The members of Donald Trump’s campaign and transition team seem to have a strategy: Lobby first, register later. But former campaign chair Paul Manafort has taken that to a ridiculous degree.
A consulting firm led by Paul Manafort, who chaired Donald Trump’s presidential campaign for several months last year, retroactively filed forms Tuesday showing that his firm received $17.1 million over two years from a political party that dominated Ukraine before its leader fled to Russia in 2014.
These payments sound remarkably like the under-the-table payments that were uncovered by Ukranian investigators last August.
What they found was $12.7 million in cash payments from Yanukovych’s pro-Russian forces to Manafort. These weren’t the acknowledged, legitimate payments to Manafort for his services in the campaign. These were secret payments. While the ledgers show these secret payments continuing through 2012, Manafort continued to work in Kiev and was still being paid openly through Yanukovych’s ejection in 2014.
Manafort denied the payments at the time. The new filing indicates that Manafort spent $4 million in the Ukraine, putting his take-home pay remarkably close to the amount he earlier denied. But if Manafort is belatedly admitting off the books cash routed from the Kremlin, it’s not the only thing that’s late.
FARA requires so-called foreign agents to register within 10 days of agreeing to conduct work for the foreign entity and to provide updates every six months on political activities. The disclosures require more minute details than what is covered for domestic lobbyists.
Manafort is at least five years late in getting in his FARA paperwork, making even Michael Flynn much more compliant. But the Department of Justice has rarely prosecuted FARA violations, and it seems unlikely that Jefferson Beauregard Sessions would find that either Flynn or Manafort’s failing to report their foreign activities was an affront to his fragile honor.
Investigators in Ukraine are looking into other aspects of Manafort’s time in their country. Including what he spent that $4 million on—like arranging riots to attack United States Marines.
“We had rocks thrown at us. Rocks hit Marines. Buses were rocked back and forth. We were just trying to get to our base.” …
Manafort’s work in Ukraine doesn’t just include getting Putin’s local puppet into the presidency. It features efforts to degrade the relationship between Ukraine and NATO and encouraging unrest that provided Putin with an excuse to invade Crimea.
In denying the payments earlier, Manafort sounded remarkably Trump-like.
Donald Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, slammed the New York Times Monday morning after the newspaper published a story reporting that secret ledgers in Ukraine show more than $12 million in cash earmarked for him. …
“Once again, the New York Times has chosen to purposefully ignore facts and professional journalism to fit their political agenda, choosing to attack my character and reputation rather than present an honest report,” Manafort said in a statement obtained by NBC News. “The suggestion that I accepted cash payments is unfounded, silly and nonsensical.”
Of course. Manafort would never take cash. He would insist that all payments be routed through his fake office in Cyprus where he kept his accounts at Wilbur Ross’ bank.
In the 2014 case, Manafort used Cypriot shell companies as part of a nearly $19 million deal with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska to purchase Ukrainian cable television provider Black Sea Cable. Deripaska said that after taking the money, Manafort and his associates stopped responding to Deripaska's queries about how the funds had been used.
Cash. Bah. Never take money that hasn’t been freshly laundered.