McClatchy Keeps Russian Collusion Talk Alive

Let's talk about Robert Mueller's investigation. Specifically, let's talk about Paul Manafort and money laundering.

Mueller’s expanded focus on Manafort’s complicated financial picture is zeroing in on whether he may have evaded taxes or engaged in any money laundering schemes, the sources say, and the hunt for his financial records through a labyrinth of offshore bank and business accounts has become an important prong of the investigation.

  McClatchy

Presumably ensnaring his partner in crime, Donald J Trump.

Yes, I am going to be very disappointed if they don't haul off Dolt 45 for money laundering and racketeering. But I think they will. Or else run him off.

Manafort, who chaired the Trump campaign for three months in mid-2016 and earlier spent two months coordinating the search for pro-Trump delegates, is a prime target as investigators attempt to win the cooperation of key members of the campaign’s inner circle.

[...]

Given his pro-Kremlin connections and his closeness to the campaign, Manafort was uniquely positioned to play a role in any collusion between the campaign and operatives working on behalf of the Russian government to help elect Trump.

We know that Manafort quit the campaign when it became known that he was accused of money laundering in Ukraine. How did Manafort get involved with Trump in the first place?

WNYC, the New York public-radio station, [...] reported on three cases unearthed by 377union.com in which Manafort purchased properties in the city with no mortgages:

Manafort’s New York City transactions follow a pattern: Using shell companies, he purchased the homes in all-cash deals, then transferred the properties into his own name for no money and then took out hefty mortgages against them, according to property records.

[...]

This pattern does not necessarily indicate any illegal behavior. But experts told WNYC that if someone was trying to launder money, this would be a typical way to do it, turning ill-gotten gains into legitimate cash by moving it through the various transactions. Once the mortgage was taken out, the money would be “clean” for the individual, with the property as collateral and the original source and purchaser forgotten. Manafort denied any wrongdoing and said it was common to buy real estate with limited liability companies, as he did.

  The Atlantic

Common amongst money launderers. Let's have a look at Dolt 45's acquisitions. Dealing in casinos and New York and Miami real estate, I'm sure we'll find some sleaze.

Despite the large cash flows, Manafort found himself in danger of foreclosure on a townhouse in Brooklyn and properties in California, The Wall Street Journal reports. He was saved by a $16 million bailout, spread between November and January, from a bank owned by a Trump adviser. Manafort has received other loans from Trump friends before, highlighting the closeness of his ties to Trump. Nonetheless, the White House has argued of late that Manafort was a mere short-term volunteer for the campaign.

Very funny.

Manafort was also investigated for money laundering on Cyprus, NBC News reports. The island is a common outlet for money from Russia. Starting in 2007, Manafort opened at least 15 bank accounts and incorporated at least 10 companies.

All innocent. And common.

Banking sources said that in October 2009, one of the 15 Manafort-associated bank accounts in Cyprus received a payment of a million dollars and left the account on the same day. Experts said the way the multiple accounts and companies were used suggests they were set up to deliberately make it difficult for auditors to track the movement of funds.

[...]

In 2016, The New York Times reported that documents turned up in Ukraine showed that Manafort was to receive almost $13 million in off-the-books cash payments from the political party of Viktor Yanukovych, the Kremlin client for whom Manafort worked as a consigliere.

Innocent. And common.

The reason Manafort is the first and most overt target of Mueller’s high-powered inquiry is that he sits atop a massive tangle of ties to Russia, pro-Russian Ukrainians, and shady New York real-estate deals. Any one of those could pop up like a jack-in-the-box in Mueller’s offices, leading to criminal charges against Manafort—who, you’ll recall, was campaign manager for Donald Trump last year. And, were that to happen, it’s possible that Manafort—who isn’t really part of Trump’s inner circle, which consists of his sons, his daughter, and his son-in-law—would “flip,” telling what he knows about Trump’s Russia connections in exchange for immunity.

[...]

Veteran of more than four decades of political chicanery, going back to Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, Manafort helped found the legendary lobbying firm Black Manafort Stone & Kelly. (The third principal in that firm was Roger Stone, the pro-Trump provocateur who is himself a person of interest for Mueller’s inquiry, and who admitted that he was in regular contact with WikiLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, the Russian-intelligence-linked hacker.) During those years, Manafort compiled a track record of working on behalf of some the world’s most reviled butchers and autocrats, including Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, and Jonas Savimbi, an anti-communist rebel in Angola who was supported by the South African apartheid regime.

[...]

As early as 2014, Manafort was the subject of an FBI investigation stemming from his work in Ukraine. All of this, of course, was well known when Trump brought him on in 2016 to manage his presidential campaign.

[...]

Manafort made a fortune working in Ukraine from 2004 to 2015 for a mix of pro-Moscow Ukrainian oligarchs and political figures, most notably ex-president Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted and fled to Moscow in early 2014, and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a billionaire with good ties to Vladimir Putin.

[...]

Manafort also had old ties with Dmytro Firtash, who made billions in energy deals with Russia; U.S authorities are trying to extradite him on separate corruption charges. Firtash is known to have organized crime links.

[...]

In a particularly ugly accusation, Manafort was described by his daughter—whose iPhone texts were hacked and released publicly on a Ukrainian website—as having helped to engineer the February 20, 2014, massacre in which at least 50 Ukrainians were killed by pro-Yanukovych police. “You know he has killed people in Ukraine? Knowingly,” Manafort’s daughter, Andrea, reportedly wrote to her sister, Jessica, a year later. “Do you know whose strategy that was to cause that, to send those people out and get them slaughtered.”

[...]

Manafort’s sudden departure from the campaign last August 19 came after a New York Times story about a “secret ledger” in Ukraine disclosing that he had received $12.7 million in off the books payments from Ukraine’s Party of Regions for a five year period, a charge that Manafort has flatly denied.

[...]

There has been no indication to date that Manafort is spilling the beans to the feds.

  The Nation

And no indication that he hasn't.

People knowledgeable about the probe say investigators are looking intently at whether any of the millions [Manafort] received from oligarchs and politicians came from corrupt sources, as well as his purchase almost a decade ago of three homes in New York and Florida – including a $3.7 million condo in Trump Tower -- for almost $8 million in cash.

[...]

“The biggest problem that Mr. Manafort faces is that these transactions, taken as a whole, are suggestive of either money laundering or tax evasion or both,” said Washington attorney Ross Delston, who is a money laundering expert. “Mr. Manafort’s multimillion-dollar real estate transactions present a target rich environment for any law enforcement probe.”

And would that not also be the case for Dolt 45?

Money-laundering charges, of course, would very possibly heighten Manafort’s interest in flipping and cooperating with investigators.

[...]

The growing legal pressure Manafort faces was underscored further when the once high-flying foreign consultant abruptly switched attorneys not long after his home was raided, hiring Kevin Downing, a partner at Miller & Chevalier. Downing’s expertise is in tax and money laundering issues; he previously handled such cases in a senior position at the Justice Department.

[...]

Mueller’s team is also scrutinizing Manafort’s participation in the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting attended by Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son in law Jared Kushner and a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin.

[...]

(Manafort and Kushner separately — and at roughly the same time — alerted Senate Intelligence Committee investigators to the meeting in documents they provided the committee, according to a person familiar with the matter.)

What’s more, government investigators are looking at information they’ve received concerning “talks between Russians about using Manafort as part of their broad influence operations during the elections,” a source familiar with the matter told McClatchy.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.