By Josh Marshall:
At a minimum, Trump appears to have a deep financial dependence on Russian money from persons close to Putin. And this is matched to a conspicuous solicitousness to Russian foreign policy interests where they come into conflict with US policies which go back decades through administrations of both parties. There is also something between a non-trivial and a substantial amount of evidence suggesting Putin-backed financial support for Trump or a non-tacit alliance between the two men.
* * *
Then there's Paul Manafort, Trump's nominal 'campaign chair' who now functions as campaign manager and top advisor. Manafort spent most of the last decade as top campaign and communications advisor for Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian Ukrainian Prime Minister and then President whose ouster in 2014 led to the on-going crisis and proxy war in Ukraine. Yanukovych was and remains a close Putin ally. Manafort is running Trump's campaign.
The Full Story (July 23, 2016)
~ ~ ~
Talking Points Memo: It Can't Be Dismissed
Drezner says Trump's advisors who have various levels of connection to Putin or Putin-aligned leaders or businessmen in the post-Soviet successor states are largely irrelevant because the people who call the shots in Trumpland are Trump and his immediate family, specifically his adult children. I think this is largely true. But it misses the point.
Does Ivanka or Donald Jr have strongly held views on NATO commitments to member states in the Baltics or who the good guys and bad guys are in the Ukraine? Of course not. The question answers itself.
So while I don't think Carter Page is secretly running the Trump campaign, I think his views and agenda are actually quite significant on a critical foreign policy question that I strongly suspect neither Trump nor anyone in his family knows the first thing about. The same goes for Paul Manafort and others.
~ ~ ~
Talking Points Memo: The Trump and Putin Thing, A Detailed Response
Here's a few grafs from a Politico article that was, notably, written in 2014, before Manafort's business dealings had any obvious political import. So we can rule out any effort to pump up Manafort's role to damage Trump ...
Manafort’s friends describe his relationship with Yanukovych as a political love connection, born out of Yanukovych’s first downfall when he was driven from power by the 2004 Orange Revolution. Feeling that his domestic political advisers had failed him, Yanukovych turned to a foreign company, Davis Manafort, which was already doing work for the Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov. The former Ukrainian PM and Manafort, the Georgetown-educated son of a Connecticut politician, hit it off.
Manafort’s firm had a set of international clients and produced an analysis of the Orange Revolution that Yanukovych found instructive, according to one operative involved in Yanukovych’s political rehabilitation. Manafort became, in effect, a general consultant to Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, shaping big-picture messaging, coaching Yanukovych to speak in punchy, American-style sound bites and managing teams of consultants and attorneys in both Ukraine and the United States ahead of an anticipated Yanukovych comeback. While it’s difficult to track payments in foreign elections, a former associate familiar with Manafort’s earnings say they ran into the seven figures over several years.
After Yanukovych’s 2010 victory, Manafort stayed on as an adviser to the Russia-friendly president and became involved in other business projects in Eastern Europe. In 2012, then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Tefft told the newspaper Ukrainska Pravda that he had met with Manafort, though he declined to elaborate on the American’s role there.
This sounds very much like the relationship I described. Yanukovych wasn't one of many of Manafort's clients that I'm just cherry-picking. And Manafort wasn't one of many US advisors. It was a key relationship for both men. And business deals which grew out of the Yanukovych relationship were part of it.
~ ~ ~
New York Times: Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief
And Mr. Manafort’s presence remains elsewhere here in the capital, where government investigators examining secret records have found his name, as well as companies he sought business with, as they try to untangle a corrupt network they say was used to loot Ukrainian assets and influence elections during the administration of Mr. Manafort’s main client, former President Viktor F. Yanukovych.
Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.
In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residence with a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.
No comments:
Post a Comment