Paul Manafort and Trump

[u/Ashly_Lily]

I will likely make a more detailed post about this with resources when I can, but I had to share some basic information on this because it could be important in getting on-the-fence MAGA to question Trump. I have been noticing that Paul Manafort has been very active since his pardon by Trump, so I wanted to look further into what this man does.

Paul Manafort co-founded the lobbying firm Black, Manafort, & Stone (yes, the Roger Stone) in 1980, which was the same year he began a professional relationship with Trump. Since then his specialty is in getting the US to support anti-communist regimes throughout the world, and in coaching dictators on how to get into power and stay there. He gamed the system to where these dictators could pay him using some of the funds sent by the US, allowing those without the financial means to afford his services. Of note, he started lobbying for a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, with the goal of benefiting Putin's government in 2005.

This man has single-handedly spurred the murder and suffering of millions of lives, and he's expressed that he really didn't care as long as he benefitted. He helped catapult lobbying in our country's politics into the monster it is today. He has always been Democracy's greatest threat. I'm confident that without him, Trump wouldn't have been elected in 2016.

[u/Buffalo95747]

Manafort has been rumored to interfere in elections around the world. No wonder he was working for Trump in 2016. (Some claim he was responsible for Ferdinand Marcos)

[u/Ashly_Lily → u/Buffalo95747]

He was definitely responsible for Marcos.

[u/Buffalo95747 → u/Ashly_Lily]

It’s hard to believe the U.S. Government didn’t know about Manafort’s skill set before the 2016 Election. This makes the response to Trump’s “election” all the more puzzling. One wonders if there is more the authorities want to conceal than just Kompromat.

[u/Ashly_Lily → u/Buffalo95747]

I'm sure some knew and kept it to themselves because they're involved with Manafort's firm and don't want to oust themselves. Others probably didn't take it as seriously as they should have and didn't care to address it since people dying in third world countries was an "out-of-sight and "out-of-mind" problem. The rest are fully supportive.

[u/Buffalo95747 → u/Ashly_Lily]

All that may be true, but having a foreign power determine a U.S. election is a recipe for disaster, as we are now seeing. I got the feeling at the time that Obama didn’t take the Russian threat as seriously as he should have (Some Intelligence people were unhappy with him after 2016). Exactly where did Manafort learn his trade? How long have politicians been using his services? We know he was close to the Reagan Administration. What did they use him for?

There is growing evidence that election interference has been around in the U.S. for some time. Some have claimed that it has been present since the 90’s. Has this been done on an international basis? Are we soon going to have a completely different view of the past 40 years of our history? Election fraud has given us Trump, and Kompromat keeps him there.

[u/Buffalo95747 → u/Ashly_Lily]

One of the things we have learned is that power is what matters. Politicians will do whatever it takes to obtain it. They give lip service to the Rule of Law and the Constitution, but both parties appear to have ignored both of them.

[u/Ashly_Lily → u/Buffalo95747]

Paul Manafort’s Wild and Lucrative Philippine Adventure

[u/Ok-Confidence9649 → u/Buffalo95747]

Everyone should read about the 2004 elections in Ukraine and his involvement. It will sound scarily familiar. It also helps explain why Ukraine isn’t in NATO and doesn’t have that backup for their invasion.

“In 2004, he was hired by oligarchs supporting a pro-Russian party in Ukraine. It was a tough assignment: The Party of Regions needed an image makeover. A recent election had been marred by allegations that fraud had been committed in favor of the party’s candidate, prompting a popular revolt that became known as the Orange Revolution.”

“Manafort did quite well during his time in Ukraine. He was paid tens of millions of dollars by pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych and other clients, stashing much of the money in undeclared bank accounts in Cyprus and the Caribbean. He used the hidden income to enjoy some of the finer things in life, such as a $15,000 ostrich jacket. Manafort was convicted in 2018 of wide-ranging financial crimes.

In 2014, Manafort’s plum assignment in Ukraine came to an abrupt end. In February of that year, Yanukovych was deposed in Ukraine’s second uprising in a decade, known as the Maidan Revolution, in which more than a hundred protesters were killed in Kyiv. He fled to Russia, leaving behind a vast, opulent estate (now a museum) with gold-plated bathroom fixtures, a galleon on a lake and a 100-car garage.”

[u/Mumbled_Jumbo]

The podcast Behind The Bastards does a good couple episodes on him.

[u/Ashly_Lily → u/Mumbled_Jumbo]

I just started listening to them when I was suggested the Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin episodes, but I didn't know they covered Manafort. Thank you!

[u/ygpv1035]

One of the main clues as to Trump being a Russian asset

[u/No_Clue_7894]

on March 1, when Terrence K. Williams tagged the X platform’s owner on a post complaining that the government was “targeting conservatives and small businesses” by requiring them to file a beneficial ownership information form with FinCEN. “ELON MUSK!!! I’m begging you! Please ask President Trump to get rid of this ridiculous BOI rule that Biden created,” Williams wrote.

A few hours later, Musk replied: “I can look into it.”

The demise of the FinCEN database is just one small and particularly impulsive example of Musk’s project of demolishing the federal bureaucracy.

During Trump’s first term, congressional committees, prosecutors, and reporters focused a great deal of attention on the overseas business relationships of Trump and his advisers, some of which were also scrutinized by FinCEN. (In 2021, a former senior Treasury Department official was sentenced to six months in prison for leaking thousands of confidential FinCEN reports on former Trump-campaign manager Paul Manafort and others.)

https://www.curbed.com/article/trump-musk-shell-companies-money-laundering-real-estate.html