Paul Manafort

> *"Manafort* **is** *the swamp.**"*
> - Andrea Chalupa -
>
>

It takes little more than a look at his wikipedia page to realize Manafort is a career criminal, connected to the Russian Mafia, with vast foreign ties and assets.

> "Manafort was a Republican political operative who had known Trump for over three decades, taking up residence in Trump Tower in 2006. In the 1980s and 1990s, Manafort and Roger Stone - another old Trump friend and presidential campaign adviser - partnered in a D.C. firm nicknamed "the torturers' lobby" because their clients included the most brutal dictators in the world. By the mid-2000s, Manafort had left the firm to pursue his own specialty: serving oligarchs from the former Soviet Union."
>
>

Manafort has been characterized as a political "hired gun", for sale to the lowest bidder to any enemy of America, democracy and/or human rights - a felonious operative bent on working for blood money. His ties to deposed Ukrainian dictator Viktor Yanukovych and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska are well-established. Manafort represented human-rights violators of the worst kind, such as the Phillipines' Marcos clan and Congolese leader Mobutu Sese Seko.

*This* is the man Donald J. Trump chose to be his campaign manager in 2016. And contrary to what The New York Times has readers believe, their relationship did *not* begin in a chance encounter that year but much, much earlier. This decision made clear that, beside Trump's intention to rule like post-Soviet dictators, he was *directly* connected to these dictators *through his own staff.*

> "It was in the Grand Havana Room of 666 Fifth Avenue that convicted felons Paul Manafort and Rick Gates gave Kremlin operative Konstantin Kilimnik US election polling data on August 2, 2016. This transaction, once at the heart of the Mueller investigation, was never fully explored after the probe abruptly ended in March 2019."
>
>

> "Manafort’s criminal history was so expansive he was initially set to potentially face over three hundred years in prison the judge in his case, T. S. Ellis, was threatened to the point that he had to be protected by US Marshals."
>
>

Manafort eventually pled guilty to two charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States and witness tampering in the DC District Court, agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors, which he never did.

> "At Manafort’s sentencing months later, Ellis shocked the country by proclaiming Manafort—now well known by Americans as a crime machine—a man who had led an "otherwise blameless life." He reduced his sentence to below the recommended guidelines, prompting a series of ethics inquiries that were later dismissed. No one followed up on the threats to Ellis—a frightening pattern that played out with many who attempted to hold the Trump team accountable."
>
>

During and after an incredible string of negligence on the part of the special counsel, Manafort lied repeatedly to the FBI, for which he was eventually convicted to 47 months in prison.

> *"Waiting for the Manafort verdict to come down was like waiting for the verdict of your rapist, the rapist of your democracy."*
> - Andrea Chalupa -
>
>

The Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in August 2020 that Manafort's ties to individuals connected to Russian intelligence while he was Trump's campaign manager "represented a grave counterintelligence threat" by creating opportunities for "Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump campaign."

Nothing ever came of these conclusions though.

> "Those who treat this as a game seem to not grasp—or care—that ordinary Americans have been caught in the crossfire and that Manafortposes a public safety threat. At the time of Manafort’s sentencing, I was in disbelief that Mueller’s team could not see this outcome coming, and it has made me wonder whether, in fact, they did, and found it acceptable. I remember looking at a photo of Mueller heading to church in spring 2019, shortly after Barr had issued a misleading summary of his probe, and wondering what kind of god this man could believe in to allow his countrymen such preventable pain. We were living in Mueller’s America. One nation, under God, collateral damage."
>
>

On May 13, 2020, Manafort was released to home confinement due to the threat of COVID-19, and on December 23, 2020, he was granted a pardon by Trump.

<-- test edit -->

1. ↑ https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-trump-aide-led-the-torturers-lobby
2. ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-manaforts-2016-meeting-with-a-russian-employee-at-new-york-cigar-club-goes-to-the-heart-of-muellers-probe/2019/02/12/655f84dc-2d67-11e9-8ad3-9a5b113ecd3c\_story.html
3. ↑ https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/13/politics/paul-manafort-faces-305-years/index.html—until
4. ↑ https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/17/judge-in-paul-manafort-trial-said-hes-been-threatened.html.
5. ↑ https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/paul-manafort-judge-no-disciplinary-actionmueller