Manafort To Jail - Not About Justice; Not About Russia

[Brian4Liberty]

Manafort To Jail - Not About Justice; Not About Russia

Former Trump campaign official Paul Manafort has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison for acting as an unregistered agent for Ukraine. But looking at the media coverage of the case one would never know that "taking down" Manafort was not all about Russia collusion. Reporting...or propaganda?

[Brian4Liberty]

Article referenced in this episode:

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Paul Manafort Was an Agent of Ukraine, Not Russia
By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY - March 9, 2019

He is a scoundrel, but he was never a Kremlin operative.

Paul Manafort, the clandestine agent of Russia at the heart of the Trump campaign’s “collusion” scand — oh, wait.

Have you ever noticed what Paul Manafort’s major crime was? After two years of investigation, after the predawn raid in which his wife was held at gunpoint, after months of solitary confinement that have left him a shell of his former self, have you noticed what drew the militant attention of the Obama Justice Department, the FBI, and, ultimately, a special counsel who made him the centerpiece of Russia-gate?

According to the indictment Robert Mueller filed against him, Manafort was an unregistered “agent of the Government of Ukraine.” He also functioned as an agent of Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s president from 2010 to 2014, and of two political parties, the Party of Regions and its successor, the Opposition Bloc.

Manafort was not an unregistered agent of Russia. Mueller never alleged that Manafort was a clandestine operative of the Kremlin. He worked for Ukraine, not Putin. Indeed, for much of his time in Ukraine, he pushed his clients against Putin’s interests.

Mueller’s prosecutors looked on glumly Thursday as Manafort was sentenced to a mere 47 months’ imprisonment by Judge T. S. Ellis III of the federal court in Alexandria, Va. After rescinding the cooperation agreement they had extended Manafort following his convictions at trial, Mueller’s team had pressed for a sentence of up to 24 years for the 70-year-old former Trump campaign chairman. The judge demurred, pointedly observing that Manafort was “not before this court for anything having to do with collusion with the Russian government to influence [the 2016] election.”

The prosecutors won’t be chagrined long, of course. Against Manafort, one case with a potential century of jail time was not enough. There’s a case in Washington, too. There, Manafort will be sentenced next week, by a different judge who will surely impose a sentence more to the special counsel’s liking. The knowledge of that, more than anything else, explains Judge Ellis’s comparative wrist-slap, which ignored sentencing guidelines that called for a severe prison term.
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More: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/...ne-not-russia/

[Brian4Liberty]

~8:15 mark: The Clintons know collusion. Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 to give one speech by the Russians.

[Brian4Liberty]

Article referenced in this episode:

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Paul Manafort Was an Agent of Ukraine, Not Russia
By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY - March 9, 2019

Also:

As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton worked with the Putin regime to develop Moscow’s version of Silicon Valley. Business with Russia was like what the Clintons used to tell us about lies about sex: Everybody does it.

[Brian4Liberty]

~17:25: Ron - “it’s because of the hysterical reaction to Trump winning”

“Hysterical”. Exactly.

[AZJoe]

So Mueller's crowning achievement was getting Manafort for colluding with Ukraine against Russia, during the the Obama Administration.

From NR:

According to the indictment Robert Mueller filed against him, Manafort was an unregistered “agent of the Government of Ukraine.” ... he pushed his clients against Putin’s interests. ...

Paul Manafort would never have been prosecuted if he had not joined Donald Trump’s campaign. He would not have been prosecuted if Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 election and spared Democrats the need to conjure up a reason to explain their defeat ...