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Interesting story on Paul Manafort

KIEV, Ukraine — On a leafy side street off Independence Square in Kiev is an office used for years by Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, when he consulted for Ukraine’s ruling political party. His furniture and personal items were still there as recently as May.

And Mr. Manafort’s presence remains elsewhere here in the capital, where government investigators examining secret records have found his name, as well as companies he sought business with, as they try to untangle a corrupt network they say was used to loot Ukrainian assets and influence elections during the administration of Mr. Manafort’s main client, former President Viktor F. Yanukovych.

Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.

In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residence with a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.

Mr. Manafort’s involvement with moneyed interests in Russia and Ukraine had previously come to light. But as American relationships there become a rising issue in the presidential campaign — from Mr. Trump’s favorable statements about Mr. Putin and his annexation of Crimea to the suspected Russian hacking of Democrats’ emails — an examination of Mr. Manafort’s activities offers new details of how he mixed politics and business out of public view and benefited from powerful interests now under scrutiny by the new government in Kiev.

Anti-corruption officials there say the payments earmarked for Mr. Manafort, previously unreported, are a focus of their investigation, though they have yet to determine if he actually received the cash. While Mr. Manafort is not a target in the separate inquiry of offshore activities, prosecutors say he must have realized the implications of his financial dealings.

“He understood what was happening in Ukraine,” said Vitaliy Kasko, a former senior official with the general prosecutor’s office in Kiev. “It would have to be clear to any reasonable person that the Yanukovych clan, when it came to power, was engaged in corruption.”

Mr. Kasko added, “It’s impossible to imagine a person would look at this and think, ‘Everything is all right.’”

Mr. Manafort did not respond to interview requests or written questions from The New York Times. But his lawyer, Richard A. Hibey, said Mr. Manafort had not received “any such cash payments” described by the anti-corruption officials.

Mr. Manafort’s involvement with moneyed interests in Russia and Ukraine had previously come to light. But as American relationships there become a rising issue in the presidential campaign — from Mr. Trump’s favorable statements about Mr. Putin and his annexation of Crimea to the suspected Russian hacking of Democrats’ emails — an examination of Mr. Manafort’s activities offers new details of how he mixed politics and business out of public view and benefited from powerful interests now under scrutiny by the new government in Kiev.

Anti-corruption officials there say the payments earmarked for Mr. Manafort, previously unreported, are a focus of their investigation, though they have yet to determine if he actually received the cash. While Mr. Manafort is not a target in the separate inquiry of offshore activities, prosecutors say he must have realized the implications of his financial dealings.

“He understood what was happening in Ukraine,” said Vitaliy Kasko, a former senior official with the general prosecutor’s office in Kiev. “It would have to be clear to any reasonable person that the Yanukovych clan, when it came to power, was engaged in corruption.”

Mr. Kasko added, “It’s impossible to imagine a person would look at this and think, ‘Everything is all right.’”

Mr. Manafort did not respond to interview requests or written questions from The New York Times. But his lawyer, Richard A. Hibey, said Mr. Manafort had not received “any such cash payments” described by the anti-corruption officials.

Photo

Visitors at Mr. Yanukovych’s estate in Kiev, which was abandoned in 2014. Credit Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images
Mr. Hibey also disputed Mr. Kasko’s suggestion that Mr. Manafort might have countenanced corruption or been involved with people who took part in illegal activities.

“These are suspicions, and probably heavily politically tinged ones,” said Mr. Hibey, a member of the Washington law firm Miller & Chevalier. “It is difficult to respect any kind of allegation of the sort being made here to smear someone when there is no proof and we deny there ever could be such proof.”

Mysterious Payments
The developments in Ukraine underscore the risky nature of the international consulting that has been a staple of Mr. Manafort’s business since the 1980s, when he went to work for the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Before joining Mr. Trump’s campaign this spring, Mr. Manafort’s most prominent recent client was Mr. Yanukovych, who — like Mr. Marcos — was deposed in a popular uprising.

Before he fled to Russia two years ago, Mr. Yanukovych and his Party of Regions relied heavily on the advice of Mr. Manafort and his firm, who helped them win several elections. During that period, Mr. Manafort never registered as a foreign agent with the United States Justice Department — as required of those seeking to influence American policy on behalf of foreign clients — although one of his subcontractors did.

It is unclear if Mr. Manafort’s activities necessitated registering. If they were limited to advising the Party of Regions in Ukraine, he probably would not have had to. But he also worked to burnish his client’s image in the West and helped Mr. Yanukovych’s administration draft a report defending its prosecution of his chief rival, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, in 2012.

Photo

Paul Manafort, Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman, ran a political consulting operation out of a first-floor office on Sofiivska Street in Kiev, Ukraine. Credit Joseph Sywenkyj for The New York Times
KIEV, Ukraine — On a leafy side street off Independence Square in Kiev is an office used for years by Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, when he consulted for Ukraine’s ruling political party. His furniture and personal items were still there as recently as May.

And Mr. Manafort’s presence remains elsewhere here in the capital, where government investigators examining secret records have found his name, as well as companies he sought business with, as they try to untangle a corrupt network they say was used to loot Ukrainian assets and influence elections during the administration of Mr. Manafort’s main client, former President Viktor F. Yanukovych.

Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.

In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residence with a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.

Photo

Hand-written ledgers show $12.7 million in cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from the pro-Russian political party of Viktor F. Yanukovych. Mr. Manafort did not receive “any such cash payments,” his lawyer said. Credit Eric Thayer for The New York Times
Mr. Manafort’s involvement with moneyed interests in Russia and Ukraine had previously come to light. But as American relationships there become a rising issue in the presidential campaign — from Mr. Trump’s favorable statements about Mr. Putin and his annexation of Crimea to the suspected Russian hacking of Democrats’ emails — an examination of Mr. Manafort’s activities offers new details of how he mixed politics and business out of public view and benefited from powerful interests now under scrutiny by the new government in Kiev.

Anti-corruption officials there say the payments earmarked for Mr. Manafort, previously unreported, are a focus of their investigation, though they have yet to determine if he actually received the cash. While Mr. Manafort is not a target in the separate inquiry of offshore activities, prosecutors say he must have realized the implications of his financial dealings.

“He understood what was happening in Ukraine,” said Vitaliy Kasko, a former senior official with the general prosecutor’s office in Kiev. “It would have to be clear to any reasonable person that the Yanukovych clan, when it came to power, was engaged in corruption.”

Mr. Kasko added, “It’s impossible to imagine a person would look at this and think, ‘Everything is all right.’”

Mr. Manafort did not respond to interview requests or written questions from The New York Times. But his lawyer, Richard A. Hibey, said Mr. Manafort had not received “any such cash payments” described by the anti-corruption officials.

Photo

Visitors at Mr. Yanukovych’s estate in Kiev, which was abandoned in 2014. Credit Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images
Mr. Hibey also disputed Mr. Kasko’s suggestion that Mr. Manafort might have countenanced corruption or been involved with people who took part in illegal activities.

“These are suspicions, and probably heavily politically tinged ones,” said Mr. Hibey, a member of the Washington law firm Miller & Chevalier. “It is difficult to respect any kind of allegation of the sort being made here to smear someone when there is no proof and we deny there ever could be such proof.”

Mysterious Payments
The developments in Ukraine underscore the risky nature of the international consulting that has been a staple of Mr. Manafort’s business since the 1980s, when he went to work for the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Before joining Mr. Trump’s campaign this spring, Mr. Manafort’s most prominent recent client was Mr. Yanukovych, who — like Mr. Marcos — was deposed in a popular uprising.

Before he fled to Russia two years ago, Mr. Yanukovych and his Party of Regions relied heavily on the advice of Mr. Manafort and his firm, who helped them win several elections. During that period, Mr. Manafort never registered as a foreign agent with the United States Justice Department — as required of those seeking to influence American policy on behalf of foreign clients — although one of his subcontractors did.

It is unclear if Mr. Manafort’s activities necessitated registering. If they were limited to advising the Party of Regions in Ukraine, he probably would not have had to. But he also worked to burnish his client’s image in the West and helped Mr. Yanukovych’s administration draft a report defending its prosecution of his chief rival, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, in 2012.

Photo

A page from the “black ledger,” released by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau. This page does not include Mr. Manafort’s name.
Whatever the case, absent a registration — which requires disclosure of how much the registrant is being paid and by whom — Mr. Manafort’s compensation has remained a mystery. However, a cache of documents discovered after the fall of Mr. Yanukovych’s government may provide some answers.

The papers, known in Ukraine as the “black ledger,” are a chicken-scratch of Cyrillic covering about 400 pages taken from books once kept in a third-floor room in the former Party of Regions headquarters on Lipskaya Street in Kiev. The room held two safes stuffed with $100 bills, said Taras V. Chornovil, a former party leader who was also a recipient of the money at times. He said in an interview that he had once received $10,000 in a “wad of cash” for a trip to Europe.

“This was our cash,” he said, adding that he had left the party in part over concerns about off-the-books activity. “They had it on the table, stacks of money, and they had lists of who to pay.”

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau, which obtained the ledger, said in a statement that Mr. Manafort’s name appeared 22 times in the documents over five years, with payments totaling $12.7 million. The purpose of the payments is not clear. Nor is the outcome, since the handwritten entries cannot be cross-referenced against banking records, and the signatures for receipt have not yet been verified.

Continue reading the main story

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RECENT COMMENTS

RealityCheck 3 hours ago
Will Trumps supporters defend this? Will they be able to process and understand the implications and what it means? This revelation has to...
Mshark 3 hours ago
This is the biggest, most shocking story in the last few years, IMO. A corrupt pro-Russian operator managing an America presidential...
Steve Fankuchen 3 hours ago
Shouldn't Manafort have had to register as an agent of a foreign government under the Foreign Agents Registration Act?The following is from...
SEE ALL COMMENTS WRITE A COMMENT
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Continue reading the main story
“Paul Manafort is among those names on the list of so-called ‘black accounts of the Party of Regions,’ which the detectives of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine are investigating,” the statement said. “We emphasize that the presence of P. Manafort’s name in the list does not mean that he actually got the money, because the signatures that appear in the column of recipients could belong to other people.”

Photo

Paul Manafort, Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman, ran a political consulting operation out of a first-floor office on Sofiivska Street in Kiev, Ukraine. Credit Joseph Sywenkyj for The New York Times
KIEV, Ukraine — On a leafy side street off Independence Square in Kiev is an office used for years by Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, when he consulted for Ukraine’s ruling political party. His furniture and personal items were still there as recently as May.

And Mr. Manafort’s presence remains elsewhere here in the capital, where government investigators examining secret records have found his name, as well as companies he sought business with, as they try to untangle a corrupt network they say was used to loot Ukrainian assets and influence elections during the administration of Mr. Manafort’s main client, former President Viktor F. Yanukovych.

Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.

In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residence with a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.

Photo

Hand-written ledgers show $12.7 million in cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from the pro-Russian political party of Viktor F. Yanukovych. Mr. Manafort did not receive “any such cash payments,” his lawyer said. Credit Eric Thayer for The New York Times
Mr. Manafort’s involvement with moneyed interests in Russia and Ukraine had previously come to light. But as American relationships there become a rising issue in the presidential campaign — from Mr. Trump’s favorable statements about Mr. Putin and his annexation of Crimea to the suspected Russian hacking of Democrats’ emails — an examination of Mr. Manafort’s activities offers new details of how he mixed politics and business out of public view and benefited from powerful interests now under scrutiny by the new government in Kiev.

Anti-corruption officials there say the payments earmarked for Mr. Manafort, previously unreported, are a focus of their investigation, though they have yet to determine if he actually received the cash. While Mr. Manafort is not a target in the separate inquiry of offshore activities, prosecutors say he must have realized the implications of his financial dealings.

“He understood what was happening in Ukraine,” said Vitaliy Kasko, a former senior official with the general prosecutor’s office in Kiev. “It would have to be clear to any reasonable person that the Yanukovych clan, when it came to power, was engaged in corruption.”

Mr. Kasko added, “It’s impossible to imagine a person would look at this and think, ‘Everything is all right.’”

Mr. Manafort did not respond to interview requests or written questions from The New York Times. But his lawyer, Richard A. Hibey, said Mr. Manafort had not received “any such cash payments” described by the anti-corruption officials.

Photo

Visitors at Mr. Yanukovych’s estate in Kiev, which was abandoned in 2014. Credit Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images
Mr. Hibey also disputed Mr. Kasko’s suggestion that Mr. Manafort might have countenanced corruption or been involved with people who took part in illegal activities.

“These are suspicions, and probably heavily politically tinged ones,” said Mr. Hibey, a member of the Washington law firm Miller & Chevalier. “It is difficult to respect any kind of allegation of the sort being made here to smear someone when there is no proof and we deny there ever could be such proof.”

Mysterious Payments
The developments in Ukraine underscore the risky nature of the international consulting that has been a staple of Mr. Manafort’s business since the 1980s, when he went to work for the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Before joining Mr. Trump’s campaign this spring, Mr. Manafort’s most prominent recent client was Mr. Yanukovych, who — like Mr. Marcos — was deposed in a popular uprising.

Before he fled to Russia two years ago, Mr. Yanukovych and his Party of Regions relied heavily on the advice of Mr. Manafort and his firm, who helped them win several elections. During that period, Mr. Manafort never registered as a foreign agent with the United States Justice Department — as required of those seeking to influence American policy on behalf of foreign clients — although one of his subcontractors did.

It is unclear if Mr. Manafort’s activities necessitated registering. If they were limited to advising the Party of Regions in Ukraine, he probably would not have had to. But he also worked to burnish his client’s image in the West and helped Mr. Yanukovych’s administration draft a report defending its prosecution of his chief rival, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, in 2012.

Photo

A page from the “black ledger,” released by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau. This page does not include Mr. Manafort’s name.
Whatever the case, absent a registration — which requires disclosure of how much the registrant is being paid and by whom — Mr. Manafort’s compensation has remained a mystery. However, a cache of documents discovered after the fall of Mr. Yanukovych’s government may provide some answers.

The papers, known in Ukraine as the “black ledger,” are a chicken-scratch of Cyrillic covering about 400 pages taken from books once kept in a third-floor room in the former Party of Regions headquarters on Lipskaya Street in Kiev. The room held two safes stuffed with $100 bills, said Taras V. Chornovil, a former party leader who was also a recipient of the money at times. He said in an interview that he had once received $10,000 in a “wad of cash” for a trip to Europe.

“This was our cash,” he said, adding that he had left the party in part over concerns about off-the-books activity. “They had it on the table, stacks of money, and they had lists of who to pay.”

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau, which obtained the ledger, said in a statement that Mr. Manafort’s name appeared 22 times in the documents over five years, with payments totaling $12.7 million. The purpose of the payments is not clear. Nor is the outcome, since the handwritten entries cannot be cross-referenced against banking records, and the signatures for receipt have not yet been verified.

Continue reading the main story

Presidential Election 2016
The latest news and analysis of the candidates and issues shaping the presidential race.
Donald Trump’s Terrorism Plan Mixes Cold War Concepts and Limits on Immigrants
AUG 15
Donald Trump to Lay Out ‘3 Pillars’ of Terrorism Plan, Aides Say
AUG 15
G.O.P. Urges Donald Trump to Broaden Outreach to Black Voters
AUG 15
Hillary Clinton’s Edge in a Donald Trump-Centric Race Has Liberals Wary
AUG 14
Mike Pence May Break With Donald Trump, Again, Over Tax Returns
AUG 13
See More »

RELATED COVERAGE


How Paul Manafort Wielded Power in Ukraine Before Advising Donald Trump JULY 31, 2016

Trump Aide Paul Manafort Promoted to Campaign Chairman and Chief Strategist MAY 19, 2016

Donald Trump to Reshape Image, New Campaign Chief Tells G.O.P. APRIL 21, 2016

FIRST DRAFT
Donald Trump Hires Paul Manafort to Lead Delegate Effort MARCH 28, 2016

Donald Trump Calls on Russia to Find Hillary Clinton’s Missing Emails JULY 27, 2016
RECENT COMMENTS

RealityCheck 3 hours ago
Will Trumps supporters defend this? Will they be able to process and understand the implications and what it means? This revelation has to...
Mshark 3 hours ago
This is the biggest, most shocking story in the last few years, IMO. A corrupt pro-Russian operator managing an America presidential...
Steve Fankuchen 3 hours ago
Shouldn't Manafort have had to register as an agent of a foreign government under the Foreign Agents Registration Act?The following is from...
SEE ALL COMMENTS WRITE A COMMENT
Advertisement

Continue reading the main story
“Paul Manafort is among those names on the list of so-called ‘black accounts of the Party of Regions,’ which the detectives of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine are investigating,” the statement said. “We emphasize that the presence of P. Manafort’s name in the list does not mean that he actually got the money, because the signatures that appear in the column of recipients could belong to other people.”

Photo

Anti-corruption groups in Ukraine said the black ledger detailing payments was probably seized when protesters ransacked the Party of Regions headquarters in February 2014. Credit Oleg Petrasyuk/European Pressphoto Agency
The accounting records surfaced this year, when Serhiy A. Leshchenko, a member of Parliament who said he had received a partial copy from a source he did not identify, published line items covering six months of outlays in 2012 totaling $66 million. In an interview, Mr. Leshchenko said another source had provided the entire multiyear ledger to Viktor M. Trepak, a former deputy director of the domestic intelligence agency of Ukraine, the S.B.U., who passed it to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau.

The bureau, whose government funding is mandated under American and European Union aid programs and which has an evidence-sharing agreement with the F.B.I., has investigatory powers but cannot indict suspects. Only if it passes its findings to prosecutors — which has not happened with Mr. Manafort — does a subject of its inquiry become part of a criminal case.

Individual disbursements reflected in the ledgers ranged from a few hundred dollars to millions of dollars. Of the records released from 2012, one shows a payment of $67,000 for a watch and another of $8.4 million to the owner of an advertising agency for campaign work for the party before elections that year.

“It’s a very vivid example of how political parties are financed in Ukraine,” said Daria N. Kaleniuk, the executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Kiev. “It represents the very dirty cash economy in Ukraine.”

Offshore Companies
While working in Ukraine, Mr. Manafort had also positioned himself to profit from business deals that benefited from connections he had gained through his political consulting. One of them, according to court filings, involved a network of offshore companies that government investigators and independent journalists in Ukraine have said was used to launder public money and assets purportedly stolen by cronies of the government.

The network comprised shell companies whose ultimate owners were shielded by the secrecy laws of the offshore jurisdictions where they were registered, including the British Virgin Islands, Belize and the Seychelles.

In a recent interview, Serhiy V. Gorbatyuk, Ukraine’s special prosecutor for high-level corruption cases, pointed to an open file on his desk containing paperwork for one of the shell companies, Milltown Corporate Services Ltd., which played a central role in the state’s purchase of two oil derricks for $785 million, or about double what they were said to be worth.

“This,” he said, “was an offshore used often by Mr. Yanukovych’s entourage.”

The role of the offshore companies in business dealings involving Mr. Manafort came to light because of court filings in the Cayman Islands and in a federal court in Virginia related to an investment fund, Pericles Emerging Markets. Mr. Manafort and several partners started the fund in 2007, and its major backer was Mr. Deripaska, the Russian mogul, to whom the State Department has refused to issue a visa, apparently because of allegations linking him to Russian organized crime, a charge he has denied.

Mr. Deripaska agreed to commit as much as $100 million to Pericles so it could buy assets in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, including a regional cable television and communications company called Black Sea Cable. But corporate records and court filings show that it was hardly a straightforward transaction.

The Black Sea Cable assets were controlled by a rotating cast of offshore companies that led back to the Yanukovych network, including, at various times, Milltown Corporate Services and two other companies well known to law enforcement officials, Monohold A.G. and Intrahold A.G. Those two companies won inflated contracts with a state-run agricultural company, and also acquired a business center in Kiev with a helicopter pad on the roof that would ease Mr. Yanukovych’s commute from his country estate to the presidential offices.

Mr. Deripaska would later say he invested $18.9 million in Pericles in 2008 to complete the acquisition of Black Sea Cable. But the planned purchase — including the question of who ended up with the Black Sea assets — has since become the subject of a dispute between Mr. Deripaska and Mr. Manafort.

In 2014, Mr. Deripaska filed a legal action in a Cayman Islands court seeking to recover his investment in Pericles, which is now defunct. He also said he had paid about $7.3 million in management fees to the fund over two years. Mr. Deripaska did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Manafort’s lawyer, Mr. Hibey, disputed the account of the Black Sea Cable deal contained in Mr. Deripaska’s Cayman filings, and said the Russian oligarch had overseen details of the final transaction involving the acquisition. He denied that Mr. Manafort had received management fees from Pericles during its operation, but said that one of Mr. Manafort’s partners, Rick Gates, who is also working on the Trump campaign, had received a “nominal” sum.

Court papers indicate that Pericles’ only deal involved Black Sea Cable.

Mr. Manafort continued working in Ukraine after the demise of Mr. Yanukovych’s government, helping allies of the ousted president and others form a political bloc that opposed the new pro-Western administration. Some of his aides were in Ukraine as recently as this year, and Ukrainian company records give no indication that Mr. Manafort has formally dissolved the local branch of his company, Davis Manafort International, directed by a longtime assistant, Konstantin V. Kilimnik.


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COMMENTS
At Mr. Manafort’s old office on Sofiivska Street, new tenants said they had discovered several curiosities apparently left behind, including a knee X-ray signed by Mr. Yanukovych, possibly referring to tennis matches played between Mr. Manafort and Mr. Yanukovych, who had spoken publicly of a knee ailment affecting his game.

There was another item with Mr. Yanukovych’s autograph: a piece of white paper bearing a rough sketch of Independence Square, the site of the 2014 uprising that drove him from power.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/politics/paul-manafort-ukraine-donald-trump.html?_r=1

Guys gotta make a living right?

lol

tldr tldr

Exactly, while many of you would salivate to be able to read through thousands of Hillary's personal emails.

At the end of the day, if trump and Clinton can't put together an offensive slaughtering during the debates with all this email scandals and racist crap and blah blah blah....it won't matter.

People hate Hillary as if she turned them down on dates.

People hate trump as if he already deported their aunt.

Whatever. Time to hit this bong.

Like hearing people argue of which pile of poo smells worse.

Yep, that's the only problem with Hillary is those darn e-mails that the evil Republicans just won't let go of... nothing to do with her massive influx of foreign money, her constant scandal ridden time in public office, the dubious role of her "foundation", her admission that there is nothing we can do about outsourcing jobs, her campaign being bankrolled by the Wall Street companies she vows to go after.... none of that matters, it's just the e-mails..

**and I'm not even going to get into the long line of people who have crossed her path... may they all rest in peace.

DC, the one thing I'll disagree in regards to your criticism of her is outsourcing jobs. I've stated that I think automation is going to make any tax breaks given irrelevant. Machines are the future and its false hope that we will bring these jobs back.

However, everything else you said is absolutely valid.

Damn shame we gotta talk about all the bad on each candidate.

We've gone over very little good between the two.

Go team roar!!!

There's some good?

Well, trump didn't have sex with his daughters.

And Clinton didn't eat hers.

So...good I guess?

Giuliani Claims No Successful 'Radical Islamic' Attacks in US Before Obama

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rudy-giul...ory?id=41402651

So for all y'all who think Trump is a plant, is Guilliani in on it, too?

The guy who was the current mayor during the worst Islamic terror attack ever really said that?

There's also a video in the link.

Jeez..... But lemme guess, that's Obama's fault too. At least that's what I'm expecting Katrina Peirson to say.

A plant by whom exactly? Clinton? Or Putin?

http://gawker.com/ivanka-trump-hanging-out-in-croatia-with-vladimir-putin-1785290129

This weekend, Ivanka Trump and Wendi Deng Murdoch went “sight seeing” in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Deng Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife, is reportedly dating Vladimir Putin.


Report: Rupert Murdoch's Ex Finds a Man Even More Evil
Wendi Deng was married to Rupert Murdoch for 14 years before they divorced in 2013 amidst rumors…
Read more
Trump and Deng Murdoch have been friends for years—according to People, Deng Murdoch set up Trump with her husband Jared Kushner. Trump and Kushner apparently traveled to Croatia together without their three children.

The timing of the women’s meeting is notable because Trump’s father, the Republican nominee for president, has courted Putin’s affections and expressed his admiration for the Russian autocrat. Numerous advisers to his campaign have ties to Russia, and speculation abounds that Trump’s unreleased tax returns would reveal heavy debts owed to Russian business interests.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that secret documents recovered from an office in Ukraine showed $12.7 million in payments between 2007 and 2012 to Trump’s current campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who worked as a consultant for the deposed, pro-Russia Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

This is the strategy. You don't have to say anything factual. Just say something that appeals to your base. Plant ideas in their minds that confirms what they believe already.

Context: he mentions Mike Pence coming to ground zero (9/11) and the ensuing passage of the PATRIOT Act. He's talking about how there were no Islamic terrorist attacks in the U.S. after passing that act until Obama came into office. This was all said in the span of about 30 seconds.

edit2: What he said was still not technically correct, but he obviously did not forget 9/11

Naa, you have to go at least a little out of your way to do some good. Not having sex with your children and/or not eating them is expected behavior; good Karma will not be your friend just for those actions.

The bubonic plague never happened until Obana came.

- Giuliani.

You do come up with some good jokes. I'll give you that.

So Trump's Protect Murica Immigration Policy:

- You must swear allegiance to America.
- You must respect American culture, traditions and laws.
- You must accept and respect religious freedom.
- You must accept and respect LGBTQ rights.

Ummm... Can we apply this to Trump supporters too?

It was really more of a speech on terrorism. Immigration policy was only part of that. Also given that the speech was held in Youngstown, I'd be interested if YTown heard anything about this. Here's the full speech.. 48 minutes or so:

Forget about the supporters....how can he say this when he chose Pence as his running mate?

Trump is beyond ridiculous and clueless and proves he is also one contradiction after another.

His plan on how he will deal with ISIS is vague, at best.

j/c

I didn't think this deserved its own thread, and this was the most convenient spot to drop it.

I thought that this offering was a refreshingly well-written and researched op-ed. It does a great job of explaining how America's twp parties to this point.

It was even-handed, objective, and extremely insightful and informative. It was a pleasure to read in this climate of snipe, snark and stupidity.

What I liked about it most was how the author examined the two parties from a vantage point above the current fray. It lent an objectivity (and credibility) to her observations that's rare in a read these days.

It's a bit on the long side, but I think I know My Dawgs: some of you will truly appreciate the time spent. I know I did.

__________________________

WHY HASN'T THE REPUBLICAN PARTY COLLAPSED?
by Julia Azari, August 15, 2016

To be a political scientist in the Trump era is to constantly ponder one big question: whether the Republican Party is in a state of collapse. Could the growing split over Donald Trump bring about the end of one of our major political parties?

The truth is that American politics doesn’t offer many points of comparison. The first two parties to vanish, the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Democrats, were proto-parties that lacked much of the organization that really makes parties succeed. A later party, the Whigs, which collapsed in the 1850s, was similarly loosely organized, and its members had decidedly mixed feelings about how things like patronage and campaigns should work.


Since the Republicans formed in 1856, the two major parties have bent but not broken. But, as incredulous commentators consider the possibility that 2016 could be the end of the GOP, they are missing the issue about which they should be most incredulous: Our two political parties are still, in some sense, vestiges of the parties they were in the 1850s. Despite changes in coalitions and ideology — to say nothing of revolutions like industrialization, the civil rights movement, women’s suffrage, two world wars, and the changing composition of the electorate — the two parties have proved immensely adaptable.

Asking whether the GOP is not long for this world is, in a sense, the wrong question. Here’s the right one: Are the parties too resilient for their own good?

Democracy needs political parties to function. But our two major parties have become constrained by holding onto more than 100 years of ideas, constituencies and practices that can come into conflict with what those parties need right now to be competitive.

Perhaps the starkest example of this is in the area of race relations: The parties have historically been structured to accommodate racism and racial conflict. Neither one was created with our current norms about racial equality in mind. If a new party were founded today, we might expect that it would have goals like addressing racial inequality or income inequality in a modern economy, or developing a workable immigration system. Both parties have some ideas about these things, but they’re often shoehorned into policy and ideological agendas inherited from years ago. New issues are often foisted onto coalitions that can’t agree on positions, much less solutions.

The convention system is another example. Nominating conventions have obviously changed over the years, but they’re based on a system developed in the 1830s. The main purpose of this system was to coordinate partisans across different states, and we still see each state delegation sitting with its big state sign at each party convention every four years. Geography and state representation still play a role in the American political system. But when the first conventions were held, New York had a population of about 200,000. A system developed today might do even more to represent Americans by age, gender or ethnic background (the parties have adopted reforms to ensure delegate representation along some of these lines), and to take into account the differences between Americans who live in urban and rural areas.

Though there’s some benefit to the stability of a longstanding system, the long, rigid reign of two parties also limits the flexibility of American politics, reducing complex national decisions to simple binary contests and yoking together seemingly unrelated ideas—gun control, tax reform and health care, for example—in ways that make it impossible for any of them to move forward
This problem also creates problems for the parties themselves, in ways big and small. On the small side, as the Democratic coalition has become more diverse and reliant on voters who are people of color, Democratic state parties have run into some criticism for celebrating Jefferson-Jackson Day—usually an annual fundraising gala that celebrates two historic, slave-owning Democrats, hosted by a party that now prides itself on embracing racial equality. For the Democratic Party, there’s a point at which celebrating the heroes of its troubled past jeopardizes its political necessities for the future.

For Republicans, the problem is more immediate and profound: The party’s history of ideological unity and organizational continuity will tie future Republicans to the Trump candidacy, regardless of efforts to distance themselves from his positions. The story of parties’ remarkable resiliency gives a sense of how they’ve survived so long, but also how their survival might prevent American politics from representing all citizens and facing modern challenges.

***

Both of the major parties were originally created to solve problems. The Democrats were created to meet the challenge of coordinating candidates and their supporters across a vast, expanding, largely rural nation. The Democrats have long been a party of process. The early party included members who disagreed on slavery, westward expansion and tariffs. Yes, they had policy commitments—originally centered around limiting the federal government’s influence—but they were more a pragmatic alliance than an ideological crusade.

The Republican Party, meanwhile, has long been a party of ideology, created in the 1850s with a much more specific guiding principle in mind: stopping the expansion of slavery. Ever since, that difference—one party, a pragmatic alliance; the other, an ideological one—has meant that the Republican Party is more prone to ideological fights blowing up into potential existential crises.

Most of the time, the GOP has withstood these tensions, often emerging with greater electoral strength than before.
As an organization formed in opposition to the expansion of slavery, the Republican Party’s guiding purpose became less clear after the Civil War was won—much as its leadership became less clear after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. The period between the Civil War and the end of Reconstruction represents the first time the Republicans could have disintegrated. They were divided into many different factions, first over how harshly to treat the former Confederate states, then over whether to reform the system of patronage with a cleaner, more merit-based approach to civil service.

During this time, the GOP won a lot of elections, especially for the presidency (though not without some controversy), so it wasn’t that Republicans weren’t able to function as a political party. But lacking a central purpose, it’s impressive just how adaptable the Republican Party proved itself to be.

Part of the reason for this was the procedures it had in place. Strong norms about supporting the presidential ticket—and harsh consequences for not doing so—meant that state and local party leaders supported presidential candidates even when they disagreed with them. The party’s resilience in this era was also born out of necessity: Although Republicans won nearly every presidential election, the Democrats had an extensive electoral machine and the political battle down the ticket was incredibly competitive.

The second time the Republican Party might have ceased to exist was after the Great Depression. The name of Republican President Herbert Hoover became synonymous with poverty and want, and the party experienced record-level seat losses in 1930 and 1932. Starting in the 1930s, it was unclear exactly how to act like an opposition party in the face of Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s popular New Deal programs and expanding coalition. Though the New Deal was not without its detractors (including the Supreme Court, congressional opponents and demagogic radio preacher Father Charles Coughlin), the Republican presidential nominee in 1936, Alf Landon, opted not to mount too strong an opposition to the basic ideas behind Roosevelt’s programs. The 1936 Republican National Convention featured clashes between Republicans who rejected the New Deal in principle as unconstitutional, and those, including Landon, who accepted some of its basic premises and sought efficient and effective implementation of new policies. The ideological contours of this fight would inform subsequent fights within the party.
This problem flared up again in the election of 1952. That year, a primary showdown between the conservative supporters of Ohio Senator Robert Taft (his nickname was literally “Mr. Republican”) and the more reform-oriented supporters of General Dwight D. Eisenhower reflected tensions within the GOP over whether to resist the principles behind the new administrative state or to adopt them in a more measured way. Eisenhower’s brand of “modern Republicanism” won out (for a while), and the Republicans retook the White House after losing five straight presidential elections.

But threats to the existence of the Republican Party have not been limited to ideological splintering within the GOP. When, in 1974, Richard Nixon became the first president to resign from office—and his replacement, Gerald R. Ford, pardoned him over his involvement in the Watergate scandal and cover-up—it did severe damage to the party’s brand. After the disastrous 1974 midterm elections, Republican efforts to revive their image were pleading in tone: They launched a prominent public relations campaign centered around the slogan “Republicans are people, too.” Though Ford went down to defeat in 1976 (losing to Jimmy Carter by a pretty narrow margin), the party successfully came back in 1980, with a new (sort of) presidential candidate, a new electoral coalition (adding evangelical Christians and white working-class ex-Democrats), and the same name and basic organization.

Most recently, deep fissures have been evident in the Republican Party between establishment and insurgent types. This began with the 2010 midterms, when the party’s control over its own nominations slipped away in the Tea Party revolt by conservative voters. In retrospect, it seems reasonably clear that the nomination of candidates like the firebrand conservative Christine “I’m Not a Witch” O’Donnell over moderate Republican Mike “Experience and Electability” Castle signaled a loosening of party machinery that was later manifested in the primary loss of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in Virginia, the resignation of Speaker John Boehner (after several frustrating years with the recalcitrant insurgents whom these primaries brought to the House) and, of course, the 2016 presidential nomination of Donald Trump.

***

In contrast to the Republicans, the Democrats’ founding purpose was always more about process than a specific ideological end. And like the Republicans, the Democrats have also experienced periods of purposeless wandering, long-term minority status and internal division. Indeed, the history of the Democratic Party has been, to some degree, a series of efforts to infuse the organization with an ideological identity while holding a diffuse coalition together.
In the 1890s, the party emerged from a struggle over economic policy with a populist agenda and presidential candidate—William Jennings Bryan, who would win the party’s presidential nomination for the first of three times in 1896. Decades later, FDR sought to make the Democrats a more cohesive party, going so far as to try to “purge” the party of anti-New Dealers in the 1938 midterms. FDR envisioned a party organized around its commitment to New Deal principles, but his efforts met with so much resistance that he basically gave up on remaking the party from the top down.

FDR was not the last to try to remake the party around a set of policy ideas. In 1948, Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey (then running for a U.S. Senate seat) and FDR’s own successor, Harry Truman, saw the possibility of bringing together moral principles and electoral gain by making the Democrats the party of civil rights. This didn’t go over well with everyone. Civil rights drove a wedge straight through the party’s North-South coalition. In 1948 and 1968, Southern Democratic factions splintered off, forming their own presidential tickets under South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond (who ran as a “Dixiecrat”) and Alabama Governor George Wallace, respectively.

Another identity crisis happened as the era of Ronald Reagan unfolded and a group of moderate Democrats organized under the banner of the Democratic Leadership Council to promote an approach to governing that was neither liberal nor conservative, but rather a “third way.” This movement culminated with the presidency of Bill Clinton, whose support for traditionally Republican stances like welfare reform led some on the left to question what the Democratic Party stood for at all.

At this moment, the Democrats do not appear to be experiencing anything on the level of the Republicans’ crisis. But the surprise success of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign suggests some pent-up demand for a more ideologically committed Democratic Party devoted to clearer principles of social provision, income equality and a noninterventionist foreign policy. These aren’t huge ideological leaps from the liberal identity of the current party, but pushing the party to define itself in terms of these basic principles is a shift away from its historical purpose: to create majority coalitions by cobbling groups together, and, in a long-dead version of Democratic ideology, to limit the power of the federal government.

***

The stability political parties provide is an oft-unappreciated dimension of U.S. politics. Opposition to the party in power has been reliable and loyal, and our staggered elections mean that an electoral rebuke need only be two years away. Our parties have held together long-standing coalitions and ideologies, providing continuity with the past and allowing governing majorities to form in large, diverse country. The Republicans and Democrats have been good at telling us what to expect and with whom to expect to agree. These are crucial, if unsexy, aspects of a functioning democracy.
And until 2016, it seemed that the parties were succeeding in representing their supporters: Partisans in the electorate increasingly hold a range of positions consistent with “conservative” or “liberal” lines on issues, as they have come to be defined. The case for a major transformation by merging a party faction or two with a minor party movement and abandoning names, symbols and infrastructure from the past, was not clear.

What we’ve observed in 2016 changes all this. The process by which the Republican Party chooses its nominees has allowed the nomination—via a plurality of primary votes—of a candidate who has no history with the party, no traditional qualifications, and who engages in political rhetoric that pushes beyond the boundaries of even the most polarized partisan discourse. The GOP’s leaders have proved unable—or perhaps unwilling—to stop it.

In a less dramatic fashion, it is also possible that the Democratic Party has outlived its usefulness as an organization, or will in the not-so-distant future. Party divisions informed by economic class lines have not been the historical norm in the United States, which has long impeded the emergence of a serious leftist or workers’ party. Because our system’s current design can sustain only two major parties for any length of time, the formation of such a party would entail coalition-building and compromise—yet the nature of an ideologically-oriented party is that compromise would deflate the base of support and potentially render the entire exercise pointless.

Do either of the two parties need to be replaced? The recent departure of Dmocratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and the inability of the Republican National Committee to deal with Trump, might suggest some degree of institutional stagnation. Parties are very useful, but we might imagine that the two we have would be designed differently in order to address the problems of the 21st century, rather than the 19th.

For the Republicans, the trajectory of the presidential race remains uncertain. More and more Republicans denounce Trump, while the party’s top leadership (at the time of this writing) has maintained its tepid endorsement. Despite expectations, the Cleveland convention did not descend into violence or chaos, although one of the major speakers did pointedly refuse to endorse the presidential candidate. And even as chatter has grown about whether some Republicans will flee the party to vote Libertarian this November, that move is hardly ever thought of as more than a short-term measure: They hope to return to the GOP once Trump is gone.
Through this election season, the Republican Party in particular has demonstrated that, while it can’t control its nomination process, it has the institutional resources to prevent a full-blown existential crisis for the party at large.

The thing is, maybe sometimes a crisis is what the situation calls for.

I think what bothers me is that we think giving these guys tests will weed out the extremists. Does he not realize these guys are going to be trained on giving BS answers? People can be trained to fake out lie detection software, but you think they'll fail a personality test? He didn't even mention how to stop domestic terrorism. Oh wait... That's right... He wants to detain US citizens in Gitmo

Amazes me how people don't trust the government but are cool with trusting the government doing things Trump proposed.

I really didn;t pay attention to the news today. I saw a short snippet of his speech, but that was about it.

That's an excellent article that highlights the problems we have w/our two-party system today. I also like the tidbits of history thrown in.

I think that article deserves its own thread. It will largely get ignored so people can go back to throwing stones at either Trump or Clinton.

Well, maybe it's one of those things that he thinks the terrorists were "UNSUCCESSFUL" on 9/11? I don't know how to respond other than I just must not be understanding where he's going with that.

Of course, he has blamed all of it on Clinton and Obama. I guess that's only natural.

That's it. That's what it is. I remember when Obama was running against McCain and my Mom, 81 or so at the time, was at my house and said, she can't vote for Obama.. I asked why?

She said, because he's a Muslim. I asked her where she heard that. She explained that there is a group of elderly folks that meet up at a place in Macedonia (I do forget the name of the place, it's not there anymore anyway) But one of those folks invited his grandson to speak in front of all of them. He convinced them that they need to vote for McCain because Obama was a Muslim and Muslims are responsible for 9/11.

I know lots of folks still think he is and lots of folks think he wasn't born in America but John McCain himself told an elderly lady in PA, that she was wrong and that Obama wasn't a Muslim.

Mom heard that of course, and man, I've seen my Mom angry, but she was pretty ticked off that that kid had lied to her. She was pretty vocal about it at the next gathering.

Go Mom. LOL

Your mom is Sarah Palin?

If you are going to quote me, quote me correctly, honestly and within context:

The actual statement was:

I remember when Obama was running against McCain and my Mom, 81 or so at the time,

Punctuation is your friend.

Grow up

You have such a great sense of humor.

Btw: your punctuation was off. Thus, my comment.

But again, it was a small joke and not intended as an insult.

I wouldn't want to admit that in public.

Another new report of an open letter being circulated in the GOP with over 100 signatures from top brass asking the RNC to stop funding the Trump campaign and to divert funds to the down ballot races.

Sure sounds like the Trump campaign is falling apart at the seams. Wonder what 40 thinks about all of this, haven't seen him lately.

Go for it, start a thread that focuses on the positives.. I assure you it will be negative before it gets off the first page.

We all say we hate it, but we all are very quick to join in...

Negativity is what draws your attention. People like to be upset, vent, and complain. I just posted a video about a woman and her dog being rescued from drowning by a normal civilian and it has a grand total of 9 comments and maybe 150 views. I know it's a small example, but how often do you just gloss over the positive news? Unless it something bad, you're probably not going to look twice. I'm not going to act like I'm above it at times. However, it's important to acknowledge that there are certain people comfortable with being miserable.

I believe some of the pseudo intellectualism we see at times is just people saying they don't know how to be happy so they have to show how smart they are.

For sure, ever read the book Eat, Shoots and Leaves? Punctuation is everything. Interesting read.

If for one second, I thought you were joking, I'd have laughed with you. But I seriously doubt you were.