The recent reports of secret payments tying Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort to pro-Russia work in Ukraine are troubling in themselves, considering the possibility that Russian-backed hacking groups have been targeting Democratic organizations with the apparent intention to undermine the 2016 elections.
However, these reports aren’t even all that groundbreaking. When Manafort was hired by the Trump campaign earlier this year, his ties to Russia were already suspect; not to mention a veritable rogue’s gallery of shady characters. Apparently, this isn’t even the first time his ties compromised a Republican Presidential campaign and/or American foreign policy!
In 2005, John McCain received a call from a staffer on the National Security Council. There was a problem, the staffer told the senator. The man orchestrating McCain’s presidential campaign was Paul Manafort’s partner, a lobbyist named Rick Davis. The administration wanted the senator’s help dialing back the duo’s work in Ukraine, two top McCain aides told me. By promoting enemies of the Orange Revolution, they were undermining American policy.
The call came after Manafort and Davis had already drawn McCain into their eastern escapades. It wasn’t just Ukraine. That year, the pair had consulted on behalf of pro-independence forces in the tiny principality of Montenegro, which wanted to exit Serbia and become its own sovereign republic. On the surface, this sounded noble enough, so noble that McCain called Montenegro’s independence the “greatest European democracy project since the end of the Cold War.”
A report in the Nation, however, showed that the Montenegrin campaign wasn’t remotely what McCain described. The independence initiative was championed by a fantastically wealthy Russian mogul called Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska had parochial reasons for promoting independence. He had just purchased Montenegro’s aluminum industry and intended to buy broader swaths of its economy. But he was also doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin, on whose good graces the fate of all Russian business ultimately hangs. The Nation quoted Deripaska boasting that “the Kremlin wanted an area of influence in the Mediterranean.”
When the Trump campaign first hired Paul Manafort, the leading narrative was for his experience in nomination fights.
Manafort has had past experience with nomination fights.
He helped to manage the convention floor for Gerald Ford during the 1976 convention, when Ford was facing off against Ronald Reagan. Neither candidate went into the convention with a majority of the delegates.
Manafort also helped to manage the convention floor for Ronald Reagan in 1980, George H. W. Bush in 1988 and Bob Dole in 1996.
Here’s the thing, though: Manafort is not the only Trump operative with this kind of background, There’s Carter Page, and Howard Lorber, of his team of economic advisors. At least.
And why is it that all these people come onto the Trump campaign in the midst of him taking a softer stance on Russia, softer than being the Republican nominee ought to dictate?
One has to ask: how in the hell do you get so many people working for you who have more vested financial interests in Russia than your own campaign? Are we watching a tragically subversive episode of Celebrity: Informant?
Like I’ve said before, this is not just about the political pressure this brings on Trump. This is a serious issue for US foreign policy. If Trump becomes President, he will have the ability to appoint key officials to our country’s intelligence and defense agencies, let alone within his personal cabinet. One does not need to be a security expert to understand how getting a key player in any one of these positions could be a boon for Russia, and severely compromise America’s ability to monitor and respond to Russian threats.
It could just be a statement of Trump’s compromised status in itself. He has made it no secret that he wants to expand his business interests into Russian markets. for someone who wants to go after Clinton for alleged Pay-to-play, he has basically made it a campaign policy to cater to an entire country of pay-to-play business. One has to wonder just how much — or how little — financial leverage Russia would really need to apply to a President Trump to get a policy beneficial to their interests.
If Donald Trump’s inner circle is already this deeply compromised, what does that say about a potential Trump Presidency?