Discussion: 'Long Time Friends' Of Paul Manafort Set Up Legal Defense Fund

TPM Article Topics
21

BUT, being the scammers they are, they know how to do a con.

As their motto says, leave no money on the easy mark.

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With names like Boris, Natasha, Vladimir etc.

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The reality is that I come here to read your take on things, irasdad. Thank you.

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The Paul Manafort Defense Fund was established “to assist Paul and his family in meeting the tremendous legal costs resulting from the proceedings commenced against him by the Office of Special Counsel following my the historic 2016 Presidential Election over Crooked Hillary.”

I guess that we can safely deduce who set up this fund, based on the edit history shown above.

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Leftover funds?” What leftovers?

Manafort’s backers must have hired a Hollywood accountant to do distributions (e.g., if someone offers to pay you a percentage of the net income for a movie for some contribution they want you to make, it is practically guaranteed you will never see a dime).

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I thought they were all wealthy.

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I want my Mueller T V

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Every defendant in a criminal action is entitled to a defense, getting paid for services duly rendered in a criminal case doesn’t make a the lawyers “greedy,” charging whatever the traffic will bear doesn’t make a lawyer any greedier than any other person who sells goods or services at market rates, and representing a Republican doesn’t make you “Republican supporting” any more than defending Nazis makes you a Nazi.

But I strongly suspect Robert Mueller is going to be very interested in finding out who these “friends” who don’t want to be identified might happen to be.

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Can he compel the defense fund to divulge those names?

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Sure. He could send FBI agents to ask and issue a subpoena if they won’t, though there would be a major outrage offensive orchestrated as soon as he did. But I doubt that he’s going to need to do that. Large sums of money do not flow from account A to account B without leaving a trail that FBI agents know very well how to follow.

There’s a reason Tony Soprano was stashing vast sums of cash in drop ceilings rather than opening a bank account.

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another rube scam it would appear, good, money to Manafort is money not going to repube candidates

how many of the legal fund donors are from Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar? Probably no need to cross-reference the Manafort legal contributors list with those foreign donors to the NRA and the Repube party as they are almost certainly the same check writers

unless there is a major rally in November and the Dems find the courage of their voters convictions (which is unlikely since the Dems only seem interested courting the center-right into their fold at the expense of those on the left upon whom the Dems rely for votes - gotta appeal to the tRUmp-lite voters for some reason, so no “Impeachment on the table”) it is my opinion that the democratic experience in the former-USA may have been dealt a lethal blow

I would argue that running government is somewhat like raising children, unless there is real discipline/consequences for behavior instead of ineffectual verbal reprimands with no real consequence, the egregious behavior will not be tempered. The Dems fucked up in 2008 when holding Congress and the White House by not going after the Bushies’ transgressions from 2001 to 2008, they let them get away with the shit (gotta look forward, not back, right Nancy and Barack?), so why would the Repubes not push the envelope further to see what they would get away with? Now we have this. Reap what you sow.

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I think that’s probably just trolling. “Leftovers? What leftovers…ha ha ha!”

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Let me guess … Boris and Natasha finally stepped up.

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True. Except that it’s Treasury who tracks this. Which makes it a little less assured in this case…

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You beat me to it.

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OK, co-conspirators, then.

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Yes, this is the same cabinet department that declared “The trade war with China has been called off!”

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Lifetime fly-by-night shady dealers like Paul Manafort have no friends.

Likely true. However, Oleg Deripaska is running out of options for recovering the $20 million Manafort scammed from him. Might he be the philanthropist behind, and primary beneficiary of, both the Brain Trauma and Manafort Defense Funds?
If so, we can expect very few of the donated dollars to go to Manafort’s lawyers.

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39

Awesome. Lets lock down even more of the GOP money in defense fees instead of campaign ads :smiley:

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Lol. Definitely check out the website. It’s set up as a classic rightwing scam. Sure, interested, complicit parties may donate if need be, but it’s designed to skim the pockets of all the gullible followers of Spanky the God-Emperor. “Fight back against the Deep State!” “Poor Trump and Manafort are victims and You can help save them!” There’s even a video of Hannity maundering on about “the corruption and bias inside Special Counsel Mueller’s team”.

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