June 8, 2018: Rick Gates Knows Where the Coven Meets

 

6/8/18: This is how the Russia investigation goes. Rudy Giuliani makes stupid comments on television: “The president has the power to pardon himself! He can pardon a head of lettuce!” 

Next, the president posts a stupid tweet, something like: “I can pardon anyone I want. Even witches! I am totally innocent. But even if Special Counsel Mueller has pictures of me in bed with five Russian hookers, a pair of mallard ducks, and Vladimir Putin, I have the power to pardon myself!!!” 

 

Gates knows where the coven meets. 

Special Counsel Mueller and his investigators just keep on digging. They keep building cases (we don’t know how many there will be) and keep their mouths clamped shut. 

On this fine day Mueller and his team issue two fresh indictments. Paul Manafort gets hit with another, this time for witness tampering. 

If you’re having trouble keeping track, don’t feel bad. Manafort has been charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, money laundering, tax evasion, bank fraud and being, generally, a scumbag. 

Also indicted for the first time is Konstantin Kilimnik, Manafort’s business partner and man with ties (of course) to Russian intelligence. Manafort once referred to him as “my Russian brain.” 

Rick Gates, Manafort’s right-hand man, and a cooperating witness in the investigation, has admitted that he knew Kilimnik was linked with Russian intelligence agents. Manafort left the campaign under a cloud in August 2016; but Gates remained a member of Team Trump through Inauguration Day and beyond. 

That means if there are real witches in the White House Gates knows where the coven meets.

Rick Gates is cooperating with Mueller.

 

* 

AT THE G-7 MEETING in Canada, President Trump, who all the other leaders there can’t stand, suggests Russia should be allowed to rejoin the group. That way he’d have at least one friend. 

Trump also appears to be confused. At one point, he suggests Canada was responsible for burning the White House in 1814. As for Russia invading the Crimea in 2014, that doesn’t bother him one bit.

Trump does ♥Putin.

 

Ohio Governor John Kasich, a Republican, issues this statement: 

Russia was kicked out of the G-8 because of its invasion and annexation of Crimea. Since that time, Moscow has encouraged and directed a separatist insurgency in Eastern Ukraine, intervened in support Syria’s murderous dictator and the war crimes that he has perpetrated, interfered in the U.S. presidential election, waged an information war to undermine Western democracies, attempted to assassinate opponents on the sovereign territory of our allies, and made common cause with China to undermine the post-WWII international security system and the democratic values embedded in it.

 

…President Trump’s idea of renewing Russian membership in the G-7/G-8 does not protect or defend the national security interests [emphasis added] of the United States or our allies.

 

Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, also a Republican, says in a statement of his own, “Russia shouldn’t be let back into the G-8 until it changes the behavior that caused it to be expelled in the first place.”

 

* 

BACK IN WASHINGTON D.C., Sierra Club leaders file a Freedom of Information Act request. Then they start digging through E.P.A. records. It doesn’t take long to learn that E.P.A. Administrator Pruitt allowed a Dallas businessman to select the head of the E.P.A.’s influential Science Advisory Board. 

That businessman, Doug Deason, and his dad, Darwin Deason, donated $900,000 to GOP candidates and Trump’s 2016 election. Now the head of the Science Advisory Board will review regulations that can impact Deason’s business. 

Pruitt has also removed pesky scientists, with their ridiculous focus on clean air and water, from several advisory boards. To fill their seats, he allowed coal and gas industry executives to suggest replacements. Now the people who bring you giant oil spills, blow up towns like West, Texas and cause hundreds of fracking-related earthquakes in Oklahoma, will be advising the E.P.A. on clean water and clean air and how to make sure dangerous chemicals don’t end up… 

Oh, forget it. This is Scott Pruitt. 

He doesn’t care any more about clean air and water than Trump cares about eating healthy and regular exercise.

August 2, 2018: Does President Trump Have a White Stripe Down His Back?

 

8/2/18: Paul Manafort gets pummeled in court. Did Trump’s onetime campaign manager launder tens of millions of dollars in cash? It seems so. Did he avoid paying taxes whenever he could? Yes. Did he live a lavish lifestyle, while doing the bidding of Putin and his allies in the Ukraine? Yes! 

____________________ 

“Cyprus is, effectively, the money-laundering country of choice for criminals from Russia.” 

Bill Browder, critic of Vladimir Putin

____________________ 

If it walks like a skunk...

 

Testimony shows Manafort once spent $21,000 for a watch. He shelled out $15,000 for an ostrich skin coat, $9,500 for a vest to match. He spent $900,000, at one store, in just five years, on suits, $450,000 for landscaping at one of his seven homes and millions more on renovations for a home he gave a daughter. Manafort often liked to pay his bills with drafts on Cyprus banks. 

The reason would seem clear. “Cyprus is, effectively, the money-laundering country of choice for criminals from Russia,” Bill Browder, a leading critic of Vladimir Putin tells reporters. “And the reason … is because the Cypriot authorities turn a very active blind eye to the money-laundering.” 

How extensive is the spider’s web of cash woven by criminal types working through Cypriot banks? According to the Dallas Morning News, when the Panama Papers leaked in May 2016 (revealing massive tax evasion by many of the world’s wealthiest individuals), the Bank of Cyprus was cited 4,657 times.

 

Why might this worry the President of the United States? Consider who organized a group of investors in 2014 to buy the Bank of Cyprus for $1.3 billion. That would be none other than Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. Who co-chaired the bank with Mr. Ross, who stepped down join the cabinet in 2017? 

The Morning News reports: 

Ross’s first co-chair was Putin appointee Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, a former KGB agent and long-time associate of Putin. In 2015, Strzhalkovsky was replaced by Maksim Goldman, is [sic] director of strategic projects at Viktor Vekselberg's Renova Group and sits on the board of Rusal. 

 

Trump’s name appears 3,540 times. 

Just for fun, consider the shady possibilities revealed in the sentences above. Putin’s name appears in the Panama Papers. So does President Trump’s. Actually, his name appears 3,540 times; although there may be some plausible explanation why “Trump” turns up as often as it does. 

The Guardian, a leading British paper, has examined the leaked documents and detailed a complex $2 billion money trail that leads straight back to Putin. Vekselberg is currently under sanction by the U.S. government, which means he’s blocked from getting his mitts on an estimated $1.5-$2 billion dollars in assets. Rusal, a company which exports aluminum, is owned by Oleg Deripaska, and in April was placed under sanctions by the Treasury Department. Deripaska and Manafort have a long history of working on all kinds of questionable deals. 

We also know that Manafort possessed something of immense potential value during the 2016 campaign. In an email to a Russian intermediary, Manafort offered to keep Deripaska informed on what positions Trump was planning to take regarding sanctions on Russia. Here one might surmise that Manafort would be working hard to steer Trump in a direction the Russians would want him to go in order to end those sanctions, perhaps for the right price. “If he [Deripaska] needs private briefings we can accommodate,” Manafort wrote in a July 7, 2016, email, sent to Konstantin Kilimnik.

 

Who is Kilimnik? His name surfaced again in March when Mueller’s team was wrapping up a case against a Dutch lawyer, Alex van der Zwaan. Zwann’s crime: lying to the F.B.I. about dealing with Kilimnik. 

Zwaan wasn’t the only man dealing with Kilimnik during the campaign. As Bloomberg explained last spring: 

Now, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has fleshed out another detail. [Rick] Gates said he knew Kilimnik was a onetime Russian military intelligence officer, according to a Tuesday court filing. The FBI is even more direct: Agents believe he has “ties to a Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016,” according to the [court] filing.

 

You can call all of the above “Fake News” if you like. But there’s more we already know and likely a great deal more that Mueller and his team have uncovered in the last fifteen months. 

We’ve all heard the cliché about the duck. Let’s try this instead. If it walks like a skunk, hisses like a skunk, and emits noxious gas like a skunk, it’s a skunk. The fundamental question Mueller must answer in weeks to come: Does President Trump have a white stripe down his back?

February 13, 2019: Another Secret Meeting with Trump Advisers and Russians Is Revealed

 

2/13/19: Yet another secret meeting with Trump campaign people and Russians is revealed. 

On August 2, 2016, we learn (more than two-and-a-half years after it happened) that Paul Manafort, then Trump’s campaign manager, and his right-hand man Rick Gates, met for dinner with a third party at a Manhattan cigar bar, the Grand Havana Room. That third party, Konstantin Kilimnik, was a man with connections to Russian intelligence. He, too, is now under indictment in the Russia probe. 

 

“The people of Crimea…would rather be with Russia.” 

Among other topics Manafort, Gates and Kilimnik discussed a possible peaceful resolution to the conflict in the Ukraine. It was, in fact, the invasion of Ukrainian territory and the seizure of Crimea by Putin’s forces that led to the Obama administration slapping Russia with sanctions. 

At this same meeting, it is alleged, Manafort turned over valuable polling data to Kilimnik. This data would (in theory) help Russian hackers target U.S. social media sites successfully. It is also alleged that Manafort expected to be paid $2.4 million for the trove. After the three men finished dinner, chatted, and smoked cigars, they decided it would be wise to leave by three separate doors, just like any set of friends out for dinner and conspiring to steal an election.

 

Something else interesting had happened the day before: that is August 1, 2016. 

Candidate Trump had informed George Stephanopoulos, host of This Week on ABC that, “The people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were.” 

Then he blamed the problem in the Ukraine on the Obama administration, not on the invaders, themselves.

 

So, while this blogger would argue that we still have not seen evidence that would merit impeachment of President Trump, the case is taking shape. If a gang of eight is suspected of robbing a bank, and five gang members (Flynn, Gates, Manafort, Papadopoulos and Cohen), lie about where they were on the night of the heist, you begin to believe the gang robbed the bank. If two alleged accomplices (Don Jr. and Stone) are caught with safe-cracking tools in their cars, you realize there is evidence the gang robbed the bank. Does that prove the head of the gang, President Trump, gave the orders, or that he was directly involved? 

Not yet. 

At this point you begin to suspect police are going to find marked $100 bills, covered in red dye, under Trump’s bed.

Trump and Putin.

March 7, 2019: Pardons Are in the Air - And Paul Manafort Can only Dream

 

3/7/19: Lately, it sucks to be Donald Trump. He can’t get the cash he wants to build the Great Wall, and he promised he was going to renegotiate the hell out of all the bad trade deals other presidents made. He would fix the whole balance-of-trade mess. 

Fanfare please: the trade deficit for 2018 turns out to be $621 billion, the highest figure in ten years. 

Last time it was worse: 2008, after the last Republican president plunged the U.S. economy into a near depression.

 

* 

THEN AGAIN, maybe it doesn’t suck so much to be Trump! Party time at the White House, as former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is sentenced to only 47 months in jail! 

Manafort even gets credit for eight months served. 

In the president’s mind this unexpectedly light sentence proves that there was no collusion between his campaign and the Russians. Speaking to reporters gathered on the White House lawn, he explains: 

I feel very badly for Paul Manafort…uh… I think it’s been a very, very tough time for him, but if you notice, both his lawyer, a highly respected man and a very highly respected judge said that there was no collusion with Russia, this had nothing to do with collusion with Russia, because there was no collusion. It’s a collusion hoax, a collusion witch hunt.

 

“So bad for our country,” he adds with the wave of a hand and a spritz of self-pity. 

If you are looking for Manafort's pal...you'll need to head to Moscow.

 

Hint of a pardon might influence Manafort to keep yap closed. 

A reporter asks if the president has ever discussed a pardon for Manafort – because, you know, the hope of a pardon might influence Manafort to keep his yap closed if he did know about collusion. 

“I don’t even discuss it,” the president insists. “The only one discussing it is you.” 

Only we know that’s not true. Trump has said repeatedly he won’t take a pardon off the table. 

Wink. Wink. 

Rudy Giuliani has also admitted that lawyers for “several people” under investigation by Special Counsel Mueller have approached him to ask if the president might someday grant pardons. These pardons, we know, are not off the table. I mean, it could depend on what defendants say in court. Rudy says he always tells them he can’t promise them anything and they leave “disappointed.” 

Then again, pardons are not off the table. 

Wink. Wink. Wink.

 

For now, Manafort knows he caught a break. Next week he faces additional sentencing in a Virginia court for another set of crimes. In that case, he’ll find out how much additional time he must serve for additional felonies committed. And in that case the charges do hint at collusion with Russia. 

One felony involves witness tampering, related to Mr. Manafort’s efforts to sync testimony with Konstantin Kilimnik. 

Kilimnik used to hang around Washington D.C., but recently fled to Russia. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: Allow me to clarify! A pardon has been ruled out for one of six convicted felons from the Trump campaign. 

That would be Michael Cohen. Cohen has been coughing up evidence damaging to Mr. Trump. 

There will be no pardon for him.

March 13, 2019: The Wheels of Justice Grind Slowly - But Team Trump Takes Fresh Hits

 

3/13/19: Former Trump 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort is sentenced to an added 43 months in jail. 

____________________ 

“If the people don’t have the facts, democracy can’t work.” 

Judge Amy Berman Jackson

____________________

  

This gives him a total of seven-and-a-half years to ponder his crimes, wonder what ever happened to his python skin jacket, and pray for a pardon from President Trump. (See: 3/7/19 for first sentencing.) 

 

Manafort's expensive python-skin jacket.

 

Judge Amy Berman Jackson roasts the defendant thoroughly before handing down her decision. Manafort’s lobbying work for Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs, which he kept secret for years, “infects our policymaking [emphasis added throughout],” Jackson says. “What you were doing was lying to Congress and the American public,” she adds, noting that Manafort made a “deliberate effort to obscure the facts.” 

“If the people don’t have the facts, democracy can’t work,” the judge warns; and “court is one of those places where facts still matter.” 

You could take that as a veiled slap at Donald J. Trump. 

Manafort tried his best to appear contrite. “I know it was my conduct that brought me here today,” he said. “For these mistakes, I am remorseful. I will be 70 years old in a few weeks. My wife is 66. She needs me. I need her. I ask you to think of this and our need for each other. Please do not take us away from each other. Please let me and my wife be together.”

  

Jackson was in no mood to spare the defendant, who appeared in a wheelchair, wearing a green prison jumpsuit. 

She noted that one of the crimes for which he was being sentenced was witness tampering. That tampering involved a Russian, Konstantin Kilimnik. Kilimnik was under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. But he wasn’t about to stick around and take his chances in court. When last seen he was hopping a flight for Moscow, and we assume never coming back. 

So, how did the president react once he heard the sentencing news? “I feel very badly for Paul Manafort,” Trump told reporters.  Naturally, they asked: Had he given any thought to a pardon for the money-laundering, tax-evading, witness-tampering tool of Russian oligarchs who used to run his campaign? 

Oh, no, Trump claimed. He did add, however, that Judge Jackson had found that there was no collusion with Russians involved in the Manafort case.

In reality, that was the exact opposite of what she had said. Jackson all but said Manafort’s entire defense was a flawed ploy to win the president’s heart. That is: hey, look at me! I keep my mouth shut about what I know. When the coast is clear, you slap me with a pardon. 

Manafort’s lawyer exited the courtroom Wednesday and made the same claim: that Judge Jackson had found that in his client’s case it had was proven there was no collusion with Russians. 

He was lying, too.

 

The pardon door might have slammed shut even before Trump could reach for the knob. Within minutes of Jackson’s ruling, New York State prosecutors filed 16 fresh felony charges against Manafort, which could mean ten additional years behind bars if he were convicted.  

A presidential pardon would not get Trump’s old campaign manager off the hook for state crimes.

 

* 

“Sleep well tonight, you have friends in high places.” 

 BY DAY’S END we had fresh news regarding presidential pardons. Emails between Michael Cohen and lawyers for Mr. Trump had surfaced. 

Before diving into this story, it helps to go back to April 9, 2018. That was the day federal law enforcement raided Cohen’s home, office and hotel suite and confiscated his electronic devices. From that moment on, it was clear authorities believed the president’s lawyer was involved in some kind of criminal enterprise. Prosecutors soon charged Mr. Cohen with eight felonies – while also listing President Trump as an unindicted coconspirator, or “Individual 1.” 

Cohen had to find out. Was he going to be protected by his longtime boss and top client, now the President of the United States? 

And his longtime boss had to find out. Would his former fixer still take a bullet for him and clamp his mouth?

 

What made this unlike your garden variety criminal case was the president’s ability to grant pardons for federal crimes. Cohen had to be pondering his predicament. Lawyers for Cohen had to be wondering. How could their client make it clear he’d keep quiet if a pardon were coming his way? How could Trump’s lawyers hint to Mr. Cohen that a pardon would be forthcoming, and how could they make it clear what they expected in return? There has been a good deal of arguing in recent weeks about whether Cohen asked for a pardon first, or whether the president and his lawyers were all but guaranteeing a pardon in return for sealed lips. 

What is not in dispute is that the president has said he would not take pardons off the table (hint: for witnesses who protected him). That means any discussion related to pardons might devolve into classic obstruction of justice. 

Initially, the president was all in on support for Cohen. Trump made this clear while speaking to reporters from the Oval Office just hours after the Cohen raids: 

So I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys, a good man and it’s a disgraceful situation. It’s a total witch-hunt. I’ve been saying it for a long time….And it’s a disgrace, it’s a real disgrace. It’s an attack on our country in a true sense. 

 

On April 21, 2018, Trump made it clear where he stood regarding Mr. Cohen when he tweeted:

 

 

So, what were Trump’s defense lawyers, and Cohen and his team, discussing that very day? Recently revealed emails allow us to see. 

“I just spoke to Rudy Giuliani and told him I was on your team,” Robert Costello wrote in the first email. It was one of two from Mr. Costello that popped up in Cohen’s email inbox on April 21, 2018. Costello was a longtime friend and associate of Giuliani and was serving as intermediary between the president’s old lawyer, now in serious legal jeopardy, and his new lawyer, Horndog Rudy, whose full-time job was keeping the president out of similar jeopardy. Rudy “asked me to tell you,” Costello wrote, “that he knows how tough this is on you and your family and he will make (sure) to tell the President. He said thank you for opening this back channel of communication and asked me to keep in touch.” 

We don’t know if Cohen responded. But CNN has seen a second, follow-up email, later that day. 

This time, Costello assured Cohen he had spoken with Giuliani and their conversation was “very very positive.” “There was never a doubt and they are in our corner,” Costello continued. “Rudy said this communication channel must be maintained. He called it crucial and noted how reassured they were that they had someone like me whom Rudy has known for so many years in this role.”  

Finally, he added, “Sleep well tonight, you have friends in high places.”

 

So, was this a veiled hint to Cohen – keep your yap closed and you can expect a pardon? If you have an ounce of objectivity, you know it is. Costello, however, told CNN that such an interpretation was “utter nonsense.”  

Well, CNN wanted to know, had a pardon been dangled in front of Cohen, or not? 

Costello scoffed: 

Does dangled mean that he raised it and I mentioned it to Giuliani, and Giuliani said the President is not going to discuss pardons with anybody? If that’s dangling it, that’s dangling it for about 15 seconds. The first time I kind of danced around the issue because Michael brought it up with me and I told him, “Look, this is way too premature.... But if you want me to bring it up, I will bring it up.” And I did.

 

Premature, yes. 

On the table? No doubt.

 

CNN tracked down Giuliani for this story and inquired: What about the “friends in high places” comment? 

What exactly could these friends in high places do for Mr. Cohen – and who might those friends be? 

“That was about Michael Cohen thinking that the President was mad at him [Cohen],” Giuliani told CNN. “I called (Costello) to reassure him that the President was not mad. It wasn’t long after the raid and the President felt bad for him.” 

Yes, the president felt bad for Cohen at the time – just like the president feels bad for Paul Manafort, as of today. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: A fresh sign of trouble for Team Trump may have been overlooked in all the flash and bang of this week’s news. 

Officials from the Department of Justice asked a judge for permission to delay turning over 302’s to General Michael Flynn’s lawyers, preparatory to final sentencing. Flynn has been cooperating for two years, but the 302’s in question (official F.B.I. documents detailing Flynn’s interviews with agents), are important in open cases. DOJ lawyers explain: “The 302s of General Flynn’s interviews relating entirely to matters other than the pending charges against the defendant contain information concerning a number of sensitive matters, including ongoing investigations.” 

We already know the General fingered two other individuals who, as the DOJ officially noted, were indicted last December 17: 

An indictment was unsealed today charging Bijan Rafiekian, aka Bijan Kian, 66, of San Juan Capistrano, California, and Kamil Ekim Alptekin, 41, of Istanbul, and a Turkish national, with conspiracy, acting in the United States as illegal agents of the government of Turkey, and making false statements to the FBI.

 

What other treasures Flynn might have revealed remain to be seen. If the rule of law lives  and that’s a big “if” with Trump seated in the White House – any and all revelations will be seen.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (3/18/21): Rafiekian was convicted by a jury, had his case thrown out by the judge, and then had it reinstated by the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in March 2021. 

The Justice Department explained: 

According to court records and evidence presented at trial, the scheme included using Alptekin’s Dutch shell company to act as FIG’s “client.” FIG [Flynn International Group, run by General Flynn] was paid $600,000 in three installments from an account in Turkey in Alptekin’s name. After Alptekin made the payments to FIG, FIG kicked back 20% of the payments to Alptekin’s shell company.

 

(As far as this blogger can ascertain, Alptekin has remained beyond the reach of the law, since he resides in Istanbul, Turkey.)

January 20, 2020: President Trump's "Crack" Corruption-Fighting Team in Ukraine

 

IN THIS POST, WE BEGIN COVERING YEAR FOUR OF THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY....

NADIR OF DEMOCRACY

  

____________________ 

“The worse [sic] part of Donald Trump’s presidency isn’t what we learned about him, it’s what we learned about our Family & Friends.” 

“Dax Gigandet” on Twitter

____________________

  

1/20/20: Year Four of the Trump Presidency begins like Year Two, and Year Three. Most Americans understand that the man in the White House is both incompetent and a threat to democracy.    

(At least the economy is strong.)

 

* 

THE GENTLEMAN below is Lev Parnas and that’s his mugshot. He’s the currently-indicted former bosom pal/business partner of Trump personal lawyer/bosom pal Rudy Giuliani. 

Rudy and Lev used to be tight.

 

____________________ 

Chasing after corruption in Ukraine, like a pit bull chasing a fat mailman.

____________________

  

Mug shot of Lev Parnas.

 

President Trump has said that he does not know Parnas. Vice President Jesus has hinted he wouldn’t know Parnas if Parnas passed the collection plate in church. Even Rudy is having difficulty remembering. 

“Lev, who?” 

So, let’s refresh our memories. Parnas, Igor Fruman (also a pal of Rudy’s) and two other lesser figures have been, 

charged in a four-count indictment alleging that each of the defendants conspired to violate the ban on foreign donations and contributions in connection with federal and state elections. In addition, PARNAS and FRUMAN were charged with conspiring to make contributions in connection with federal elections in the names of others, and with making false statements to and falsifying records to obstruct the administration of a matter within the jurisdiction of the Federal Election Commission (“FEC”). 

 

Have we mentioned lately that a lot of felons and alleged felons show up in stories about Team Trump? Parnas and his co-defendants were allegedly funneling foreign money into GOP and Trump campaign coffers. 

Or: Foreign policy for sale!

 

* 

YOU MAY BE ASKING yourself, “How can this be???” We have all heard President Trump insist that where Ukraine is involved, he only cares about cleaning up corruption. He wants to clean it all up! We have been told that he is all for investigating corruption in every shape, color and shoe and hat size. His defenders in Congress have told us the president really cares about Ukraine. 

He can’t stop thinking about Ukraine, even when he’s golfing. 

We know that in his famous July 25 phone call to the president of Ukraine, Trump asked the Ukrainians to get involved in his efforts to clean up corruption in their country, by investigating just one specific company. That company, by coincidence, was Burisma, which by an even more amazing coincidence happened to be the company for which Hunter Biden worked. 

What were the chances!

 

If you listened to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Oh.) shouting about all the sleazy Democrats in Congress who started investigating Trump – after a whistleblower tooted warning – you know Trump was going to be chasing after corruption in Ukraine, like a pit bull chasing a fat mailman. 

We know Acting White House Chief of Babysitting Mick Mulvaney told reporters that military aid was being withheld because the Department of Justice was participating in an investigation into corruption in Ukraine. We also know DOJ immediately offered this assessment. “If the White House was withholding aid in regards to the cooperation of any investigation at the Department of Justice, that is news to us,” a DOJ spokesperson announced.

 

* 

THIS IS WHERE the crack corruption-crushing crew assembled by the president comes into view. Rudy would lead the crusade. The president hired Rudy. Rudy hired Lev and Igor and those three and several other lesser lights went to work investigating all the companies and individuals listed below. Not just Burisma, the company for which the son of a political rival had been employed. Not just Hunter Biden and maybe Joe Biden, his dad. Trump and his crusaders against corruption were coming. Look out, Ukrainian scumbags. Your days are numbered! 

Here’s the list: 

1)     Burisma

2)     Hunter Biden (and maybe Joe)

3)     ….

4)     ….

5)     ….

6)     ….

7)     ….

8)     ….

9)     ….

10)  …

 

Okay, there were no other companies or individuals. In fact, there were zero Ukrainians on the list. 

 

Paul Manafort, corruption fighter extraordinaire! 

In fact, the crusade for a clean Ukrainian government began even before Trump was elected. He began assembling a crack crusading crew in March 2016, when he hired Paul Manafort to help win the presidency. By June, Manafort was heading up the Trump campaign. He was leading the fight against crookery in all its manifold forms, like General Custer charging the Lakota and Cheyenne at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. 

Manafort had vast experience in the corruption-fighting field. As a young man he and Roger Stone (both of whom have been convicted on multiple felony charges in recent years) set up a Washington law firm that specialized in cleaning up the reputations of world leaders. See! Cleaning up corruption! The two partners were good at what they did, prospered, and became known for their fine work as part of “The Torturer’s Lobby.” That’s how you clean up corruption. You spray perfume on the reputations of corrupt Nigerian politicians and others. 

Who like torture!!

 

Eventually, Manafort and Stone parted ways. Manafort went to work crusading for good government – in – of all places – Ukraine! He was adept at fighting corruption. He made tens of millions fighting. When he was done, he had piles of cash stashed in secret bank accounts in Cyprus. Not just one secret account. Fifteen. Manafort also fought the good fight by setting up shell companies to handle all the money he was making fighting crime. Not just one shell company. Ten! Ten shell companies. He was like a corruption-fighting conglomerate. Manafort’s reputation for fighting crime grew. He made millions working for leading Ukrainian politicians, only some of whom had to flee to Russia to avoid arrest after stealing from their people. 

Nowadays, the “Fake News” folks like to undercut Mr. Manafort’s fine work by quoting from Department of Justice and court documents, showing that Manafort had worked for known money-launders. Reporters crank out “Fake News” stories, noting that Mr. Manafort had – since going to work for Mr. Trump – been found guilty of a whole bunch of felonies and pled guilty to a whole bunch more – including witness tampering. They add that that tampering took place in 2018; and then Konstantin Kilimnik, the tampered-with witness, fled to Russia. 

So, as any fool could see, Team Trump has always been huge when it comes to fighting corruption. 

Only cynics could fail to see it.

 

Nor dare we ignore the corruption-crushing efforts of Mr. Rudy Giuliani. Per President Trump’s instructions, he traveled to Ukraine on several occasions, always in an effort to ferret out crooks who might be related to U.S. political opponents of his boss. While Rudy was visiting, he told everyone he met that he was functioning as Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer. He wasn’t there as a representative of the President of the United States. He wasn’t representing the U.S. government. He had one client. Trump. And Rudy knew he would need help. So, he hired two famous corruption fighters, Parnas and Fruman. The trio set to work. Their first move in their crusade was to get the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine fired. 

That was the perfect place to begin! Even though no one had ever accused the ambassador of corruption.

 

* 

MEANWHILE, back in Washington, Manafort and Stone were showing up in court, as part of the crusade to clean up government, home and abroad. Manafort was cleaning up by getting indicted and convicted by a jury on eight felony counts. The same jury voted 11-1 to convict on ten more. Manafort got off on those charges. Later he agreed to cooperate with investigators. He admitted to those extra ten charges, but they did not, technically, count against him. 

Otherwise, he would be the clear leader in the felony count, regarding all the assorted felons on Team Trump. 

Rick Gates, his corruption-fighting sidekick, who worked with him in Ukraine, pled guilty to multiple felonies also. Gates began cooperating with prosecutors. 

There were other hiccups along the way. Manafort violated his cooperation agreement. The feds slapped him with new charges. He went to court again. He got thumped in court again. He got more felonies added to his record. Currently, he’s serving seven-and-half years in prison. 

This makes fighting corruption kind of hard.

 

Stone happened to bump into a Russian in the spring of 2106. The Russian said he had dirt on Hillary Clinton. If Stone wanted to fight corruption, he would have to pay $2 million to get his hands on the dirt. Stone told the Russian that his boss, Mr. Trump, was cheap. He would never pay that much. 

Later, Stone told a congressional committee that he had never met with any Russians during the campaign. Not even anyone who sounded Russian. His corruption-fighting career came to a halt, however, when a jury convicted him on seven felony counts, including lying under oath and witness tampering. 

With a good chunk of his corruption-fighting team suddenly jailed, or awaiting sentencing, the President of the United States turned to Rudy, and Rudy turned to Lev and Igor to lead the fight.

 

____________________ 

“Protecting the integrity of our elections – and protecting our elections from unlawful foreign influence – are core functions of our campaign finance laws.”  

Notice of arrest, Southern District of New York

____________________

  

At first, the trio did some excellent work for Mr. Trump. As noted, they started cleanup on Aisle 1, by getting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, fired. You can see how committed Lev and Igor were to cleaning up Ukraine when you read the notice of their arrest: 

U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said: “As alleged in the Indictment, the defendants broke the law to gain political influence while avoiding disclosure of who was actually making the donations and where the money was coming from. They sought political influence not only to advance their own financial interests but to advance the political interests of at least one foreign official – a Ukrainian government official who sought the dismissal of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Protecting the integrity of our elections – and protecting our elections from unlawful foreign influence – are core functions of our campaign finance laws. And as this Office has made clear, we will not hesitate to investigate and prosecute those who engage in criminal conduct that draws into question the integrity of our political process.”

 

FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. said: “Campaign finance laws exist for a reason. The American people expect and deserve an election process that hasn’t been corrupted by the influence of foreign interests, and the public has the right to know the true source of campaign contributions. These allegations aren’t about some technicality, a civil violation, or an error on a form. This investigation is about corrupt behavior and deliberate law breaking. The FBI takes the obligation to tackle corruption [ironic emphasis] seriously – there are no exceptions to this rule.”

 

In other words, the F.B.I. had joined the fight for clean government in Ukraine by arresting Rudy’s pals.

 

Amnesia spread throughout the Trump administration, like that Chinese coronavirus. Attorney General William Barr said he wouldn’t know Parnas or Fruman if they jumped out of a tree and landed on him while he was out walking his poodle. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo agreed. He had never laid eyes on those characters. He wasn’t sure he could pick them out of a police lineup. Interesting – since they had been instrumental in getting a U.S. ambassador fired. 

The fact that all his friends now seemed to be turning their backs on him, just because he was under arrest, made Mr. Parnas sad. He started posting videos and pictures to remind his pals of happier times, when they were in the fight to clean up Ukraine together. He posted pictures showing him with Rudy. He had another – with Rudy – and Igor. We saw Lev sitting down for breakfast with Donald Trump Jr. We saw Lev in a video, taken at Mar-a-Lago. Here we could watch him introduce other Ukrainians to the president, but only the non-corrupt kind of Ukrainians. (We hope.) We saw Lev and Igor and Rudy standing with President Trump and Vice President Pence in another photo. All five gentlemen were smiling. 

When asked by reporters about Parnas, Vice President Jesus, responded, “I don’t know the guy.” Any claim that Pence knew about the scheme to delay military aid to Ukraine, as Parnas said he did, was, according to a spokesperson for the vice president, “completely false.” Parnas released another video. In it he could be seen holding Mrs. Pence’s hand. It was a 23-second clip, to be fair. It might not prove much. We do know Parnas ran in high Trump circles.

VP Pence, Fruman, Parnas, President Trump, Rudy Giuliani in happier times.

 

* 

He might have stolen a few pennies from the Ukrainian people. 

WE ALSO KNOW that Lev, Igor and Rudy and a number of other dedicated corruption fighters did some of their best work in trying to get a Ukrainian oligarch named Dmitry Firtash out of a jam. 

The crusaders quickly went to work to save Firtash, who was being targeted unfairly under U.S. law. These efforts made Firtash happy. After Parnas got arrested, Dmitry sent Lev $1 million. But he thought the safest way to fight corruption was to break up the money into five equal installments and deposit it in Lev’s wife’s bank account. Lev and his lovely wife promptly forgot they had that extra money when listing assets at Lev’s first bail hearing. When you are busy battling crooks it’s easy to forget a million dollars. In that situation, you know you would. You would be balancing the checkbook. You would see that your wife had a million more in her account than expected. “Honey,” you would yell to your spouse in the kitchen, “Do you know anything about these five installments of $200,000 that have showed up in your account?” 

Then you would go back to fighting corrupt oligarchs and politicians in Ukraine. All of them named Biden. 

Because that is your mission!

 

This is why you work for President Donald J. Trump. You are not in it for the money. You would fight corruption for free, with your bare hands, and stand there smiling, in a picture, by Trump’s side. But if someone wanted to give you a million dollars…well, you would take it to be polite. So Lev and Igor and Rudy kept up the fight to help Firtash avoid extradition to the United States, just because he’s under federal indictment for bribery and money-laundering. Also, because he might have stolen a few pennies from the Ukrainian people. 

Firtash? He too wanted to fight the corruption – not be the corruption. For that reason he paid another $1 million to two American lawyers, Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing. Joe and Victoria are married, and one way they like to help drain the Ukrainian swamp is to show up on Fox News, and talk about corruption problems in Ukraine, none of which involve Firtash. 

You have probably already guessed it. Joe and Victoria want to clean up corruption by focusing on Hunter Biden. 

And Hunter’s dad.

 

The happy couple had a plan. They would pay Lev Parnas to be their interpreter, so they could fight corruption in more than one language. Parnas would receive $400,000 for his services, leading him to joke at one point, “I’m the best paid interpreter in the world.” Rudy pitched in and asked Yuri Lutshenko, former prosecutor general of Ukraine, if he would like to fight corruption by handing over $200,000, and asked a second group of Ukrainians to chip in $300,000. That way, he and the boys would have the cash they needed to battle the criminals. 

 

Can you guess who gave Yanukovych an “extreme makeover?” 

At this point, the story takes a few more twists and turns. Lutshenko is a famous corruption fighter in his own right – and it was a shame back in 2012, when he was found guilty of embezzlement and sentenced to spend time in prison. Then it sucked when he got sentenced to spend time behind bars again on other charges. Then Victor Yanukovych, the President of Ukraine, pardoned him in 2013. Then the president decided shortly after that he might need to go after corruption by fleeing to Russia. Then Reuters described Mr. Yanukovych as a “toppled ‘mafia’ president,” which was mean, and reported that he had been fighting corruption by absconding with billions of dollars, which only technically belonged to the Ukrainian people. 

Now, for just a moment, we must back up a little. Can you guess who – according to a U.S. State Department cable in 2006 – helped give Yanukovych an “extreme makeover” when he was running to be president in Ukraine?  

 

You will never guess. So, I will tell you. It was Paul Manafort! Did we already mention Manafort’s lobbying firm, and its fine reputation?  Manafort was the perfect man for this clean-up job. 

As Time explained, in those days, Yanukovych was head of the Party of Regions, which the U.S. State Department described as, 

“a haven” for “mobsters and oligarchs.”

 

Making things harder for Manafort were the candidate’s rough manners and criminal past, which had dimmed his chances of winning elections. Oafish and inarticulate, Yanukovych had served jail time in his youth for theft and battery. He also had a hard time speaking Ukrainian – the national language – as he had grown up in the Russian-speaking province of Donetsk. Yet Manafort accepted the challenge of trying to make Yanukovych electable. The man paying the exorbitant bills for these efforts was an early backer of the Party of Regions, the coal and metals magnate Rinat Akhmetov, who soon began calling Manafort his friend.

 

And the man who really hoped Yanukovych would win? Time to guess again! 

Putin.

 

Manafort and Akhmetov were now corruption-busting pals, even though Akhmetov had to flee to Monaco to avoid arrest by Ukrainian authorities. Then he returned once Yanukovych took charge. And he prospered. By 2014 his estimated wealth was $11.2 billion. But when Yanukovych fled, Akhmetov took a few financial lumps of his own, and decided he’d rather live in England. 

By the way, we haven’t forgotten Firtash. Back to him shortly. 

Akhmetov (sometimes spelled “Akhmedov”) settled in England. He and his wife began fighting. Divorce resulted, followed by a battle over assets. The courts ordered Mr. Akhmetov to turn over the couple’s yacht, named Luna, to his ex-wife, as part of the settlement. It’s a nice little pleasure craft, worth half a billion dollars. (See 7/24/18.) 

Anyway, you start digging into this story and pretty soon you turn up all kinds of elite corruption fighters. Many have interesting connections to that paragon of clean government, Mr. Manafort. If you look at a list of billionaires drawn up by the U.S. Treasury Department for sanction, you notice names that pop up here and there in the Mueller Report. The now-yachtless Mr. Akhmetov made the sanction list. So did Aras Agalarov, who helped broker the famous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016.

 

Who was in that meeting?

 

Manafort.

 

Don Jr.

 

Jared Kushner.

 

Also making an appearance on the list of fantastically rich people, now under U.S. sanction, but people you just knew really wanted to end corruption: Sergei Gorkov, a banker with whom Kushner met secretly in early 2017. There was Dmitry Rybolovlev, who bought, at a highly-inflated price, a Palm Beach mansion from Donald J. Trump some years back. And you had Viktor Vekselberg, who met in secret with Michael Cohen in January 2017.

 

Nor should we forget Oleg Deripaska, who had worked on all kinds of projects in tandem with Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates. True, the Russian oligarch’s reputation as a crime fighter took a hit when he was accused of bribery, money laundering, extortion, and ordering the murder of a business rival.

 

But these guys couldn’t be stopped. The fight to drain the international swamp continued apace.

 

*

 

NOW, TO PROVE our point, that President Trump wants to tear up corruption, root, branch, leaf, and even birds in the tree, we return to Mr. Firtash. In April 2018, a U.S. senator, Roger Wicker, a Republican, sent the Justice Department a letter. He was curious why Firtash had not yet been extradited, since he had been out on bail, living in luxury in Austria, and fighting to stay out of reach of U.S. authorities for four years. In October 2019, Sen. Wicker got tired of waiting for response and pointed out to reporters that his letter had not been answered. That seemed pretty weak on the part of DOJ since Wicker had also pointed out that Firtash was piling up “hundreds of millions” in additional “illicit profits” while hanging out with the other corruption-clobbering crusaders. You know who we mean: Rudy and Lev and Igor and the married couple lawyers who always enjoyed showing up to talk to Lou Dobbs at Fox News.

 

In any case, we should probably note again that bail for Firtash had been set in 2014 at $174 million.

 

Plus, he was forced to surrender his passports – which kind of cramped all the good work he might have done to clean up Ukraine, if, for example, he could only flee, I mean “travel,” to Russia.

 

Speaking of Russia, it would be remiss to fail to mention the greatest-corruption fighter of them all. This would be the man who invaded Ukraine to stomp out corruption, and maybe kill a few thousand Ukrainians while he was at it. We are talking about that not-such-a bad killer fellow, as Trump once described him. This would be the very man who Trump cronies – I mean “corruption-fighting friends” – like Felix Sater thought should be given a penthouse worth $50 million for free to seal the Trump Tower Moscow deal. You might be saying to yourself that this sounds like a bribe. And you might be thinking it would be a huge conflict of interest if Candidate Trump were trying to land a lucrative deal. In Russia! While running for office!! 

But that just proves how little you know about fighting corruption. 

Yes. We are talking about Vladimir Putin, the man, the myth, the foe of corruption on all seven continents, a man willing to toss reporters off fifth floor balconies in an effort to drain the swamps of countries he has invaded. We are talking about a guy who, on a humble government salary, going back to when he worked for the KGB, saved, and saved. And, lo, he came to be worth somewhere between $70 and $200 billion, so carefully did he save his rubles.

 

* 

The only way to clean up all the corruption in Ukraine. 

IN CLOSING this tale of Trump and his unfailing efforts to clean up government, both home and abroad, we should mention two other young men who have dedicated themselves to the same fight. These are two men, unlike Hunter Biden. They would never trade on the family name, just to milk millions out of prospective business partners. Here, of course, we are talking about Eric and Donald Trump Jr., pillars of squeaky clean business and pristine government. 

According to James Dodson, a golf writer, Eric told him in 2014 that the Trump Organization was having no trouble financing new golf courses. They agreed to play a round, as Dodson remembers it: 

So when I got in the cart with Eric…as we were setting off, I said, “Eric, who’s funding? I know no banks – because of the recession, the Great Recession – have touched a golf course. You know, no one’s funding any kind of golf construction. It’s dead in the water the last four or five years.” And this is what he said. He said, “Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia [emphasis added].” I said, “Really?” And he said, “Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.” Now that was three years ago, so it was pretty interesting.

 

By the way, it might be worth mentioning here that one fine way to launder money is to sneak it out of, say, Russia, and buy assets like real estate, including golf courses, in, say, the U.S.A. But that could not in any way be the case here, because everyone knows Trumps hate corruption. 

Eric responded, as all Trumps do, by calling Dodson’s story “totally fabricated and just another example of why there is such a deep distrust of the media in this country.” It didn’t help when someone dredged up a quote from his older brother. In 2008, Don Jr. told an audience at a real estate conference in New York City, that the “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

 

Five years later, while running the Miss Universe pageant, which was held in Moscow in 2013, Don Sr. first got interested in cleaning up corruption when he attended a party with all kinds of Russian corruption fighters. “Almost all of the oligarchs were in the room,” is how he put it later. In fact, a more recent review of financial records by Reuters in 2017, found that 63 Russians had invested a total of $100 million in Trump Florida properties. So, the moral of that story is: 63 more corruption fighters, fighting crooks by investing in foreign real estate. 

A story by McClatchy, in June 2018, revealed the names of even more corruption-fighting Russians and Ukrainians, who had seen the wisdom of buying up Trump properties. There was, for instance, Aleksandr Burman, a Ukrainian-born businessman who engaged in a scheme to defraud Medicare of $26 million (or maybe $30 million). Burman is currently serving a ten-year prison sentence. So, his corruption-fighting days may be over. In sunnier times, however, he paid $725,000 in cash for a condo at a Trump Tower in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida. Another typical buyer – McClatchy said there were 86 – was Leonid Zeldovich, who had “reportedly done extensive business in the Russian-annexed area of Crimea. Records show he gobbled up four Trump condo units at a cost of $4.35 million, three in New York City, between 2007 and 2010.   

He, too, paid cash.

 

It is alleged that Donald J. Trump got interested in “cleaning up corruption” way back in 1984. At that time, he allowed purchasers of multi-million-dollar condos to pay in cash, by going through shell companies. A gentleman named David Bogaton, said to have been a Russian gangster, was one of his first customers. Bogaton handed over $6 million (equal to something like $15 million today) and snagged five condos in the new Trump Tower in New York City. 

Last, but not least, Trump enjoyed fighting criminals by using banks that would give him risky loans – when many banks wouldn’t – just because a string of Trump casinos ended up bankrupt. That meant Trump worked closely with Deutsche Bank, which fought crookery on all fronts, by laundering Russian money. And also, money for drug cartels. Sadly investigators round the world did not appreciate the sterling efforts the bank was making, because Deutsche had to pay a 15 million euro fine for the Russian business. Then there was the $630 million fine for more money laundering, involving more Russians. And the other fine for laundering drug cartel dollars. 

So, yes. The only way to clean up all the corruption in Ukraine. 

Get Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden.

Rybolovlev's yacht.