Paul Manafort managed to turn Ukraine into a pipeline that directed at least $17 million to his pocket and generated not just a wardrobe of ostrich-skin coats and a driveway full of Mercedes, but allowed him to scam banks, distort real estate prices, dodge taxes, and generally live the life of an oligarch. Everyone in New York pays higher rent and higher taxes because Manafort, Trump, and others have abused lax real estate regulations to disguise money-laundering operations and inflate the apparent value of apartments and condos. They profit from this. Everyone one else picks up the check.
People in Ukraine also pick up that check. They pick it up by surrendering freedoms. By living in a place where they have to bribe Trump and Manafort and Giuliani’s pals just to get through a day. They pay for it with Russian troops not just on their border, but in their country. They pay for it with their lives.
In the hearings just past, Republicans made a point of saying that Donald Trump’s next statement after “I want you to do me a favor, though” didn’t mention Joe Biden. It didn’t — Biden came a few breaths later. But what Trump asked for next was not a generic “look into the 2016 election” as both Republicans, and Republican witness Jonathan Turley, have maintained. Trump directly, and specifically asks for President Zelensky to back up the “Crowdstrike” conspiracy theory, which is an attack on Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and U.S. intelligence agencies. It’s far worse than if he had just immediately gone on to Biden.
That’s what Rudy Giuliani is doing in Ukraine—looking for people who will blame their own country for interfering in the last election, because they’re perfectly, perfectly willing to weaken democracy in exchange for personal wealth and power. He’s searching out people who, with Russia daily nibbling away at their territory, are still willing to exonerate Vladimir Putin and indict their own officials. People who want to maintain corruption, because they are corrupt.
There are people on both sides of the Atlantic who like Ukrainian corruption. People who depend on Ukraine being weak, being in turmoil, and being always open to a juicy bribe. Those people include not just Trump and Manafort, but a long line of Republican lawyers, like Giuliani, whose job it is to remove people like Marie Yovanovitch and smear people like Hillary Clinton.
Because its only when both ends of the pipeline are open, that the money flows through.
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