Posted on 10/30/2017 11:13:10 AM PDT by ColdOne
Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta and the Podesta Group, according to an NBC News report.
Mueller, who is leading the investigation into Russia’s attempts to meddle in the U.S. presidential election, is reportedly probing the firm to determine whether it violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in its work for the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine (ECFMU). The nonprofit ECFMU was part of a public relations campaign run by President Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, to bolster Ukraine’s reputation.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
BKMRK
Sounds like someone messing with the heads of people who want to believe this stuff. I will believe Mueller is out to get people for Uranium One when I see it. Meanwhile Mueller has hired a team of Hillary supporters to fill up his staff that wouldn’t be interested in investigating the Obama/Clinton ties even if the work was done for them and placed on their desks.
As in quit? Does he know he quit? Someone should let him know because hes been posting all day.
it reads like a mixture of the actual and BS.
He’s still here. And you can always find him at twitter.
But are the attorneys on Mueller’s team Bernie Bots or loyal to Her Royal Highness, Queen Loser I?
The folks that Stalin had shot in the basement of Lubyanka in 1930’s all were thought of as good commies at one point too. Purges are part and parcel with being a good marxist...
Yeah, there is no way Rosinstein is going to go after a theocratic government proxy like Podesta group and that system of theocracy since Mueller and Rosenstein are dependent on that themselves to spread this islamic globalist culture shenanigans amongst others
One of the attorneys on Mueller’s team was formerly counsel to the Clinton Foundation.
One would think she would have to resign if they were actually investigating the Clinton Foundation. I don’t see how a mere Chinese Wall separating her from the other lawyers would be adequate to handle the conflict in such a small office.
So I’m skeptical they are really investigating the CF donations for Uranium One.
They are all loyal Hillary automatons. I read it all the time on FR so it’s gotta be true. Poor Trump. A naif let down by his own staff. He was too trusting. The world is about to end. We are doomed.
“is reportedly probing the firm to determine whether it violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in its work for the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine (ECFMU). The nonprofit ECFMU was part of a public relations campaign run by President Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, to bolster Ukraine’s reputation.”
Important to note here is that Manafort’s “Ukrainian connection” involved pro-Putin/pro-Russia elements in the Ukraine.
Viktor Yanukovych
Manafort was hired to advise Yanukovych months after massive street demonstrations known as the Orange Revolution overturned Yanukovych’s victory in the 2004 presidential race.[50]
Borys Kolesnikov, Yanukovich’s campaign manager, said the party hired Manafort after identifying organizational and other problems in the 2004 elections, in which it was advised by Russian strategists.[48]
Manafort rebuffed U.S. Ambassador William Taylor when the latter complained he was undermining U.S. interests in Ukraine.[34]
According to a 2008 U.S. Justice Department annual report, Manafort’s company received $63,750 from Yanukovych’s Party of Regions over a six-month period ending on March 31, 2008, for consulting services.[51]
In 2010, under Manafort’s tutelage, the opposition leader put the Orange Revolution on trial, campaigning against its leaders’ management of a weak economy. Returns from the presidential election gave Yanukovych a narrow win over Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, a leader of the 2004 demonstrations.
Yanukovych owed his comeback in Ukraine’s presidential election to a drastic makeover of his political persona and, people in his party say, that makeover was engineered in part by his American consultant, Manafort.[48]
In 2007 and 2008 Manafort was involved in investment projects with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska (the acquisition of a Ukrainian telecoms company) and Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash (redevelopment of the site of the former Drake Hotel in New York City).[52]
The Associated Press has reported that Manafort negotiated a $10 million annual contract with Deripaska to promote Russian interests in politics, business, and media coverage in Europe and the United States, starting in 2005.[53]
In 2013 Yanukovych became the main target of the Euromaidan protests.[54]
After the February 2014 Ukrainian revolution (the conclusion of Euromaidan) Yanukovych fled to Russia.[54] On March 17, 2014, the day after the Crimean status referendum, Yanukovych became one of the first eleven persons who were placed under executive sanctions on the Specially Designated Nationals List (SDN) by President Obama, freezing his assets in the US and banning him from entering the United States.[55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][a]
Manafort then returned to Ukraine in September 2014 to become an advisor to Yanukovych’s former head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine Serhiy Lyovochkin.[49]
In this role he was asked to assist in rebranding Yanukovych’s Party of Regions.[49] Instead, he argued to help stabilize Ukraine, Manafort was instrumental in creating a new political party called Opposition Bloc.[49] According to Ukrainian political analyst Mikhail Pogrebinsky, “He thought to gather the largest number of people opposed to the current government, you needed to avoid anything concrete, and just become a symbol of being opposed”.[49]
According to Manafort, he has not worked in Ukraine since the October 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election.[66][67]
However, according to Ukrainian border control entry data, Manafort traveled to Ukraine several times after that election, all the way through late 2015.[67]
According to The New York Times, his local office in Ukraine closed in May 2016.[28]
According to Politico, by then Opposition Bloc had already stopped payments for Manafort and this local office.[67]
In an April 2016 interview with ABC News Manafort stated that the aim of his activities in Ukraine had been to lead the country “closer to Europe”.[68]
Ukrainian government National Anti-Corruption Bureau studying secret documents claimed in August 2016 to have found handwritten records that show $12.7 million in cash payments designated for Manafort, although they had yet to determine if he had received the money.[28]
These undisclosed payments were from the pro-Russian political party Party of Regions, of the former president of Ukraine.[28] This payment record spans from 2007 to 2012.[28] Manafort’s lawyer, Richard A. Hibey, said Manafort didn’t receive “any such cash payments” as described by the anti-corruption officials.[28]
The Associated Press reported on August 17, 2016 that Manafort secretly routed at least $2.2 million in payments to two prominent Washington lobbying firms in 2012 on Party of Regions’ behalf, and did so in a way that effectively obscured the foreign political party’s efforts to influence U.S. policy.[11]
Associated Press noted that under federal law, U.S. lobbyists must declare publicly if they represent foreign leaders or their political parties and provide detailed reports about their actions to the Justice Department, which Manafort reportedly did not do.[11] The lobbying firms unsuccessfully lobbied U.S. Congress to reject a resolution condemning the jailing of Yanukovych’s main political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko.[69]
Financial records certified in December 2015 and filed by Manafort in Cyprus showed him to be approximately $17 million in debt to interests connected to interests favorable to Putin and Yanukovych in the months before joining the Trump presidential campaign in March.[70]
These included a $7.8 million debt to Oguster Management Limited, a company connected to Russian oligarch and close Putin associate Oleg Deripaska.[70] This accords with a 2015 court complaint filed by Deripaska claiming that Manafort and his partners owed him $19 million in relation to a failed Ukrainian cable television business.[70]
An additional $9.9 million debt was owed to a Cyprus company that tied through shell companies to Ivan Fursin, a Ukrainian Member of Parliament of the Party of Regions.[70] Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni maintained in response that “Manafort is not indebted to Mr. Deripaska or the Party of Regions, nor was he at the time he began working for the Trump campaign.”[70]
During the 2016 Presidential campaign, Manafort, via Kiev-based operative Konstantin Kilimnik, offered to provide briefings on political developments to Deripaska, though there is no evidence that the briefings took place.[71][72]
According to alleged leaked text messages between his daughters Manafort was also one of the proponents of violent removal of the Euromaidan protesters which resulted in police shooting dozens of people during 2014 Hrushevskoho Street riots.
In one of the messages his daughter writes that his “strategy that was to cause that, to send those people out and get them slaughtered”.[73]
Manafort has rejected questions about whether Russian-Ukrainian operative Konstantin Kilimnik, with whom he consulted regularly, might be in league with Russian intelligence.[74]
___________________________________________________________
During his campaign for the presidency in 2004, Yushchenko became seriously ill from dioxin poisoning in an apparent assassination attempt; his face was left permanently disfigured and pockmarked.
Mass protests, which became known as the Orange Revolution, followed a runoff round in which Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, backed by Kuchma and generally considered pro-Russian and cool toward western Europe as compared with Yushchenko, had been declared the winner.
The Supreme Court, after invalidating that result, ordered a second runoff to be held in December 2004. Yushchenko was officially confirmed as the winner the following month.
As president, Yushchenko quickly encountered difficulties. He faced a fuel crisis beginning in May 2005, and in September he replaced his entire cabinet, accusing it of incompetence. In the 2006 parliamentary elections, Yushchenko’s party finished third, and eventually he was forced to approve the nomination of Yanukovych for prime minister.
A power struggle between Yushchenko and Yanukovych escalated in early 2007, when parliament passed laws that seriously curtailed Yushchenko’s authority. In particular, the new legislation ended the president’s right to reject parliament’s choice of prime minister.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Viktor-Yushchenko
_______________________________
From 2014
Many Ukrainians believe you need look no further than the face of Viktor Yushchenko to understand Russia's aggression against Ukraine.
Once smooth and ruggedly handsome, it still bears the scars from an assassination attempt when someone slipped dioxin into Yushchenko's food. ..."
Read more here:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article24765781.html#storylink=cpy
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Manifort is not an idiot. He knows exactly who put him under this scrutiny...
He’ll make sure nothing comes of it, no matter the evidence. Because he’s implicated himself.
I hope this is factual. It would be so nice to see Holder, Lynch and Hillary in Orange Jumpsuits.
If he’s doing it so he can clear the Podestas Manafort has to play along. I don’t think he will. Otherwise he would have already cut a deal. No?
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Manafort may be a lot of things, but he isn’t going down quietly. Do deal-cutters fight charges? $10M bond, means a posting of $1M??? How does that work? I suppose he has various assets he could put up as collateral, even for $10M.
I don’t think snitches plead not guilty to every charge. Lawyers, can you comment? I really have little idea how this sort of thing works.
Mueller hired ONLY Clinton people.
After today we know for a fact that no Democrat will be charged. He is after Trump only.
This may be the classic battle we read about in books. The battle between good and evil, lawless vs. lawful. The question, who is on whose side? Time will tell.
Mueller does not have to clear his name, the press does not report anything bad about him.
His goal is to charge as many Trump people as possible, and then send a report to Congress for Impeachment.
For this he will be hailed as a hero.
MSNBC, ABC, CNN all painting a picture of this points to Trump. I just saw the breathless Steponanelephant do his little thing...They really believe this points to Trump, they really do.
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