Paul Manafort, American Hustler theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
"Rick Gates, once boasted to a group of Washington lobbyists, “You have to understand, we’ve been working in Ukraine a long time, and Paul has a whole separate shadow government structure … In every ministry, he has a guy.” OH REALLY.
"The power had helped fill Manafort’s bank accounts; according to his recent indictment, he had tens of millions of dollars stashed in havens like Cyprus and the Grenadines."
"in the early months of 2014, protesters gathered on the Maidan...and swept his patron from power...Yanukovych sought protective shelter in Russia. Manafort... in his Kiev office...left behind a safe filled with papers that he would not have wanted to fall into...the wrong hands"
"Money... soon became a problem. After the revolution, Manafort cadged some business from former minions of the ousted president...But he complained about unpaid bills and, at age 66, scoured the world (Hungary, Uganda, Kenya) for fresh clients"...
lol: Manafort was so broke he even suggested hot dogs at his daughter's “wedding weekend kick off party"!
"Meanwhile...Deripaska had been after Manafort to explain what had happened to an $18.9 million investment in a Ukrainian co that Manafort had claimed to have made on his behalf."
"In 2006, the US State Dept had revoked Deripaska’s visa, reportedly out of concern over his ties to org'd crime...Despite Deripaska’s reputation, or perhaps because of it, Manafort had been dodging the oligarch’s attempts to contact him."
"Nine months after the Ukrainian revolution, Manafort’s family life also went into crisis. The nature of his home life can be observed in detail because Andrea’s text msgs were obtained last year by a “hacktivist collective"...The texts extend over four years (2012–16)..."
"Collectively, the texts show a sometimes fraught series of relationships, by turns loving and manipulative....when he called home in tears or threatened suicide in the spring of 2015, he was pleading for his marriage...."
"The prev Nov, as the cache of texts shows, his daughters had caught him in an affair w/a woman more than 30 yrs his junior...According to the text msgs, Manafort had rented his mistress a $9,000-a-month apartment in Manhattan and a house in the Hamptons..."
"[Manafort] had handed her an AmEx card, which she’d used to good effect. “I only go to luxury restaurants,” she once declared on a friend’s fledgling podcast, speaking expansively about her photos...on soc media: caviar, lobster, haute cuisine"
People in Ukraine DIED FOR THIS.
People in Ukraine DIED FOR THIS.
"Because he clumsily obscured his infidelity—and because his mistress posted about their travels on Instagram—his family caught him again, six months later. He entered the clinic in Arizona soon after, according to Andrea’s texts." Clinic when busted, SHOCKED. NOT.
"By the early mos of 2016, Manafort was back in [DC]...his attempts at rehabilitation—of his family life, his career, his sense of self-worth—continued. He began to make a different set of calls. As he watched the US pres campaign take an unlikely turn, he saw an opportunity..."
"He wrote...Trump a crisp memo listing all the reasons he would be an ideal campaign consigliere—and then implored mutual friends to tout his skills to the ascendant candidate." Barrack.
Friends told him this was unwise: "Manafort simply couldn’t accept the wisdom of his friends, advice that he surely would have dispensed to anyone with a history like his own—the imperative to shy away from unnecessary attention."
"As he made a name for himself [in DC], he began to dress differently than the Brooks Brothers crowd on K Street, more European, with funky, colorful blazers and collarless shirts....Colleagues...referred to him as “the Count of Monte Cristo.”
"When it came to taking on new clients, he was uninhibited by moral limits. In 2016, his friends might not have known the specifics of his Cyprus accts...But they knew enough to believe that he could never sustain the exposure that comes with running a presidential campaign."
“`The risks couldn’t have been more obvious'"...But in his frayed state, these warnings failed to register.
When Paul Manafort officially joined the Trump campaign 3/28/16, he represented a danger not only to himself but to the political org he would ultimately run."
When Paul Manafort officially joined the Trump campaign 3/28/16, he represented a danger not only to himself but to the political org he would ultimately run."
Over the decades, Manafort had cut a trail of foreign $$$ and influence into [DC], then built that trail into a superhighway...that he would be accused of helping a foreign power subvert American democracy is a fitting coda to his life’s story."
Going back, 1977. Manafort and Stone. They eventually form Black, Manafort & Stone. Pick up here: " The Reagan admin represented a break w/the old Republican establishment. After...expansion of the regulatory state, business finally had a political partner eager to dismantle it."
"Time magazine deemed the operation [Black, Manafort & Stone] “the ultimate supermarket of influence peddling.” Fred Wertheimer, a good-government advocate, described this expansive approach as “institutionalized conflict of interest.”
“We’re getting into servicing what we sell,” Atwater (a partner) told his friends. Just as imagined, the firm’s political clients (Jesse Helms, Phil Gramm, Arlen Specter) became reliable warhorses when the firm needed them to promote the agendas of its corp clients" PATIENT ZERO.
They played both sides: "In 1984, the firm reached across the aisle. It made a partner of Peter Kelly, a former finance chair of the DNC...“People said, ‘It’s un-American’ ” Kelly told me. “ ‘They can’t lose. They have both sides.’ I kept saying, ‘How is it un-American to win?’ ”
"The firm exuded the decadent spirit of the 1980s....“A couple of women in the firm complained that they weren’t ever invited. I told them they didn’t want to be.” Manfort's masterwork was a 3-year progression: “Excess,” followed by “Exceed Excess,” capped by “Excess Is Best.”
"Foreign lobbying had certainly existed before the ’80s, but it was limited...just before World War II, Congress had passed [#FARA], largely in response to the campaigns orchestrated by...an American publicist hired...to soften the image of the Third Reich." 🔥🔥🔥
"...Congress hadn’t outlawed influence peddling on behalf of foreign interests, but the practice sat on the far fringes of K Street.
Paul Manafort helped change that." 🙄
Paul Manafort helped change that." 🙄
"Reagan admin had remade the contours of the Cold War, stepping up the fight against communism worldwide by funding/training guerrilla armies and right-wing...forces, such as the Nicaraguan contras and the Afghan mujahideen..." Hi 👋🏽 Dana Rohrabacher!
motherjones.com/politics/2010/…
motherjones.com/politics/2010/…
"This strategy of military outsourcing—the Reagan Doctrine—aimed to overload the Soviet Union with confrontations that it couldn’t sustain...All of the $$$ Congress began spending on anti-communist proxies represented a vast opportunity. "
They cashed in on war y'all.
They cashed in on war y'all.
"...Iron-fisted dictators and scruffy commandants around the world hoped for a share of the largesse. To get it, they needed help refining their image..none did so with the focused intensity of Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly..." Manafort, Stone, have ALWAYS BEEN FOREIGN AGENTS.
"But moral improvement never really figured into Manafort’s calculus...The firm’s client base grew to include dictatorial govt's...Nigeria, Kenya, Zaire, Equatorial Guinea, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia, among others...Center for Public Integrity called [them] “The Torturers’ Lobby.”
"The firm’s int'l business accelerated when the Philippines became a client, in 1985. Pres Ferdinand Marcos desperately needed a patina of legitimacy..." Manafort, of course, was there to help: “What we’ve tried to do is make it more of a Chicago-style election and not Mexico’s.”
The firm’s most successful right-wing makeover was of...Angolan guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi...whose army committed atrocities against children and conscripted women into sexual slavery." In 1986 "Manafort and his assocs created what one magazine called “Savimbi Chic.” MONSTERS
Savimbi "was meticulously coached on everything from how to answer his critics to how to compliment his patrons.” Savimbi emerged from his tour as a much-championed “freedom fighter.”
And we wonder why they don't act like they care about people w/dark skin? 😠
And we wonder why they don't act like they care about people w/dark skin? 😠
Manafort and Stone: ARMS DEALING TO BLOCK PEACE: "As the country [Angola] stood on the brink of peace talks, after nearly 15 yrs of bloody civil war, the firm helped secure fresh batches of arms for its client, emboldening Savimbi to push forward with his military campaign."
“Paul’s not especially ideological,” his former partner Charlie Black told me recently....Manafort seldom spoke of first principles or political ideals. He descends from a different kind of political lineage," He's on some Lord of War, $$$ making sh*t, innocents be damned.
Manafort's family - lol (yes of course, because their lack of self awareness knows no bounds) immigrants - from Naples. His pops was corrupt too. I know, you're shocked 🙄
Manafort's pops, a self-dealer, surprise! Preying on poor people started at home I guess: "The litany includes a complaint with the Department of Housing and Urban Development accusing him of steering contracts to Manafort Brothers, whose stock he still owned while mayor."
Late 80s: "Manafort had a new friend from abroad...Abdul Rahman Al Assir...brother-in-law of the Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, the middleman used in the arms-for-hostages scheme that became the Iran-Contra scandal." 🔥🔥🔥
Paul Manafort, #LordofWar
Paul Manafort, #LordofWar
Manafort suggested to his partners that Al Assir might help connect the firm to clients around the world... none of these relationships imprinted themselves more deeply than his friendship and entrepreneurial partnership with Al Assir."
"By the ’90s, the two had begun to put together big deals. One of the more noteworthy was an arms sale they helped broker between France and Pakistan, lubricated by bribes and kickbacks involving high-level officials in both countries, that eventually led to murder allegations."
Work for/with Pakistan: "She [Bhutto] suggested that Manafort work w/the Pakistani intel svc. Spooks in Islamabad had observed the int'l rush to hire [DC] lobbyists...An ensuing scandal that is still unfolding, some 20 yrs later, would entangle both Al Assir and Manafort."
"Manafort was not a central figure in this scandal, and was never charged with any wrongdoing. But as the former Pakistani official told me, “He was an introducer—and he received a fee for his part.”
"Manafort and Al Assir were more than biz partners...They were very brotherly...Manafort’s sartorial style began to pay homage to Al Assir...now he frequently flew off to France or Spain, collaborating with Al Assir on projects that remained a mystery to even to his partners."
"Manafort’s lifestyle came to feature opulent touches that stood out amid the relative fustiness of Washington....John Donaldson, Manafort’s friend, recalls, “He was competing with the Al Assirs of the world—and he wanted to live in that lifestyle.”
"There were always suspicions among Manafort’s colleagues...that he was making money for himself w/o regard for his partners. Al Assir’s occasional appearance in the int'l press lent these suspicions weight. One deal brokered by Al Assir helped crash a private bank in Lisbon." 🔥
(Hadn't realized how long this amazingly detailed piece was - will pause for now - I don't have a servant to feed the lil one like Paul Manafort!)
Link back to the piece by @FranklinFoer if you want to keep on reading:
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
Manafort's estate in the Hamptons that he purchased w/Ukrainian, Filipino, Angolan BLOOD MONEY $$$$. People DIED FOR THIS. Bodies into tyrants' meat grinders, for THIS: 
"In 2002, he [Al Assir] and Manafort persuaded [a Lisbon] bank to invest 57M euros in a Puerto Rican biometrics co" in a pump/dump scheme. "Manafort was the lead American investor in the co; his involvement helped justify the bank’s investment." End result: crashing of the bank.
"Manafort was said to have walked away with $10 million in cash from Ferdinand Marcos, money he promised he would deliver to Ronald Reagan’s reelection campaign (which itself would have been illegal)." Did he "walk away"? Doubtful.
This is interesting: "[Ed] Rollins Rollins recounted a dinner-party convo w/a member of the Filipino congress who claimed to have personally given a suitcase of $$$ to a “well-known [DC] power lobbyist” involved in the Marcos campaign.....
"...Rollins would neither confirm nor deny that the lobbyist was Manafort, though his description doesn’t leave much uncertainty." THIS is interesting, because Rollins is one of the leaders of Great America PAC - PAC that was caught taking foreign $$$:
"Rollins [admits he was] “not in a state of total disbelief, though, b/c I knew [Manafort] well and I had no doubt the money was now in some offshore bank.” This irked Rollins greatly: “I ran the [Reagan] campaign for $75,000 a year, and this guy got $10M in cash.” 🙄🚩🚩🚩...
Hmmm....so Rollins said that he KNEW that Manafort was hiding $$$ offshore, meaning, he knows how it's done. And then, Rollins hops onto a PAC caught soliciting foreign money. VERY INTERESTING. 🔥🔥🔥 A man who is on the board of this PAC, is pic'd w/Manafort early last yr:
"Manafort has always denied denied Rollins’s insinuation...Still, Vogel found a raft of circumstantial evidence that suggested the plausibility of the tale."
"...the veracity of the tale...persists b/c it reflects Manafort’s ethics. “I know how Paul would view it. Paul would sit there and say, ‘These guys can’t get access to Reagan. I can get them access to Reagan...."
