 years, for “serious, longstanding, and bold” financial crimes.
Some have complained about the relatively lenient punishment for a big criminal like Manafort, like for example some small criminal getting offered 36-72 months in prison for stealing $100 worth of quarters: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47491688


In the second case, Paul Manafort got another 3 ½ years, which means that his total prison sentence is 7 ½ years.

Manafort has also been prosecuted in a third “state” case, in which he’s charged with mortgage fraud, falsifying business records and conspiracy: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/13/paul-manafort-second-sentencing-hearing-donald-trump


I’m even more surprised that in the latest trickery to divert attention away from President Trump’s many scandals,
His long-time unofficial adviser Roger Stone has been arrested (with a camera crew waiting to film the event).
Even Julian Assange has been sentenced to 10 months in jail in Britian for jumping bail (would that be long if Assange has really been locked up for years in the Ecuador Embassy like it’s claimed?)...

[Firestarter]

There really is no end to the corruption scandals connected to the Ukraine...

Another link between Clinton, Donald Trump, Paul Manafort and John Bolton, brought to us by the Trump supporting media…
John Bolton pocketed $115,000 from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation of the Ukrainian steel oligarch Pinchuk for a pair of speeches in September 2017 and February 2018, shortly before becoming President Donald Trump’s national security adviser.

Bolton sat on a panel and basically expressed that President Donald isn’t any different than his predecessors, stating:
The notion that [Trump’s presidency] is going to represent a dramatic break in foreign policy is just wrong. Calm down, for God’s sake. https://nationalfile.com/john-bolton-took-six-figures-from-ukrainian-oligarch-clinton-foundation-donor/


Victor Pinchuk is the founder of EastOne Group LLC (based in London) and of Interpipe Group (located in the Ukraine). Pinchuk owns 4 TV channels and the tabloid Fakty i Kommentarii. Pinchuk was a Ukrainian MP from 1998 to 2006 and is married to the daughter of former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, Olena Pinchuk.
The Victor Pinchuk Foundation finances and works with amongst others the Clinton Global Initiative, the Kyiv School of Economics, Tony Blair Faith Foundation, the Brookings Institution, the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Aspen Institute.

Between 1994 and 2005, Pinchuk donated $10 to $25 million to the Clinton Foundation.
In 2000, Pinchuk hired former Clinton pollster Douglas Schoen on a $40,000 per month retainer.

In 2015, Pinchuk donated $150,000 to the Donald J. Trump Foundation (the largest outside donation to the Trump Foundation that year) for a 20-minute video appearance by Donald Trump shown at the Yalta European Strategy conference. This was paid on the request of Trump lawyer, Chabad-Lubavitcher Michael Cohen.
In March 2017, former Trump aid Monica Crowley registered as a foreign agent for Pinchuk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Pinchuk


In the early 2000s, Paul Manafort began to work for Ukrainian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, business partner of Pinchuk.

In January 2019, Paul Manafort's lawyers accidentally submitted a document to Robert Mueller’s team that showed that as Donald Trump's campaign chairman, Manafort met with Konstantin Kilimnik, gave him polling data on Trump's Presidential campaign (including non-public data) and discussed a Ukraine-Russia peace plan related to the ongoing Russia invasion of Ukraine with Kilimnik. Manafort asked Kilimnik to pass the data to Ukrainian MP Serhiy Lyovochkin and Akhmetov.
Konstantin Kilimnik is a known GRU agent (the follow up of the KGB).

In the spring of 2016, deputy Trump campaign manager Rick Gates (who continued to work on Trump’s campaign after Manafort was forced to resign) was also involved in providing data to Kilimnik.

Kilimnik is also an associate of none other than Russian oligarch Oleg V. Deripaska (Nat Rothschild’s buddy): http://archive.is/jsOB6


Since 2014, London is the favourite financial centre for Ukrainian multimillionaires (billionaires)…

Rinat Akhmetov has an expensive flat at One Hyde Park in London. Akhmetov controls nearly half of Ukraine’s coal, steel and thermoelectricity sectors, and has influence over up to 40 of the Ukraine’s MPs. In December 2013, he lent his private jet to then Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.
Akhmetov’s main holdings company System Capital Management has offices in Park Lane London and steel producer Metinvest, in which Akhmetov is the majority shareholder, has a plant in Newcastle.

Pinchuk calls none other than former British PM Tony Blair his friend.
Pinchuk also funds Blair's Faith Foundation.

Firtash owns a house near Harrods and calls the UK his second home.
His wife Lada is founder of the couple’s UK Firtash Foundation: https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2014/mar/09/ukraines-oligarchs-who-are-they-which-side-are-on
(http://archive.is/5WB0F)


See from left to right: Pavel Lebedev, Igor Prasolov, Viktor Pinchuk, unknown, Dmitry Firtash, Kiev, 2013.
http://archive.is/BmAxC/5f8fc7dde92746b098c261a008cabff9920c7db6.jpg


Was I wrong to expect that Joe Biden would be selected as the Democrat candidate to get Donald Trump re-elected president?
Latest polls show that Bernie Sanders has taken the lead in several states (over Biden).

Since 2010, Manafort worked with Tad Devine on the election of Victor Yanukovich as President of the Ukraine.
http://archive.is/91B2F/a9f70d62eb5260bef452e24662a415a441faf604.jpg

In 2004, Devine was senior advisor and strategist on Bonesman John Kerry’s campaign to get Bush Jr. re-elected as US president.
Devine had earlier worked on Al Gore’s campaign.

In 2016, Bernie Sanders hired Tad Devine as his campaign chief strategist.
It is not expected that Tad Devine will also work on Bernie’s current presidential campaign: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/bernie-sanders-strategist-tad-devine-paul-manafort-files-mueller
(http://archive.is/LikQc)


Bernie Sanders is another friend of the Zionist Chabad-Lubavitch cult, like Vladimir Putin and president Donald, whose daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner are Chabad-Lubavitchers…

In 1983, as mayor of Burlington, Vt., Bernie Sanders publicly inaugurated the Chabad-Lubavitch Public Menorah at Burlington’s City Hall.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) complained that a menorah in a public space violated federal laws of the separation of church and state.
A memo from City Attorney John McNeil to Mayor Bernie Sanders laid out their reason for keeping the Chabad-Lubavitch Menorah in City Hall Park.

In 1988, Reverend Paul Bortz condemned Sanders for supporting the menorah.
http://web.archive.org/web/20190626022348im_/https://w3.chabad.org/media/images/936/KPbF9368597.jpg

In 1983, Mayor Sanders also designated Chabad rebbe Schneerson’s birthday as a Day of Education in Burlington Vermont.
In 1985, Sanders celebrated his re-election by going to Chabad’s Purim party: https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3224239/jewish/Some-More-Info-on-Bernie-Sanders-and-Judaism-blog.htm
(http://archive.is/rjZUk)

[Firestarter]

Firtash, Bayrock, Zamel, Nader

In 2003-2004, Viktor Pinchuk brought US luminaries to Ukraine to improve Kuchma’s image, like Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and President George Bush Sr. Pinchuk also hired Black, Kelly, Scruggs & Healey (BKSH) Associates and the Washington World Group for public relations.

In 2010, when Zev Furst and Firtash met US Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor, Firtash told that he was only permitted to run his highly profitable gas business, because Russian mafia boss Semyon Mogilevich allowed him to.

After the 2004 Orange Revolution, Rinat Akhmetov hired Davis-Manafort International from 2005 to 2014.
Davis-Manafort International “forgot” to register their work for Akhmetov in FARA.

Vin Weber (partner at Mercury, Clark & Weinstock) registered as a lobbyist for the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine (ECFMU) that was funded by President Yanukovych. Vin Weber was also chairman for CIA front the Endowment for Democracy (NED).
And in the 2012 election campaign, Vin Weber was Mitt Romney’s leading foreign-policy adviser: https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-administration/330243-beyond-manafort-both-parties-deal-with-pro-russia
(http://archive.is/Vp7qV)


Firtash’s legal team tried to fight extradition to the USA, with the testimony of Viktor Shokin, the former Ukrainian prosecutor general. Shokin complained that he was fired in 2015 for political reasons, because he was investigating Burisma, where Joe Biden’s son Hunter was a board member.
Shokin also wrote that (then Vice President) Joe Biden had warned the Ukrainian government to keep Firtash out of Ukraine, to stop him from influencing the country’s politics.

In February 2017, an Austrian court had Dmitry Firtash extradited to the USA.
Firtash was at first represented by the same lawyer that had been hired to defend Trump’s long-time lawyer Michael Cohen.

In July 2019, Dmitry Firtash hired a new legal team; led by attorneys Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova, who frequently defend president Donald in the media. The two have also worked closely with Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani (former New York Mayor).
Firtash hired Toensing and diGenova on the recommendation of their Russian translator, none other than Lev Parnas: https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-10-31/indicted-ukrainian-tycoon-embraces-trumps-theories-fights-extradition
(http://archive.is/4d7ZQ)


I’ve previously posted on the Kazakh gangster Tevfik Arif and his ties to Trump, Erdogan, Kazakhstan and Putin. One of Arif’s companies (that were heavily involved in money laundering) was Rixos with links to Viktor Pinchuk’s business partner Rinat Akhmetov...

On the Rixos board is the Ukrainian Igor Gumenyuk, an associate of Rinat Akhmetov, owner of the Shaktar Donetsk soccer team.
The photograph of Tevfik’s son Arif Arif with Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan was taken at the 9th Yalta conference in Ukraine, organised by Viktor Pinchuk. Arif was invited by Pinchuk.
See Recep Tayyip Erdogan with Arif “Arif” Efendi in Yalta, Ukraine, 14 September 2012.
https://archive.is/nzDL3/2d5710198bf64261ab7f73c1bd9278bcbda2d54d.jpg


Arif’s associate Felix Sater has accused Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson of committing perjury.
Sater pointed out that Simpson has worked with Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who was at the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting: https://dailycaller.com/2019/07/09/felix-sater-perjury-glenn-simpson/
(http://archive.is/aUkZr)


No!!! Our internet couldn’t be rigged, or could it?

A mystery client has paid bloggers in India and Indonesia to write articles to bury some damaging story on President Donald’s suspicious ties to Tevfik Arif and Doyen...
Spokespeople for online companies in the 2 countries confirmed that they had been paid to write articles to hide articles on Trump’s ties to Arif.

The campaign is designed to manipulate internet search results so that some damaging story on Trump’s relationship to Arif, Bayrock Group and the Doyen Group is buried in the search results.
Over 50 articles were posted on obscure platforms, used explicitly to hide this story, from September 2017 to June 2018.

Indonesian writer Ongky Firmansyah wrote that he was been paid to randomly insert the names “Tevfik Arif” and “Tevfik Arif Doyen” into articles on his website.
A host of dummy social media accounts were created, with names like Tevfik Arif, Tevfik Arif Doyen and TevfikArif Bayrock: http://archive.is/6K1zG


I haven’t seen many stories with better information on Tevfik Arif, Bayrock and Doyen than the following thread: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?513623-Michael-Flynn-Inovo-and-Erdogan/page2


In the fall of 2016, Donald Trump Jr. and other aides to his father met Joel Zamel, founder of the Israeli company Wikistrat, and George Nader, emissary for the UAE, in Trump Tower.

Wikistrat was led by 3 Israelis: Daniel Green, Elad Schaffer and its founder and former CEO Zamel.
Wikistrat’s advisory council includes former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden, former national security adviser James L. Jones, former deputy director of the National Security Council Elliott Abram, and former acting director of the Defense Intelligence Agency David Shedd.

Zamel was introduced to Michael Flynn by Bijan Kian and wanted to hire Flynn for Wikistrat’s advisory board: https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-the-mysterious-intelligence-firm-now-in-muellers-sights
(http://archive.is/3RxfY)



In August 2016, Erik Prince introduced Psy-Group founder Joel Zamel to Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower. George Nader, who had worked for Prince at Blackwater, attended the meeting with Stephen Miller. Nader said that “the princes who led Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were eager to help his father win election as president”.
Zamel was affiliated with an internet company based in the Philippines, WhiteKnight, which George Nader worked with. http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?520558-Trump-Election-Consultant-Firm-Cambridge-Analytica-Execs-Caught-Discussing-Extortion-Fake-News/page3


The previously mentioned Lebanese-American George Nader has been indicted for importing child pornography and trafficking a minor for sex. In 1991, Nader had pleaded guilty to federal child pornography charges.

Nader, with Ahmad “Andy” Khawaja, has also been charged with laundering more than $3.5 million in foreign campaign donations from March 2016 to January 2017, including the 2016 presidential campaign.

And once again a Trump-Clinton link, Nader reportedly donated (part or all of?) this money to Clinton’s campaign.
In August 2016, Khawaja co-hosted a 2016 fundraiser for Clinton, with attendees like Haim Saban, Magic Johnson and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Nader was a liaison between Trump‘s team and Mohammed bin Zayed, crown prince of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
In August 2016, Nader and Joel Zamel met with Donald Trump Jr. to offer help to Trump‘s campaign with Blackwater founder Erik Prince.

In 2017, Nader visited the White House several times to meet Trump‘s chief strategist Steve Bannon: https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/03/george-nader-mueller-indicted-campaign-finance-075046
(http://archive.is/rz8pH)

[Firestarter]

I finally found another one of those rare stories, with a huge amount of information, excellent dot connecting, on the (Soviet, Jewish) crooks surrounding Donald Trump...
Some of it sounds like a good reason to impeach President Donald to me!

Viktor Topolov, one of the richest men in Ukraine, was associated with Leonid Roytman who worked for Russian mob boss Semion Mogilevich. Topolov and Alexi Oronov partnered to build an ill-fated factory in Ukraine. So in 2006, they hooked up with none other than Trump’s long-time lawyer Michael Cohen and his brother Bryan Cohen (who just happened to Oronov’s son-in-law), to pitch the factory deal to Morgan Stanley.
Oronov set up the meeting between Michael Cohen, Trump associate Felix Sater and Ukrainian MP Andrii Artemenko, to draw up a Ukrainian peace plan that Michael Cohen allegedly brought to Michael Flynn’s desk.

In 1987, Donald Trump explained that he first became attracted to Russia at a luncheon in NYC in 1986 hosted by Leonard Lauder (Ronald’s older brother), where Donald was sitting next to Soviet Ambassador Yuri Dubinin.
Donald’s friend Ronald Lauder is the overall head of the World Jewish Congress. In this role, Lauder met Vladimir Putin in April 2016.
Alfa Group chairman Mikhail Fridman is the founder and head of the Russian Jewish Congress.
Alexander Mashkevich is the leader of the Eurasian Jewish Congress and Jack Rosen is the president of the American Jewish Congress.

In 2009, Beny Steinmetz invested $10 million in the Elliott Broidy controlled Israeli Markstone Capital.
One fascinating offshore money trail connects Steinmetz, Alfred Gusenbauer and Tal Silberstein to Paul Manafort.
Steinmetz is also associated with the SCL Group linked Israeli Black Cube.
Steinmetz is also in business with the ENRC of the Kazakh Trio — Alexander Mashkevich, Patokh Chodiev and Alijan Ibragimov. ENRC was investigated by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO), for paying $40 million in bribes to Dan Gertler. In 2013, ENRC was taken renamed Eurasian Resources Group (ERG).
In one of those strange coincidences, Mashkevich was in Davos, Switzerland at the same time as Kirill Dmitriev (close to Putin, who was in the Seychelles for the infamous meeting with Erik Prince) and Anthony Scaramucci (once Donald’s White House communications officer).

Alexander Mashkevich and Patokh Chodiev were hired as managers of Seabeco Belgium and Seabeco Moscow respectively, by Alex Shnaider’s father-in-law Boris Birshtein.
In 2008, Boris Birshtein reportedly collaborated with the FBI (and Oleg Deripaska), when Robert Mueller was its director, in funnelling millions to Iran, in the Robert Levinson case.
Kazakh trio associate Musa Bazhaev is the President of the Alliance Group conglomerate and chairman of the offshore Russian Platinum PLC. Putin arranged for Bazhaev to get started in the lucrative platinum business.

On 1 June 2017, ERG signed and MOU with Russian state bank VTB at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
After the Savarona Yacht prostitution scandal, with Donald’s business associate Tevfik Arif, Mashkevich was replaced on the Gesamines Board of Directors by Jack Rosen. In 2012, Rosen formed a $1 billion American Real Estate Investment partnership with Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman, chairman of the Russian Alfa Group.
In another one of those strange coincidences, Ron Lauder met Fridman and his Alfa partner German Khan in London in November 2014. Lauder is close to Alfa Bank’s Petr Aven, and partnered with him in art expositions in New York.

See Vladimir Putin and Pyotr Aven, February 2014.
http://web.archive.org/web/20200203213449im_/https://static.themoscowtimes.com/image/1360/4d/vyqrKCAROvHEqpByOuGLMyFxGUbWTexn.jpg

Elliott Broidy, Directors of the Republican Jewish Coalition, was introduced to UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) by convicted paedophile George Nader. In the 1980s, Lebanese born Nader previously worked for Ronald Lauder in Mid-East peace deals.
Broidy reportedly arranged multi-million contracts with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) through Nader, despite “forgetting” to register as a Foreign Agent.
Broidy was reportedly the one that called for dismissing Rex Tillerson and sanctions on Qatar.

One of the groups Broidy worked with was the non-profit Secure America Now (SAN), promoted as the largest national security digital platform in the USA. The president of SAN is Allen Roth, chief political adviser of Ronald Lauder. The Board of Directors of SAN included Mike Huckabee and Donald’s dismissed National Security Adviser John Bolton.
Ronald Lauder donated $1.1 million to SAN, while its biggest donor with $2 million, was Robert Mercer (also the biggest funder of Cambridge Analytica). SAN used targeted advertising on Facebook and Google, in the 2016 presidential elections, making gullible fools afraid of a Muslim takeover of the US.

In 1994, Ron Lauder founded Central Media Enterprise (CME) in 1994 that by 1997 owned TV stations in Slovenia, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine.
Later Lauder partnered with Donald’s business partner Lev Leviev to invest in Israeli media companies Channel 10 & Israel Plus 10.

David Bonderman with another well-known financier Rich Gerson started the Redwood Bank in the UK. Bonderman was also a director of the Russian Development Investment Fund (RDIF), headed by none other than Kirill Dmitriev.
In another strange twist Blackstone CEO Skull & Bones’ Stephen Schwarzman and Leon Black of Apollo Management have also served on the RDIF Board.
Rich’s brother Mark Gerson, was an early investor in Cadre, the multi-million dollar start-up founded by Jared Kushner and his brother Josh Kushner: http://web.archive.org/web/20190914070501/https://medium.com/@sheil51/connecting-elliott-broidy-related-dots-offshore-and-on-some-russian-some-not-cabf61f28f (http://web.archive.org/web/20190914070501/https:/medium.com/@sheil51/connecting-elliott-broidy-related-dots-offshore-and-on-some-russian-some-not-cabf61f28f)

[Firestarter]

In 2006, Ron Lauder’s Lauder Institute partnered with the Russian Alfa Bank to award Deutsche bank for their successful business in Russia: http://web.archive.org/web/20170621214311/https://alfabank.com/media/news/2006/06/20/ (http://web.archive.org/web/20170621214311/https:/alfabank.com/media/news/2006/06/20/)


In November 2014, Alfa’s German Khan and Mikhail Fridman visited London and spent Shabbat with Lauder and other representatives of the British Jewish community: https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/russian-philanthropists-bound-for-london-1.61095


Ron Lauder and Len Blavatnik were also Committee members of the USC Shoah’s campaign “Auschwitz: The Past is Present”, with Kushner-Trump-Clinton affiliated: Yuri Milner, Haim Saban, Steven Spielberg, Barry Diller (and his wife Diane Von Furstenberg), David Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Eric Schmidt, Harvey Weinstein, Rob Wiesenthal and Jeff Zucker: https://sfi.usc.edu/pressroom/releases/auschwitz-past-present-announces-committee-members
(http://archive.is/9db7T)


Lauder has also worked on Jewish causes alongside national director of the Anti-Defamation League Jonathan Greenblatt and Roman Abramovich’s Chelsea: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/241425


In early 2014, Ivanka and Jared Kushner attended a charity event with Roman Abramovich that also included Alexey Reznikovich (head of Alfa’s LetterOne Technology) and other Russian oligarchs, including Viktor Vekselberg, Len Blavatnik and Ekaterina Vinokurova (daughter of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov) with her husband Alexander Vinokurov (who is a director of Alfa Group).

Kushner and Abramovich are close friends. In 2010, Thrive Capital, the venture firm founded by Joshua Kushner (Jared’s younger brother), that was funded by Jared, invested in Artsy. Investors in Artsy included Wendi Deng (Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife) and Dasha Zhukova (Roman Abramovich’s wife): https://thesternfacts.com/jared-kushner-ivanka-trump-invested-money-with-a-russian-oligarch-d31dfecc0a2d
(http://archive.is/gbgbz)

[Firestarter]

The Board of Directors of the Ron Lauder, Elliott Broidy affiliated Secure America Now (SAN) that worked on the 2016 Trump campaign, included John Bolton and Mike Huckabee.
Dick Morris, who has worked for Bill Clinton, advised Huckabee on his campaigns in 1993, 1994, and 1998. Mike Huckabee’s daughter, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, was President Donald's White House Press Secretary for 2 years.
In January 2018, Huckabee praised Doha, Qatar as "surprisingly beautiful, modern, and hospitable". Mike Huckabee forgot to mention that Qatar had paid him $50,000 as an "honorarium".


Nader was an adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi (MBZ, of the UAE) for years.
See the gay paedophile George Nader pictured with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
http://archive.is/Jyv9k/9390b45a03a11f80f21e2455810e5b48a71de7b3.jpg

George Nader has also worked as a business agent in Iraq for the private military contractor Blackwater, owned by Erik Prince (the brother of Donald’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos).
Since Erik Prince arranged the meeting between Joel Zamel, Nader and Trump’s team on 3 August 2016, George Nader frequently met Jared Kushner, Mike Flynn and Steve Bannon.
Nader and Prince were also discussing a plan to get $2 billion from the Saudis for a private army to fight against Yemen.

After Trump was elected president, Nader paid Zamel a large sum of money, $2 million.
After Donald’s inauguration, Zamel and Nader met Kushner and Bannon at the White House, supposedly promoting a plan to sabotage Iran. Nader advocated this project to American, Emirati and Saudi officials, estimated at a cost of about $300 million.

Zamel has also worked for the Emirati royal court as a consultant.
In December 2016, Nader again hired an internet company linked to Zamel — WhiteKnight, based in the Philippines.

According to insiders, Nader visited Moscow at least twice during the presidential campaign as an emissary from Crown Prince MBZ.
Joel Zamel also has ties to Russia. One of his firms has worked for Russian oligarchs like Oleg V. Deripaska and Dmitry Rybolovlev: http://web.archive.org/web/20200203212730/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/us/politics/trump-jr-saudi-uae-nader-prince-zamel.html (http://web.archive.org/web/20200203212730/https:/www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/us/politics/trump-jr-saudi-uae-nader-prince-zamel.html)


The following AP story on Nader and Broidy is obviously an attempt to whitewash Tom Barrack (who raised more than $7 billion since Donald became the Republican nominee for president) and United Arab Emirates Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba, but it certainly looks like a genuine “bombshell”...

From 2006 to 2008, Elliott Broidy was finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.
In 2009, Broidy pleaded guilty, of looting $18 million from a New York state pension fund, after bribing state officials with almost $1 million. In 2012, Broidy’s conviction was degraded to a misdemeanour after he agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and pay back the $18 million to the state.
Broidy supposedly had an affair with Playboy Playmate Shera Bechard, who got pregnant and later had an abortion and paid her $1.6 million to keep quiet, arranged by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.
Then Broidy himself spoke about the affair! It has been rumoured that it was really Donald Trump that had an affair with Shera Bechard...

Broidy and met for the first time at Trump’s inauguration and within weeks were working for the UAE and Saudi Arabia to orchestrate a campaign against Qatar, so they would be rewarded with millions of dollars in defence deals from the 2 wealthy gulf states.
Broidy and Nader “forgot” to register even though those countries were listed as “clients” for the lobbying campaign of Broidy’s Circinus LLC.

After Broidy claimed credit for pushing their agenda in the Trump White House, he collected the first $36 million for an intelligence contract with the UAE.

On 7 February 2017, Broidy wrote to a staffer of the House Foreign Affairs Committee about a bill aimed at sanctioning Qatar.
In a March 2017 document, Broidy and Nader proposed a budget of more than $12 million to “expose and penalize” Qatar and to get the US to “aid in coercive action against Iran”.

Elliott Broidy has boasted of his influence over Trump’s Cabinet, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (of Skull & Bones) in particular.
Broidy wrote to Nader about pushing for pushing for sanctions against Qatar:

Mnuchin is a close friend of mine (my wife and I are attending Sec. Mnuchin’s wedding in Washington D.C. on June 24th) and I can help in educating Sec. Mnuchin on the importance of the Treasury Department putting many Qatari individuals and organizations on the applicable sanctions lists.
http://web.archive.org/web/20190218183557im_/https://assets.rbl.ms/17741237/980x.png

Broidy also bragged that he made the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ed Royce, back an anti-Qatar bill and had “caused” Royce to praise Saudi general Ahmed Hassan Mohammad Assiri, which was memorialised in the Congressional Record.

After Broidy donated $189,000 to the RNC on 30 November, George Nader was allowed to be photographed backstage with president Donald.
http://archive.is/tXeP6/61fde8737e2c32d437d8fcd12f33cc76dc1157cc.webp

Broidy wrote Nader that the Sheldon Adelson financed Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), could stage an anti-Qatar conference and that 200 anti-Qatar articles could be published through the FDD and other “think tanks”.
On 21 April 2017, Broidy sent Nader the draft of an Op-Ed; three days later, “The Two Faces of Qatar, a Dubious Mideast Ally” was published in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, co-written by retired Air Force Gen. Charles Wald, who called for moving US military assets from the al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar to the United Arab Emirates.
Leaked emails show that Charles Wald was a member of Broidy’s Circinus team that was pitching contracts in Saudi Arabia.

In June 2017, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and regional allies launched a travel and trade embargo against Qatar.
One day after the beginning of the blockade, Trump sent a series of tweets in support of the blockade against Qatar by Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Saudi Arabia has since distanced itself from Nader and Broidy.
Days after Broidy met president Donald, the UAE awarded Broidy an intelligence contract worth up to $600 million in 5 years: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4471474-Broidy-Nader-Correspondence-Redacted2.html
https://apnews.com/a3521859cf8d4c199cb9a8567abd2b71/The-princes,-the-president-and-the-fortune-seekers
(http://archive.is/K2Se1)


On 26 May 2018, Elliott Broidy sued Ahmed Al-Rumaihi, accusing him of leaking his emails (that made the previous expose by AP possible) to damage his reputation over his wheeling and dealing with the UAE (and the Saudis) and the Trump White House.

In another one of those strange coincidences, legendary gangsta rapper Ice Cube also sued Al-Rumaihi over not keeping up their deal on financing a pro-basketball league. Ice Cube’s business partner Jeff Kwatinetz, is also a friend of Steve Bannon: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/08/qatari-investor-embroiled-in-trump-scandal-holds-top-government-post-court-filing-says/
(http://archive.is/Jzoxp)


On 3 June 2017, emails from United Arab Emirates ( UAE) envoy Yousef al-Otaiba were released by GlobalLeaks. Otaiba has “almost constant phone and email contact” with President Trump's son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner. The two first met this June at the behest of Thomas Barrack, another billionaire and backer of Trump.
In 2000, Otaiba became the director of international affairs for Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan (MBZ), the crown prince of Abu Dhabi.
Otaiba also emailed with Robert Gates, former defence secretary for Barack Obama. Gates is also associated with Mohammed bin Zayed.

Yousef al-Otaiba has repeatedly discussed the strategy towards Iran with the CEO of the FDD, Mark Dubowitz.
Part of the leaked mails, is the agenda for an 11-14 June 2017 meeting between the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and UAE government officials. As attendees for the FDD are listed: Mark Dubowitz, John Hannah, and Jonathan Schanzer. UAE officials also requested the attendance of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed. The agenda includes a discussion on Qatar, and in particular"Al Jazeera as an instrument of regional instability": https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3766679/FDD2.pdf

See the following excerpts from the document, the first image is a mail announcing a discussion on Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood on 23 May 2017.
https://archive.is/GgyxL/cb9352a6ffa5ee445902b187e6507dcdc6bc362f.png

The second and third are about the “assessment of Qatar’s troubling regional role” on 11-15 June 2017.
https://archive.is/KrcAx/4b630c733769646419dabbc66e114f7bf39cf82c.png

The FDD is financed by none other than Sheldon Adelson: https://theintercept.com/2017/06/03/hacked-emails-show-top-uae-diplomat-coordinating-with-pro-israel-neocon-think-tank-against-iran/


See Mohammed bin Zayed (centre) with Republican senators Bob Corker, Mitch McConnell (husband of Trump’s Transport Secretary Elaine Chao), John McCain, and Democratic senators Ben Cardin and Jack Reed.
http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/55e608761400002e002e4a3a.jpeg

Then on 14 June 2017, the president of the FDD, Clifford D. May, published the following...
FDD Senior Fellow David Weinberg, had this to say about the leaked mails:

The emails were cherry-picked and given to tendentious media outlets in an attempt to embarrass the ambassador and critics of Qatar.

May claims that Qatar:

extends its hospitality to the Taliban, provides refuge to Hamas leaders, takes a tolerant attitude toward al Qaeda financiers, enjoys cordial relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, supports the Muslim Brotherhood and, via al Jazeera, its media outlet, spreads Islamist propaganda.
(…)
In April, according to sources cited by the Financial Times, Qatar paid as much as $1 billion to Iran and al Qaeda, ostensibly to secure the release of members of the royal family and their companions who were kidnapped while hunting in Iraq. In May, the Saudi press reported that Qatar’s foreign minister met with Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top terrorist master.

May refers to the 23 May conference, which was attended by 1) Robert Gates, who served as Secretary of Defense and Director of Central Intelligence; 2) Ed Royce, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; and 3) Jake Sullivan, former national security advisor to Vice President Joe Biden: http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/may-clifford-d-the-qatar-ultimatum/

[Firestarter]

Last November, when the impeachment charade was still making headlines, President Donald explicitly denied sending his attorney Rudy Giuliani to "do anything" in Ukraine. Trump said, "No, I didn't direct him".

Now that President Donald has been acquitted of the impeachment, on Thursday Trump openly admitted that he sent Giuliani to the Ukraine to find damaging information on his opponents, in an interview with Geraldo Rivera.
Donald explained:
So when you tell me, why did I use Rudy, and one of the things about Rudy, number one, he was the best prosecutor, you know, one of the best prosecutors, and the best mayor.

Donald has fired several US officials who testified against him in the impeachment charade, and he demanded that the Department of Justice won’t ask for 9 years in prison for his long-time adviser Roger Stone for lying to Congress: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/13/politics/trump-rudy-giuliani-ukraine-interview/index.html

[eleganz]

Hope you guys know that any "financial activist" libertarians could be charged with the same crimes as Manafort.

[Firestarter]

Hope you guys know that any "financial activist" libertarians could be charged with the same crimes as Manafort.
My wild guess is that you're not arguing for the imprisonment of any and all "financial activist" libertarians...

[Intrepid]

The Board of Directors of the Ron Lauder, Elliott Broidy affiliated Secure America Now (SAN) that worked on the 2016 Trump campaign, included John Bolton and Mike Huckabee.
Dick Morris, who has worked for Bill Clinton, advised Huckabee on his campaigns in 1993, 1994, and 1998. Mike Huckabee’s daughter, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, was President Donald's White House Press Secretary for 2 years.
In January 2018, Huckabee praised Doha, Qatar as "surprisingly beautiful, modern, and hospitable". Mike Huckabee forgot to mention that Qatar had paid him $50,000 as an "honorarium".


Nader was an adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi (MBZ, of the UAE) for years.
See the gay paedophile George Nader pictured with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
http://archive.is/Jyv9k/9390b45a03a11f80f21e2455810e5b48a71de7b3.jpg

George Nader has also worked as a business agent in Iraq for the private military contractor Blackwater, owned by Erik Prince (the brother of Donald’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos).
Since Erik Prince arranged the meeting between Joel Zamel, Nader and Trump’s team on 3 August 2016, George Nader frequently met Jared Kushner, Mike Flynn and Steve Bannon.
Nader and Prince were also discussing a plan to get $2 billion from the Saudis for a private army to fight against Yemen.

After Trump was elected president, Nader paid Zamel a large sum of money, $2 million.
After Donald’s inauguration, Zamel and Nader met Kushner and Bannon at the White House, supposedly promoting a plan to sabotage Iran. Nader advocated this project to American, Emirati and Saudi officials, estimated at a cost of about $300 million.

Zamel has also worked for the Emirati royal court as a consultant.
In December 2016, Nader again hired an internet company linked to Zamel — WhiteKnight, based in the Philippines.

According to insiders, Nader visited Moscow at least twice during the presidential campaign as an emissary from Crown Prince MBZ.
Joel Zamel also has ties to Russia. One of his firms has worked for Russian oligarchs like Oleg V. Deripaska and Dmitry Rybolovlev: http://web.archive.org/web/20200203212730/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/us/politics/trump-jr-saudi-uae-nader-prince-zamel.html (http://web.archive.org/web/20200203212730/https:/www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/us/politics/trump-jr-saudi-uae-nader-prince-zamel.html)


The following AP story on Nader and Broidy is obviously an attempt to whitewash Tom Barrack (who raised more than $7 billion since Donald became the Republican nominee for president) and United Arab Emirates Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba, but it certainly looks like a genuine “bombshell”...

From 2006 to 2008, Elliott Broidy was finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.
In 2009, Broidy pleaded guilty, of looting $18 million from a New York state pension fund, after bribing state officials with almost $1 million. In 2012, Broidy’s conviction was degraded to a misdemeanour after he agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and pay back the $18 million to the state.
Broidy supposedly had an affair with Playboy Playmate Shera Bechard, who got pregnant and later had an abortion and paid her $1.6 million to keep quiet, arranged by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.
Then Broidy himself spoke about the affair! It has been rumoured that it was really Donald Trump that had an affair with Shera Bechard...

Broidy and met for the first time at Trump’s inauguration and within weeks were working for the UAE and Saudi Arabia to orchestrate a campaign against Qatar, so they would be rewarded with millions of dollars in defence deals from the 2 wealthy gulf states.
Broidy and Nader “forgot” to register even though those countries were listed as “clients” for the lobbying campaign of Broidy’s Circinus LLC.

After Broidy claimed credit for pushing their agenda in the Trump White House, he collected the first $36 million for an intelligence contract with the UAE.

On 7 February 2017, Broidy wrote to a staffer of the House Foreign Affairs Committee about a bill aimed at sanctioning Qatar.
In a March 2017 document, Broidy and Nader proposed a budget of more than $12 million to “expose and penalize” Qatar and to get the US to “aid in coercive action against Iran”.

Elliott Broidy has boasted of his influence over Trump’s Cabinet, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (of Skull & Bones) in particular.
Broidy wrote to Nader about pushing for pushing for sanctions against Qatar:

http://web.archive.org/web/20190218183557im_/https://assets.rbl.ms/17741237/980x.png

Broidy also bragged that he made the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ed Royce, back an anti-Qatar bill and had “caused” Royce to praise Saudi general Ahmed Hassan Mohammad Assiri, which was memorialised in the Congressional Record.

After Broidy donated $189,000 to the RNC on 30 November, George Nader was allowed to be photographed backstage with president Donald.
http://archive.is/tXeP6/61fde8737e2c32d437d8fcd12f33cc76dc1157cc.webp

Broidy wrote Nader that the Sheldon Adelson financed Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), could stage an anti-Qatar conference and that 200 anti-Qatar articles could be published through the FDD and other “think tanks”.
On 21 April 2017, Broidy sent Nader the draft of an Op-Ed; three days later, “The Two Faces of Qatar, a Dubious Mideast Ally” was published in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, co-written by retired Air Force Gen. Charles Wald, who called for moving US military assets from the al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar to the United Arab Emirates.
Leaked emails show that Charles Wald was a member of Broidy’s Circinus team that was pitching contracts in Saudi Arabia.

In June 2017, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and regional allies launched a travel and trade embargo against Qatar.
One day after the beginning of the blockade, Trump sent a series of tweets in support of the blockade against Qatar by Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Saudi Arabia has since distanced itself from Nader and Broidy.
Days after Broidy met president Donald, the UAE awarded Broidy an intelligence contract worth up to $600 million in 5 years: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4471474-Broidy-Nader-Correspondence-Redacted2.html
https://apnews.com/a3521859cf8d4c199cb9a8567abd2b71/The-princes,-the-president-and-the-fortune-seekers
(http://archive.is/K2Se1)


On 26 May 2018, Elliott Broidy sued Ahmed Al-Rumaihi, accusing him of leaking his emails (that made the previous expose by AP possible) to damage his reputation over his wheeling and dealing with the UAE (and the Saudis) and the Trump White House.

In another one of those strange coincidences, legendary gangsta rapper Ice Cube also sued Al-Rumaihi over not keeping up their deal on financing a pro-basketball league. Ice Cube’s business partner Jeff Kwatinetz, is also a friend of Steve Bannon: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/08/qatari-investor-embroiled-in-trump-scandal-holds-top-government-post-court-filing-says/
(http://archive.is/Jzoxp)


On 3 June 2017, emails from United Arab Emirates ( UAE) envoy Yousef al-Otaiba were released by GlobalLeaks. Otaiba has “almost constant phone and email contact” with President Trump's son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner. The two first met this June at the behest of Thomas Barrack, another billionaire and backer of Trump.
In 2000, Otaiba became the director of international affairs for Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan (MBZ), the crown prince of Abu Dhabi.
Otaiba also emailed with Robert Gates, former defence secretary for Barack Obama. Gates is also associated with Mohammed bin Zayed.

Yousef al-Otaiba has repeatedly discussed the strategy towards Iran with the CEO of the FDD, Mark Dubowitz.
Part of the leaked mails, is the agenda for an 11-14 June 2017 meeting between the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and UAE government officials. As attendees for the FDD are listed: Mark Dubowitz, John Hannah, and Jonathan Schanzer. UAE officials also requested the attendance of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed. The agenda includes a discussion on Qatar, and in particular"Al Jazeera as an instrument of regional instability": https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3766679/FDD2.pdf

See the following excerpts from the document, the first image is a mail announcing a discussion on Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood on 23 May 2017.
https://archive.is/GgyxL/cb9352a6ffa5ee445902b187e6507dcdc6bc362f.png

The second and third are about the “assessment of Qatar’s troubling regional role” on 11-15 June 2017.
https://archive.is/KrcAx/4b630c733769646419dabbc66e114f7bf39cf82c.png

The FDD is financed by none other than Sheldon Adelson: https://theintercept.com/2017/06/03/hacked-emails-show-top-uae-diplomat-coordinating-with-pro-israel-neocon-think-tank-against-iran/


See Mohammed bin Zayed (centre) with Republican senators Bob Corker, Mitch McConnell (husband of Trump’s Transport Secretary Elaine Chao), John McCain, and Democratic senators Ben Cardin and Jack Reed.
http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/55e608761400002e002e4a3a.jpeg

Then on 14 June 2017, the president of the FDD, Clifford D. May, published the following...
FDD Senior Fellow David Weinberg, had this to say about the leaked mails:


May claims that Qatar:


May refers to the 23 May conference, which was attended by 1) Robert Gates, who served as Secretary of Defense and Director of Central Intelligence; 2) Ed Royce, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; and 3) Jake Sullivan, former national security advisor to Vice President Joe Biden: http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/may-clifford-d-the-qatar-ultimatum/This is all fake news.

[Firestarter]

When Georgia wasn’t doing too well economically, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev came to the rescue. In 2005, Georgia’s president Mikhail Saakashvili and Nazarbayev announced that BTA Bank was providing 300 hundred million dollars in loans to develop Georgia.
In a strange twist, all the loans went to subsidiaries of the Silk Road Group. BTA’s deputy chairman, Yerkin Tatishev, selected one of his employees at the Kusto Group, Talgat Turumbayev, to represent both BTA and him on the boards of 2 of those subsidiaries. Some legal experts conclude that if Tatishev was financially involved in businesses funded by the BTA Bank loans, then he and the Silk Road Group have committed bank fraud (self-dealing).
Not surprisingly one of Silk Road’s subsidiaries receiving loans, Batumi Riviera Holding, B.V., was registered in the Netherlands.

In 2009, when Nazarbayev was planning to take control of BTA Bank, its chairman, Mukhtar Ablyazov, fled to London (where else?). Ablyazov took billions of dollars in bank funds out of BTA, by giving dozens of offshore companies under his control loans from B.T.A., which weren’t paid back.
Starting in 2009, Mukhtar Ablyazov was sued in the UK by the Kazakh government to reclaim ten billion dollars that he had siphoned out of the country. The UK courts ordered him to repay more than four billion dollars to BTA (so that he could keep almost six billion dollars). According to Judge Nigel John Martin Teare, Ablyazov had committed “fraud on an epic scale”.

In 2010, Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen began negotiating with the Silk Road Group about a Trump Tower in Batumi, Georgia.
When Donald came to Georgia for a speech, he pointed to Tatishev and Ramishvili and said: “We have two great partners. And they’re going to do a fantastic job”: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/21/trumps-business-of-corruption
(http://web.archive.org/web/20200904050950/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/21/trumps-business-of-corruption (http://web.archive.org/web/20200904050950/https:/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/21/trumps-business-of-corruption))


After I (first) posted the previous story on 16 September, suddenly on 20 September, the ICIJ found it convenient to report on some (already known) money laundering cases. For some reason Mukthar Ablyazov is mentioned, but they “forgot” to detail the case...


It is a report on Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) reported by banks to the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen), between 1999 and 2017. The suspicious transactions total more than $2.7 trillion.
They show banks transferring cash for clients that have already been publicly exposed as financial frauds and for shell companies controlled by people they can’t identify. Some banks take hundreds of days (on average) to report “suspicious” transactions to the authorities.

The SARs in the FinCEN Files were mostly filed by: Deutsche Bank (982), Bank of New York Mellon (325), Standard Chartered Bank (232), JP Morgan Chase (107), Barclays (104) and HSBC Bank (73). Together they filed more than 85% of all SARs in the leak.
Deutsche Bank reported more than half of the $2 trillion of suspicious transactions.
http://web.archive.org/web/20200923145428if_/https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/106710096-1600668971139-FinCEN_top_banks.png?v=1600668762&w=630&h=384

The most interesting bank in this story is, NOT Deutsche Bank but, JPMorgan Chase (the largest bank in the United States).
JPMorgan was involved in money laundering for the previously mentioned Mukthar Ablyazov - former chairman of Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank (previously named Bank TuranAlem).

JPMorgan also helped Paul Manafort transfer more than $50 million in over a decade. How much of that was funnelled through to Podesta?!?
JPMorgan even made $6.9 million in transactions for Manafort in the 14 months after he resigned from the Trump campaign in a swirl of money-laundering and corruption allegations.
NoviRex secretly paid $4,190,111 to Manafort’s lobbying operation on behalf of Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions (for which Podesta was subcontracted).

JPMorgan laundered money for people massively looting in Malaysia, Venezuela and Ukraine (where else?).
JPMorgan also moved more than $1 billion for the fugitive financier behind Malaysia's 1MDB scandal.
JPMorgan transferred more than $2 million for a company that has allegedly cheated Venezuela's Government.

Banks are legally prohibited from discussing filed SARs (but we really don’t need to know all that is going on or we might lose sleep), so JPMorgan declined to comment.
Likewise the Treasury Department and its subsidiary FinCEN refused to answer questions: https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/global-banks-defy-u-s-crackdowns-by-serving-oligarchs-criminals-and-terrorists/
(https://archive.is/GYiWG)


I found the following story more interesting than the previous that didn’t really disclose anything “new” (I couldn’t find this by searching the internet for a link to Bayrock, Arif or Sater, to Mukthar Ablyazov).

More than $30 million of the looted billions from Mukhtar Ablyazov was invested in the US with the help of none other than Tevfik Arif’s and Trump’s gopher, Chabad-Lubavitcher Felix Sater.

Eesh Aggarwal had worked for Ablyazov’s son-in-law, Ilyas Khrapunov, to use a network of a dozen or more offshore companies to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through accounts in the Tanzania-based bank FBME.
Ilyas Khrapunov — under the codename “Elvis” — was the ultimate beneficiary of the offshore network that handled close to $440 million through accounts at the FBME bank.

Bayrock's and Sater's links to the Khrapunovs date back to 2007, when Trump SoHo was under development. They set up a Dutch joint venture with Arif’s Bayrock called KazBay. Bayrock and the Khrapunovs also partnered on a project in Switzerland in 2008.
Sater was also directly involved with 2 members of Ilyas Khrapunov's family.
From 2012 to 2014, Ilyas Khrapunov and Elvira were helped by Sater and another ex-Trump Organization employee, Daniel Ridloff, to transfer millions of dollars to the US. Part of this cash was used to buy 3 Trump SoHo apartments: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/article213846794.html
(https://archive.is/r2cHF)


For more on Trump, Bayrock and (paedophile) Tevfik Arif: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?513623-Michael-Flynn-Inovo-and-Erdogan&p=6529940&viewfull=1#post6529940

[Firestarter]

In 2012, the European Center for Modern Ukraine (ECFMU), affiliated with the pro-Russian president of Ukraine from 2010 to 2014 Viktor Yanukovych, hired Mercury LLC (of Paul Manafort), who subcontracted the Podesta Group for lobbying...
Of course in 2016, Manafort was the campaign manager of warp speed Donald, while John Podesta was crooked Hillary's campaign manager. But reportedly at that time Podesta wasn't subcontracted by Manafort for lobbying anymore.

The following explains this in short.

http://img.pravda.com/images/doc/0/f/0f99f4c-scheme-podesta-eng-new.jpg
Paul-Manafort-Who-Once-Ran-Trump-Campaign-Indicted-on-Money-Laundering-and-Tax-Charges#post6546021 (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?516382-Paul-Manafort-Who-Once-Ran-Trump-Campaign-Indicted-on-Money-Laundering-and-Tax-Charges&p=6546021&viewfull=1#post6546021)



Mercury LLC’s filings with the Justice Department show that its lobbyists, including Ed Kutler (an ally of Newt Gingrich), spent time setting up meetings related to Ukraine issues. One person they introduced to numerous Hill offices and to a senior official at the Export-Import Bank was Sergiy Klyuyev.
Less than a year after Mercury LLC introduced Klyuyev around the Hill, the EU froze his assets in the wake of the collapse of the Yanukovych regime. Klyuyev was one of more than a dozen Yanukovych allies the EU suspected of embezzling state money. Klyuyev and his brother reportedly also fled to Russia. Sergiy’s brother has been accused of orchestrating mass killings of Euromaidan protesters
Even stranger is the connection to the brother of the previously mentioned Serhiy, Andriy Klyuyev...


Volodymyr Zelensky had Denis Kireev executed for treason, because he supposedly was a Russian spy (like Zelensky?). This is especially strange as Kireev was negotiating for the Ukraine at the "peace talks" with Russia on 28 February.

Denis Kireev had worked for several banks:
Ukreximbank, 2006-2012
Oschadbank 2010-2014

The most interesting in his resume is that between 2006 and 2012 Kireev worked for the "Austrian" company GROUP SLAV AG. GROUP SLAV AG was owned/controlled by Andrei Klyuev, and Denis Kireev was widely seen as an agent for Klyuev.
Klyuev is an ally of the pro-Putin Viktor Yanukovych, and fled the Ukraine at the same time as him: https://knowinsiders.com/who-is-ukrainian-denis-kireev-facts-his-death-russian-spy-34233.html
(https://archive.ph/v9rIJ)


Britain accused Russian intelligence services for maintaining links with former Ukrainian politicians, including Andrei Klyuev: https://globeecho.com/news/middle-east/loyal-leadership-in-kiev-returns-to-the-fore-as-an-option-for-moscow/

[Firestarter]

The repeatedly named "richest man of the Ukraine" Rinat Akhmetov (in 2021 reportedly worth $7.5 billion) is certainly interesting. The stories that I found on him often seem rush-translations of Ukrainian (or Russian?), and include many contradictions.
What's interesting about him is that he runs his business from Ukraine’s industrial and coal-mining Donbas region; the region in the east of the Ukraine that Putin's army is now trying to annex (or liberate?).

Also interesting is that in 2014 he hired none other than Trump's later campaign manager Manafort (who subcontracted Podesta for lobbying).
See Akhmetov and Paul Manafort.
https://archive.ph/hXOsG/878493e9c5d01e631a714472121d52a2a16c712f.jpg


According to the following, Akhmetov’s road to riches is "foggy". His beginnings are linked to 15 October 1995, when a bomb at Shakhtar Donetsk's football stadium killed "the region's mafia boss" Akhat Bragin. It is rumoured that Akhmetov took over Bragin’s local (crime?) business interests including the Lyuks Corporation that was identified as “the first official firm to legalise the criminal activities of the Donetsk Mafia”.
This started Akhmetov on his path to wealth and power. He also succeeded Bragin as chairman of Shakhtar Donetsk.

In 2004, Akhmetov joined Viktor Pinchuk, son-in-law of then-President Leonid Kuchma, to buy the steel giant Kryvorizhstal for a mere $800 million from the Ukrainian Kuchma government. Months later Akhmetov and Pinchuk sold the plant to Mittal Steel (now ArcelorMittal) for a $4 billion profit!

There are many rumours of Akhmetov's involvement in organised crime, but he has never been convicted.
In 2006, Akhmetov became a parliament member for the (pro-Russian) Party of Regions, gaining immunity from criminal charges.

You may have noticed that Mariupol is all over the news. Two of Akhmetov’s largest assets are located in Mariupol - Ilych Iron and Steel Works and Azovstal.
Akhmetov has effectively evaded the sanctions that were already in place, transporting the ore and steel from the (sanctioned) Donbas region to elsewhere in the Ukraine and back again, before selling it on the world market for a nice profit.

There are also stories that Akhmetov is supporting Russian-backed separatists. There is no doubt that he pays wages (and gives aid) to separatists: https://eurasianet.org/ukraines-donbas-don-who-is-rinat-akhmetov
(https://archive.ph/hXOsG)


The Russian-affiliated Ukrainian oligarch Akhmetov received $21 million in cheap PPP "small business" loans from the US government.
Former owners of Privatbank, Ihor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Boholiubov, also received PPP "small business" loans: https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/13014-ukraine-s-richest-oligarch-received-21-million-in-us-business-loans


System Capital Management (SCM) is Rinat Akhmetov's holding company.
SCM is the majority shareholder in both Ukraine’s largest steel company Metinvest (the largest company of Ukraine) and largest coal producer DTEK.

In 2018, it was reported that all 3 of these "Ukrainian" companies were registered in money laundering paradise the Netherlands (where else?): https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-scm-court-idUSKBN1EY1MN


A NABU investigation found that Akhmetov's DTEK ended low coal prices by introducing the so-called Rotterdam+ formula to "fix the price" from 2016 to July 2019 (Rotterdam is the largest harbour of the Netherlands).
Akhmetov reaped the profits from the inflated price: https://www.justsecurity.org/72677/manafort-and-his-ukraine-patron-fincen-files-further-illustrate-gaping-holes-in-oversight/


For some reason Wikipedia "forgets" to mention the Akhmetov-Netherlands links...

Pavel Gubarev claims that Akhmetov has financed the separatist movement in the Donbas region, and that the separatists "all took money" from Akhmetov and others, "As it turned out, two-thirds of the activists were supported by the oligarch Akhmetov".

In 2007, Akhmetov also founded the Foundation for Effective Governance that prepared "The Ukraine Competitiveness Report" for the WEF.

See Ukrainian oligarchs from left: Victor Pinchuk, Serhiy Taruta and Rinat Akhmetov, Davos economic forum, January 2008.
http://archive.is/F02qa/0f9b252e31dd137dba181390475ace54f14f6aa6.jpg

Akhmetov also owns the most expensive penthouse in London (where else?), bought for an impressive $213 million: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinat_Akhmetov