>>Manafort handled the campaign of a
>>Ukranian presidential candidate 20 years ago.
Lobbying for Viktor Yanukovych and involvements in Ukraine
[Paul] Manafort worked as an adviser on the Ukrainian presidential campaign of [Putin stooge] Viktor Yanukovych (and his Party of Regions during the same time span) from December 2004 until the February 2010 Ukrainian presidential election[47][48][49] even as the U.S. government ... opposed Yanukovych because of his ties to Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin.[21]
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] ...”
What Manafort did was not illegal and what do you think campaign managers make off presidential campaigns here? Millions is the answer. In 20 years nobody felt compelled to go after Manafort til now. He’s being vilified to try to get to Trump.