Who Exactly Did Paul Manafort Give Trump Campaign Data To?
Well, when you are running around the world trying to sell access to the future maybe president, I think it would be just about anyone with the ability to write bigly checks. mm excuse me, wire large sums of money to no mans land.
Reminds me of old joke -
A couple is short of money, and decides to resort to prostitution to make ends meet.
At the end of the first night, the unlucky spouse comes home with the take.
“How much did you get?”
“$85.10”.
“$85.10?, Who gave you the dime?”
“Everybody.”
And another one to fit Trump’s idiot crime family: “Eric Trump conceived of what he knew was a brilliant financial scam, sure to impress his father. He opened a PayDay Lending operation in a small southern berg. He loaned out $3 million and, under the cover of darkness, sneaked out of town”.
I’m still not sure how giving USA polling data to Ukrainians who owe you money is going to get them to repay you. Is it that you’re demonstrating influence and ability to hurt them? I would think the Ukrainians would have nothing to fear in that regard. The only reasonable connection I can see is that having that data might give the Ukrainians a sellable asset or at least influence with Russia. Money or a favor that makes them favorably inclined to dig deep into their pockets to repay a debt they could probably leave unpaid without consequence.
Are the names reversed in the last sentence? Didn’t Manafort owe millions to Lyovochkin?
No, from what I’ve read, Lyovochkin owed Manafort and Manafort was hoping he could get Lyovochkin to pay up so that Manafort could, in turn, pay back Deripaska.
What use would these guys have for that data? What interest would they have in it? Seems much more like they are a conduit
Why Manafort would give valuables to people who owe him money in order to get money from them is beyond my imagination.
Could it be that the pollster Tony Fabrizio who worked with Manafort on Ukrainian elections and has met with Mueller felt more comfortable with his data being shared with Lyovochkin and Akhmetov because he knew them from past dealing in Ukraine, whereas he might feel it bad for his professional reputation to be found to have share data directly with Oleg Deripaska?
Or maybe Fabrizio had no knowledge of or influence over where his data was being sent. I don’t know, just wondering if the two TPM stories are related more than we realize.
Let’s cut to the chase. That data only has value to people outside the campaign if they are going to use it for a targeted disinformation campaign.
It literally has zero value other than that.
It’s possible they complained to Manafort that you haven’t done squat for us yet. The polling data was another installment.
People underestimate how highly regarded Fabrizio is as a pollster both within the US and in Eastern Europe. He ran Manafort’s polling operations in Ukraine. When Manafort was shopping Fabrizio’s data, he was giving away the most credible asset he had. He did it for a few reasons: 1. To help induce GRU and the Kremlin to continue to support efforts to undermine HRC; 2. To get those who owed him money to pay up; 3. To subdue those to whom he owed money by offering them an opportunity to earn a lot more through removal of sanctions and buying access to a new Administration. (The bribery angle was offered to all groups btw). This was the score of a lifetime for Manafort at a time when he desperately needed a huge score. It all blew up in his face, however.
Could he have give the data to Lyovichenko to sell in to get the money to pay Manafort so Manafort could pay Deripaska?
Polling data for starters. Personal information about you and I given to Russian intelligence under the control of Vladimir Putin.
Have a nice day, Republican voters.
There are a few things at play:
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Showing you have that kind of clout means you have value. People invest in things that have value.
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Having the info come through Kilimnick communicated that the Kremlin approved the message. If Manafort was viewed in a positive light by the Kremlin, then you make Manafort your friend. That’s how this stuff works in mob land.
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Manafort was implicitly and explicitly dangling access to the WH for all kinds of untold goodies. That’s what the Inaugural fund was about. Give money to Trump’s Inaugural fund and he’ll unfreeze an asset, open up some opportunities etc.
The question keeps buzzing in my mind is how all parties to this transaction operated under the delusion that they would not be discovered. There are too many ends left dangling throughout the whole operation.
These circumstances depict a flamboyant amateurishness. The amorphous fuzziness of the inaugural slush fund; Foreign nationals of dubious distinction mingling with the crowd during the inaugural events, and; Plainly stupid people running the operation who would have trouble explaining why a cookie is missing from the cookie jar.
I am not above calling people names, as has happened too many times, but this level of searing idiocy brings me back to the original question: How did they expect not to rolled from any investigation? Or to escape investigation altogether?
First, they’re crooks. Crooks aways think they can get away with it. Second, following 9-11 we basically stopped serious prosecution of white collar crime. Obama got us back into it, but too many of these crooks had more than 2 decades on the DOJ. Third, these crimes were backed by major foreign gov’ts with massive amounts of money (Russia, KSA, UAE, China etc.). They thought they’d be protected somehow.
Hmm… could Manafort have been trying to get Lyovochkin to give the data to Deripaska in exchange for Deripaska forgiving Manafort’s debt to Deripaska; with a promise that if Lyovochkin was successful, Manafort would in turn forgive Lyovochkin’s debt to Manafort? That seems to follow the power dynamics better.
@yellowbeard Looking at it from the other side of the equation, I think it’s also just SOP for these foreign entities. You pay into the government/mob slush fund and you get your piece of the pie. It’s the expected behavior. They have convinced themselves that the US is just as corrupt as their institutions, so they expected that this wouldn’t be a big deal and no one would bat an eye. Sure governments claim they are “investigating” corruption, wink, wink. But that’s just CYA for the rubes. No one’s actually supposed to be arrested and nailed to the wall.
They just fundamentally don’t understand the American system (imperfect as it may be).
It’s free enterprise for government.
If you believe society runs best under a monarch, buy the USA presidency and ignore whatever laws you feel “suppress your genius.” Think fascism is the solution? Buy the government, and shut down the government until Congress funds your camps.