The Muscovite Candidate

[Lord Jim]

Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief

By ANDREW E. KRAMER, MIKE McINTIRE and BARRY MEIERAUG. 14, 2016

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.

More here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/po ... trump.html

[rubato]

Ahh, that would be Reagan's campaign advisor. Back doing what he does best.

Manafort. The reason Putin has no fear of any Republican president.



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[Lord Jim]

[rubato]

Manafort is not a new commodity and he explains why Reagan supported Jonas Savimbi, a mass murderer and serial rapist.

4] Savimbi also accused his political opponents in UNITA of witchcraft, and participated in the public burning of entire families as witches

United States support

In 1985, with the backing of the Reagan administration, Jack Abramoff and other U.S. conservatives organized the Democratic International in Savimbi's base in Jamba, in Cuando Cubango Province in southeastern Angola.[10] Savimbi was strongly supported by the influential, conservative Heritage Foundation. Heritage foreign policy analyst Michael Johns and other conservatives visited regularly with Savimbi in his clandestine camps in Jamba and provided the rebel leader with ongoing political and military guidance in his war against the Angolan government.[11][12]

Savimbi's U.S.-based supporters ultimately proved successful in convincing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to channel covert weapons and recruit guerrillas for Savimbi's war against Angola's Marxist government, which greatly intensified and prolonged the conflict. During a visit to Washington, D.C. in 1986, Reagan invited Savimbi to meet with him at the White House. Following the meeting, Reagan spoke of UNITA winning "a victory that electrifies the world."[13]

Two years later, with the Angolan Civil War intensifying, Savimbi returned to Washington, where he was filled with gratitude and praise for the Heritage Foundation's work on UNITA's behalf. "When we come to the Heritage Foundation", Savimbi said during a June 30, 1988 speech at the foundation, "it is like coming back home. We know that our success here in Washington in repealing the Clark Amendment and obtaining American assistance for our cause is very much associated with your efforts. This foundation has been a source of great support. The UNITA leadership knows this, and it is also known in Angola."[13]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort

Political activities

In 1976, Manafort was the delegate-hunt coordinator for eight states for the President Ford Committee; the overall Ford delegate operation was run by James A. Baker III.[7] Between 1978 and 1980, Manafort was the southern coordinator for Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign, and the deputy political director at the Republican National Committee. After Reagan's election in November 1980, he was appointed Associate Director of the Presidential Personnel Office at the White House. In 1981 he was nominated to the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.[2]

Manafort was an adviser to the presidential campaigns of George H. W. Bush in 1988[8] and Bob Dole in 1996.[9]

In March 2016 he joined the presidential campaign of Donald Trump to lead Trump's "delegate-corralling" efforts and as "chairman" of the Trump campaign. In April 2016, Trump terminated his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski promoting Manafort to the position. He gained control of the daily operations of the campaign as well as an expanded $20 million budget, hiring decisions, advertising, and media strategy.[10][11][12]
Lobbying career

In 1980 Manafort was a founding partner of Washington, DC-based lobbying powerhouse Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly.[13]

Manafort left BMSK in 1996 to join Richard H. Davis in forming Davis, Manafort, and Freedman.
Association with Jonas Savimbi

In 1985, Manafort's firm, BMSK, signed a $600,000 contract with Jonas Savimbi, the leader of the Angolan rebel group UNITA, to refurbish Savimbi's image in Washington and secure financial support on the basis of his anti-communism. BMSK arranged for Savimbi to attend events at the American Enterprise Institute (where Jeane Kirkpatrick gave him a laudatory introduction), the Heritage Foundation, and Freedom House; in the wake of the campaign Congress approved hundreds of millions of dollars in covert American aid to Savimbi's group.[14] Allegedly, Manafort's continuing lobbying efforts helped preserve the flow of money to Savimbi several years after the Soviet Union ceased its involvement in the Angolan conflict, forestalling peace talks.[14]
Lobbying for other foreign leaders

Manafort accepted $900,000 yearly to lobby for Ferdinand Marcos. He was also involved in lobbying for Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaïre and attempted to recruit Siad Barre of Somalia as a client.[15] His firm also lobbied on behalf of the governments of the Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya (between $660–750,000 yearly 1991 and 1993), and Nigeria ($1 million in 1991). These activities led Manafort's firm to be listed amongst the top five lobbying firms receiving money from human-rights abusing regimes in the Center for Public Integrity report "The Torturer's Lobby".[16]
Involvement in the Karachi Affair

Manafort wrote the campaign strategy for Edouard Balladur in the 1995 elections, and admitted to having been paid under the table[17] (at least $200,000). The money was transferred to him through his friend, Lebanese arms-dealer Abdul Rahman al-Assir, from middle-men fees paid for arranging the sale of three French Agosta-class submarines to Pakistan, in a scandal known as the Karachi Affair.[14]
Association with Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence Agency

Manafort received $700,000 from the Kashmiri American Council between 1990 and 1994, supposedly to promote the plight of the Kashmiri people. However, an FBI investigation revealed the money was actually from Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence agency as part of a disinformation operation to divert attention from terrorism. A former Pakistani ISI official claimed Manafort was aware of the nature of the operation.[18] While producing a documentary as part of the deal, Manafort interviewed several Indian officials while pretending to be a CNN reporter.[19]
HUD scandal

In the late 1980s, Manafort was criticized for using his connections at HUD to ensure funding for a $43 million rehabilitation of dilapidated housing in Seabrook, N.J.[20] Manafort's firm received a $326,000 fee for its work in getting HUD approval of the grant largely through personal influence with Deborah Gore Dean, an executive assistant to former HUD Secretary Samuel R. Pierce, Jr.[21]
Lobbying for Viktor Yanukovych and involvement in Ukrainian politics

Manafort also worked as an adviser on the Ukrainian presidential campaign of Viktor Yanukovych (and his Party of Regions during the same time span) from December 2004 until the February 2010 Ukrainian presidential election[22][23][24] even as the U.S. government (and US Senator John McCain) opposed Yanukovych because of his ties to Russia's leader Vladimir Putin.[9] Manafort was hired to advise Yanukovych months after massive street demonstrations known as the Orange Revolution overturned Yanukovych's victory in the 2004 presidential race.[25] Borys Kolesnikov, Yanukovich’s campaign manager, said the party hired Manafort after identifying organizational and other problems in the 2004 elections, in which it was advised by Russian strategists.[23] Manafort rebuffed U.S. Ambassador William Taylor when the latter complained he was undermining U.S. interests in Ukraine.[14] According to a 2008 U.S. Justice Department annual report, Manafort’s company received $63,750 from Yanukovych's Party of Regions over a six-month period ending on March 31, 2008, for consulting services.[26] In 2010, under Manafort's tutelage, the opposition leader put the Orange Revolution on trial, campaigning against its leaders' management of a weak economy. Returns from the presidential election gave Yanukovych a narrow win over Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, a leader of the 2004 demonstrations. Yanukovych owed his comeback in Ukraine's presidential election to a drastic makeover of his political persona and, people in his party say, that makeover was engineered in part by his American consultant, Manafort.[23]

In February 2014, Yanukovych was overthrown by the Euromaidan protests, during the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, and a Parliamentary vote, and then fled to Russia.[27] Manafort then returned to Ukraine in September 2014 to become an advisor to Yanukovych’s former head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine Serhiy Lyovochkin.[24] In this role he was asked to assist in rebranding Yanukovych's Party of Regions.[24] Instead, he argued to help stabilize Ukraine, Manafort was instrumental in creating a new political party called Opposition Bloc.[24] According to Ukrainian political analyst Mikhail Pogrebinsky "He thought to gather the largest number of people opposed to the current government, you needed to avoid anything concrete, and just become a symbol of being opposed".[24] According to Manafort he has not worked in Ukraine since the October 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election.[28]

In an April 2016 interview with ABC News Manafort stated that the aim of his activities in Ukraine had been to lead the country "closer to Europe".[29]

There was controversy over the Republican party platform regarding Ukraine and its relationship with Russia.[30]
Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Investigation

Ukrainian government officials studying secret documents have found handwritten records that show $12.7 million in cash payments designated for Manafort. These undisclosed payments are from the pro-Russian political party of Victor Yanukovych, the former president of Ukraine. This payment record spans from 2007 to 2012. Manafort’s lawyer, Richard A. Hibey, said Mr. Manafort didn’t receive “any such cash payments” as described by the anti-corruption officials.[31]
References

Compared to this? Hillary's email mistake is trivia.


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[rubato]

Finally we understand why Reagan backed nearly every murderous dictator in power at the time:


http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... rants.html

The Quiet American

Paul Manafort made a career out of stealthily reinventing the world’s nastiest tyrants as noble defenders of freedom. Getting Donald Trump elected will be a cinch.

Ukrainians use the term “political technologist” as a favored synonym for electoral consultant. Trump turned to Manafort for what seemed at first a technical task: Manafort knows how to bullwhip and wheedle delegates at a contested convention. He’s done it before, assisting Gerald Ford in stifling Ronald Reagan’s insurgency at the GOP’s summer classic of 1976. In the conventions that followed, the Republican Party often handed Manafort control of the program and instructed him to stage-manage the show. He produced the morning-in-America convention of 1984 and the Bob Dole nostalgia-thon of 1996.

Given Manafort’s experience and skill set, it never made sense that he would be limited to such a narrow albeit crucial task as delegate accumulation. Indeed, it didn’t take long before he attempted to seize control of the Trump operation—managing the budget, buying advertising, steering Trump toward a teleprompter and away from flaming his opponents, appearing on air as a primary surrogate.

Some saw the hiring of Manafort as desperate, as Trump reaching for a relic from the distant past in the belated hope of compensating for a haphazard campaign infrastructure. In fact, securing Manafort was a coup. He is among the most significant political operatives of the past 40 years, and one of the most effective. He has revolutionized lobbying several times over, though he self-consciously refrains from broadcasting his influence. Unlike his old business partners, Roger Stone and Lee Atwater, you would never describe Manafort as flamboyant. He stays in luxury hotels, but orders room service and churns out memos. When he does venture from his suite for dinner with a group, he’ll sit at the end of the table and say next to nothing, giving the impression that he reserves his expensive opinions for private conversations with his clients. “Manafort is a person who doesn’t necessarily show himself. There’s nothing egotistical about him,” says the economist Anders Aslund, who advised the Ukrainian government. The late Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory described him as having a “smooth, noncommittal manner, ” though she also noted his “aggrieved brown eyes.” Despite his decades of amassing influence in Washington and other global capitals, he’s never been the subject of a full magazine profile. He distributes quotes to the press at the time and place of his choosing, which prior to his arrival on the Trump campaign, was almost never. (Indeed, he did not respond to requests to comment for this story.)

His work necessarily entails secrecy. Although his client list has included chunks of the Fortune 500, he has also built a booming business working with dictators. As Roger Stone has boasted about their now-disbanded firm: “Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly, lined up most of the dictators of the world we could find. … Dictators are in the eye of the beholder.” Manafort had a special gift for changing how dictators are beheld by American eyes. He would recast them as noble heroes—venerated by Washington think tanks, deluged with money from Congress.

Playing tennis with Yanukovych at Mezhyhirya might have been the culmination of Manafort’s long career. He spent nearly seven years commuting to Kiev. Over that stretch, he remade Ukrainian politics and helped shift the country into Vladimir Putin’s sphere of influence. It was an impressive achievement, at least according to the ethical calculus that governs Manafort’s world. But then along came Donald Trump—another oligarch in desperate need of his services.

Its not just Trump, the GOP that has been sick with corruption for decades.

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[Burning Petard]

I saw Manafort on CBS morning news this morning, stating with absolute certainty that he had never taken any money from the Government of Ukraine.

Of course not. He was not working for at the government. He was a bag man for individuals who were in the government.

Deniability. It is a beautiful thing.

snailgate.

[rubato]

There are more recent reports that Manafort was acting on behalf of the Ukrainian government here in the US but had failed failed to register as a foreign agent.

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[Lord Jim]

AP Sources: Manafort tied to undisclosed foreign lobbying

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump's campaign chairman helped a pro-Russian governing party in Ukraine secretly route at least $2.2 million in payments to two prominent Washington lobbying firms in 2012, and did so in a way that effectively obscured the foreign political party's efforts to influence U.S. policy.

The revelation, provided to The Associated Press by people directly knowledgeable about the effort, comes at a time when Trump has faced criticism for his friendly overtures to Russian President Vladimir Putin. It also casts new light on the business practices of campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Under federal law, U.S. lobbyists must declare publicly if they represent foreign leaders or their political parties and provide detailed reports about their actions to the Justice Department. A violation is a felony and can result in up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

Manafort and business associate Rick Gates, another top strategist in Trump's campaign, were working in 2012 on behalf of the political party of Ukraine's then-president, Viktor Yanukovych.

People with direct knowledge of Gates' work said that, during the period when Gates and Manafort were consultants to the Ukraine president's political party, Gates was also helping steer the advocacy work done by a pro-Yanukovych nonprofit that hired a pair of Washington lobbying firms, Podesta Group Inc. and Mercury LLC.

The nonprofit, the newly created European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, was governed by a board that initially included parliament members from Yanukovych's party. The nonprofit subsequently paid at least $2.2 million to the lobbying firms to advocate positions generally in line with those of Yanukovych's government.

That lobbying included downplaying the necessity of a congressional resolution meant to pressure the Ukrainian leader to release an imprisoned political rival.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/c01989a4 ... n-lobbying

Here's a link to a good article written by legal analyst Dan Abrams that examines in detail the issue of this "non-profit" organization's status as it applies to the specific law in question. (His article includes the text of the statute):

http://lawnewz.com/opinion/heres-the-u- ... -are-true/


Here's a brief excerpt from that article:

That’s a lot of technical language, but it’s going to come into play later. Basically, it means anyone who engages in political, PR, or fundraising activities on behalf of or following the direction of a foreign principal, or goes before a U.S. government body or official representing a foreign principal’s interests. There are exceptions, but they are mainly for diplomats and the press. That seems like a pretty broad range of actions that would qualify someone as an agent of a foreign principal, but somehow, the lobbying groups came to the conclusion that they didn’t fit the bill.

The report says that a legal opinion that Mercury used claimed that the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine was indeed a foreign principal, but that the firm didn’t have to register their activities because they were not directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed or subsidized by the Ukrainian government or the country’s political parties.

Now go back to that list of criteria for being an agent of a foreign principal. The first part, subsection (1) uses a lot of that same language. There’s just one big problem: the law doesn’t say that an agent has to be working for a foreign government, just a foreign principal, which they acknowledged the non-profit was.

To me, this "non-profit" looks like an obvious shell operation set up to enable Manafort and Gates to evade the foreign agent registration requirements; there's definitely enough here to warrant a federal investigation.

[rubato]

Like Roy Cohn before him this tapeworm has been a central figure in the GOP for many decades. The amoral center of power which selected Romney ("47% of the American people are parasites").

Cut out the rot.

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[Lord Jim]

Geezus, you are so full of shit...

This is the first US campaign Manafort has been involved in for twenty years...

Surprising you don't know this, since even the cherry picked crap you posted makes this clear...

Then again not surprising since you've made clear for a long time that you don't bother to read a lot of the junk you copy and paste...

And while I'm cleaning up your staggering political ignorance yet again, I might as well flush this turd down the toilet too:

Finally we understand why Reagan backed nearly every murderous dictator in power at the time

I'm not going to bother showing you again the proof that every single President, Democrat and Republican from Franklin "He may be a sonuva bitch but he's our sonuvabitch" (referring to Somosa Sr.) Roosevelt through the entire Cold War, (including your hero, The Idiot Carter) supported "murderous dictators"...

I'm just going to point out something else that's incredibly obvious to anyone with even a double digit IQ:

After Reagan's election in November 1980, he was appointed Associate Director of the Presidential Personnel Office at the White House.

This obviously comes as news to you rube, but "Associate Director of the Presidential Personnel Office" ain't a really senior foreign policy shaping position...

The pecking order for foreign policy formulation doesn't go:

President
Secretary of State
National Security Advisor
Associate Director of the Presidential Personnel Office

Manafort accepted $900,000 yearly to lobby for Ferdinand Marcos.

Would that be the same Ferdinand Marcos who was forced by the Reagan Administration to turn over power to a democratically elected government, becoming the first Post War example of a pro-American right wing dictator being replaced by a democracy rather than a pro-Soviet left wing dictator? (Outside of Europe; Spain and Portugal were able to successfully navigate that transition earlier.)

Why yes, I believe it would be...

[rubato]

Manafort was an adviser to the presidential campaigns of Republicans Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole,

Has it really been 20 years? It was so much longer than that he was in power. Right up to the present.


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[Lord Jim]

WTF are you on about rube?

"in power"?

Who are you talking about? Manafort?

Manafort held some third tier and second tier positions in several campaigns, and "advisor" (one of many) positions in a couple of more campaigns (the last one being in 1996. Yes rube, the difference between 1996 and 2016 is 20...maybe it's that math that was confusing you...)

Again, the highest ranking government position he ever held was "Associate Director of the Presidential Personnel Office"...

Which means he was a mid-level HR manager...

I'd hardly call that being "in power"...

[Lord Jim]

I think this article pretty well sums it up:

Why Putin wants a Trump victory (so much he might even be trying to help him)

By Michael McFaul August 17

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to see Donald Trump become the next president of the United States. To that end, Putin and his government have taken unprecedented steps to influence our electoral process to help the Republican Party’s nominee. Whether Russia’s interventions will succeed is not obvious. But it’s clear that Putin’s government has the motives — and the means — to try.

Putin has rational motives for wanting Trump to win: Trump champions many foreign policies that Putin supports. Trump’s most shocking, pro-Kremlin proposal is to “look into” recognition of Crimea as a part of Russia. President Obama and nearly every member of Congress — Republican and Democrat — have rejected that idea vigorously. Only Afghanistan, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela have recognized Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Naturally, Putin would love to see the United States join that list.

Trump also has made clear his disdain for the United States’ alliances around the world. Demonstrating his misunderstanding of how NATO works, Trump has demanded that other NATO members essentially pay us for protection, making many of our allies, especially in the eastern part of Europe, nervous about his commitment to defend them. Trump has also disparaged our allies in Asia, creating new opportunities for Russian influence. On trade, Trump’s promises to disrupt our agreements also play right into Putin’s agenda. From Putin’s perspective, what could be a better way to start the New Year than a trade war between the United States and China or Mexico? Trump’s threats to stop paying our debts also would radically undermine our credibility as a lender, another desirable outcome for Putin.

On the whole, Trump advocates isolationist policies and an abdication of U.S. leadership in the world. He cares little about promoting democracy and human rights. A U.S. retreat from global affairs fits precisely with Putin’s international interests. And if Mr. Trump becomes president, experts on U.S. politics predict a tumultuous period domestically. If a President Trump tried to implement his radical ideas regarding immigration or walling off our southern border, a serious push-back effort would ensue, both in Congress and in the country as a whole. A United States convulsed by infighting over Trump’s deeply divisive policy proposals gives Putin more freedom to act around the world.

If a Trump victory would serve Putin’s interests, a President Hillary Clinton would not. Clinton will never recognize Crimea as part of Russia, seeks to strengthen relations with our allies and speaks out about human rights.

Putin and his government already know Clinton from her four years as secretary of state. They remember the tough line she took in seeking to negotiate a political transition in Syria; her efforts — though failed — to get Russia to support even modest U.N. Security Council resolutions regarding this humanitarian tragedy; and her early advocacy for arming Syria opponents of Bashar al-Assad, Moscow’s ally. They remember her public criticism of irregularities in Russia’s December 2011 parliamentary election, which Putin lambasted as a “signal” to Russian protesters to take to the streets against him. And they remember her portrayal of Putin’s prized foreign policy project — the creation of the Eurasia Economic Union — as a “a move to re-Sovietize the region.” No one should be surprised that Putin and his government would rather see Trump in the White House.

Putin not only has strong motives for wanting to Trump to win over Clinton, but also has some means to try to influence our presidential vote.

Kremlin-controlled media outlets have stated publicly their preference for Trump. RT, Russia’s state-controlled television station broadcasting in the United States, has a clear preference for Trump. In one of many pro-Trump reports, the Russian state-controlled news service, Sputnik, said it confirmed Trump’s claim about Obama being the “founder” of the Islamic State and tweeted the hashtag: #CrookedHillary. With vigor and volume, pro-Kremlin bloggers echoed these same messages on Twitter and Facebook. Putin himself has weighed in, praising Trump as a “colorful” (“yarkii”) and talented politician (though not as a genius, as Trump has claimed), who seems more amenable to work with Russia than other candidates.

More audaciously, Russians apparently stole emails from the Democratic National Committee, after which Trump then encouraged Russian spies to steal again and publish more of Clinton’s emails. No one should be surprised that the Russian government uses its incredible cyber capabilities to collect intelligence on important U.S. politicians. That is what spies are supposed to do. What they have never done in the past, however, is publish stolen information to influence a U.S. presidential election.

U.S. electoral experts, not me, must judge whether Russian efforts will sway the elections this fall. From my amateur armchair, the tactics seem crude and counterproductive. Does Sputnik tweeting #CrookedHillary really win over any undecided voters? I hope not, but I don’t know. What I do know is that Secretary Clinton could well become President Clinton on Jan. 20, 2017. Russian officials — from Putin to the person running the Sputnik Twitter account — might want to start thinking about what they plan to do then, and stop playing around with our electoral process now.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... aa8c462abe

[Lord Jim]

Another member of the Trump Enemies List gets hacked by the Russkies :

F.B.I. Investigating After Russians Hack The New York Times

ussian hackers are targeting more than just the Democratic Party. Two months after a trove of internal Democratic National Committee e-mails were leaked, CNN reports that The New York Times, in addition to unnamed other publications, has also been the target of Russian cyber-attacks. The attacks are believed to be part of a broader campaign of state-sponsored espionage against U.S. institutions involved in the upcoming presidential election, including the D.N.C. e-mail hack that led to the resignation of chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz in July.

The F.B.I. is reportedly investigating the latest breach. The New York Times, for its part, says the hacking attempt was unsuccessful. “We are constantly monitoring our systems with the latest available intelligence and tools,” Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for the Times, said. “We have seen no evidence that any of our internal systems, including our systems in the Moscow bureau, have been breached or compromised.”

The Clinton campaign has previously argued that the mounting tide of cyber-attacks suggests that a foreign entity—perhaps one country under the rule of Vladimir Putin—is trying to tilt the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump. The G.O.P. nominee, who has praised Putin in the past and has called for a foreign-policy approach more sympathetic to Russia, previously called on Russian hackers to infiltrate Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, and has long stated his displeasure with the “failing” New York Times.

Far from tinfoil-hat conspiracy territory, there’s mounting evidence of friendly ties between the Kremlin and Trump. Russia’s Putin has praised Trump, calling him "a really brilliant and talented person,". Paul Manafort, Trump’s now-ousted campaign chairman, is said to have close ties to Russia, working on behalf of Kremlin interests in Ukraine. Trump has also reportedly been reliant on Russia to fund development deals. At a real-estate conference in 2008, Donald Trump Jr. told attendees that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” adding, “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

Trump has also been open about his distrust of the mainstream media. He has said that if elected, he plans to open up libel laws, making it easier for news publications to be sued by those unhappy with negative coverage. This week, the famously litigious presidential candidate hired Charles Harder, the lawyer whose lawsuit helped drive Gawker into bankruptcy. Whether or not the Russian government is taking its cues from Trump, its latest target is certainly one of his favorite punching bags. The candidate couldn’t have asked for more.

Maya KosoffMaya Kosoff writes about tech for VF.com, with a focus on start-ups and venture capital.

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/ ... york-times

[rubato]

WTF are you on about rube?

"in power"?

Who are you talking about? Manafort?

Manafort held some third tier and second tier positions in several campaigns, and "advisor" (one of many) positions in a couple of more campaigns (the last one being in 1996. Yes rube, the difference between 1996 and 2016 is 20...maybe it's that math that was confusing you...)

Again, the highest ranking government position he ever held was "Associate Director of the Presidential Personnel Office"...

Which means he was a mid-level HR manager...

I'd hardly call that being "in power"...

Controlling US foreign policy is "in power".

Lobbying career

In 1980 Manafort was a founding partner of Washington, DC-based lobbying powerhouse Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly.[18]

Manafort left BMSK in 1996 to join Richard H. Davis in forming Davis, Manafort, and Freedman.
Association with Jonas Savimbi

In 1985, Manafort's firm, BMSK, signed a $600,000 contract with Jonas Savimbi, the leader of the Angolan rebel group UNITA, to refurbish Savimbi's image in Washington and secure financial support on the basis of his anti-communism. BMSK arranged for Savimbi to attend events at the American Enterprise Institute (where Jeane Kirkpatrick gave him a laudatory introduction), the Heritage Foundation, and Freedom House; in the wake of the campaign Congress approved hundreds of millions of dollars in covert American aid to Savimbi's group.[19] Allegedly, Manafort's continuing lobbying efforts helped preserve the flow of money to Savimbi several years after the Soviet Union ceased its involvement in the Angolan conflict, forestalling peace talks.[19]

This is just one of the things we already know about. More will be revealed in the passage of time.

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[Lord Jim]

[Lord Jim]

GOP pushes back against Trump’s growing embrace of Putin

WASHINGTON

Republicans chafed at Donald Trump’s growing praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, warning that the Russian leader is no ally of the United States and underscoring an internal GOP debate a generation after Ronald Reagan made strong skepticism of Russia a bedrock principle of the party.

Trump – who has for months complimented Putin as a decisive leader, said at a town hall forum Wednesday that Putin has “been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader” and that he welcomes Putin’s praise.

Pressed on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and 2014 annexation of Crimea, Trump did not demur. “Do you want me to start naming some of the things that President Obama does at the same time?” Trump asked moderator Matt Lauer. He also marveled at Putin’s 82 percent approval rating among Russians.

Trump’s running mate reinforced the praise for Putin on Thursday, also contrasting him favorably with President Barack Obama. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence called it “inarguable that Vladimir Putin has been stronger in his country than Barack Obama has been in his country.”[Yeah, the same could be said of Raul Castro, The Ayatollah Khameni, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un...shame on you for defending this Mike...]

The praise, coming a day after Trump also ridiculed American generals as “rubble,” sparked an immediate debate among Republicans, who stressed that they have their differences with Obama but criticized Trump for siding with an autocratic leader.


“If you are running to be leader of the free world and you find admiration for Putin, well, then, you’re losing me,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. “I think Vladimir Putin is a thug, a dictator, an autocratic ruler who has his opposition killed in the streets of Russia. He has dismembered his neighbor.”

Graham said he thought Putin had “walked all over” Obama but that he couldn’t agree that “Putin’s a better leader than a democratically elected president of the United States, even though I have differences with him.”


House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told reporters he did not want to do a daily “tit for tat” on Trump’s remarks, but nevertheless called Putin an “aggressor (who) does not share our interests.”

Ryan, who accused Putin of violating the sovereignty of his neighbors, also said it “certainly appears” that Putin is waging state-sponsored cyber-attacks on the U.S. political system. Russia is a prime suspect in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s email system.

“That is not acting in our interests and that is an adversarial stance and he is acting like an adversary,” Ryan said.

Trump had said Wednesday that it was not known “for a fact” that Russia was behind the hacking. And he questioned why the United States shouldn’t work closer with Russia to “knock the hell out of ISIS.”

He called in Thursday night to RT America, the Russian television station, and told host Larry King that he was unfamiliar with Putin’s claim that the DNC hacking was a “public service”

“I don’t have any opinion on it,” Trump told King. “I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know who hacked; I’m not sure who. I mean, you tell me who hacked. Who did the hacking? I have absolutely no opinion on that.”


The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said he’d “urge caution” about pursuing a closer alliance with Putin, noting that Russian forces in Syria are not directing strikes against the Islamic State but are more apt to be propping up Syria’s embattled leader.

“The idea that Putin is somehow a friend of ours, or that Russia is a friend, is a false narrative,” Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said at an event hosted by The Atlantic.

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declined to criticize Trump but suggested that “one has to be a little careful to let flattery affect one’s judgment.”

The U.S. should work with Russia, he told CNN, but he added, “President Putin has operated in ways that very much have been against our interests . . . and has done so, in many ways, in a very ruthless manner.”

Daniel P. Vajdich, a former national security adviser to Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s and Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s presidential campaigns, said he found the fact that Trump was impressed by Putin’s popularity to be frightening.

“He points to Putin’s popularity as some sort of legitimization of Putin for everything he does,” Vajdich said. “The numbers are real – he is indeed popular – but there is an anti-democratic, authoritarian context that he totally ignores.”

Vajdich said he didn’t think Trump saw a political advantage to embracing Putin but that he “genuinely admires the man.”

He pointed to some similarities between the two, including Trump’s antipathy to the press, which the government largely controls in Russia: “Trump has had a ban on media outlets. He’s not terribly interested in media freedom. His attacks on Judge Curiel. He’s not terribly interested in judicial independence.”

Trump’s warm words may be helping Putin.

Matthew Rojansky, a Russia expert and director of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington research and policy center, noted that Putin appears to be “riding this apparent endorsement by Trump in order to be restored somewhat to mainstream credibility in western politics.”

He said it could be argued that Trump is serving Putin’s interests, or it could be that Trump is “setting himself up to be able to do the hard stuff that every other American president wants to do, which is try to secure cooperation with Russia.”

“To give the guy a little credit, it’s possible he’s doing this intentionally, that he’s not being manipulated by Putin,” Rojanksy said. “That he means, ‘Hey, if I get elected I have an opening to do something here.”

But former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul said calling for a good relationship with Putin “is not a U.S. national security interest.”

He said that Trump has offered no specifics about working with Russia, beyond countering the Islamic State in Syria. McFaul noted that Secretary of State John Kerry was flying to Geneva on Thursday to meet with his Russian counterpart about reinstating an elusive cease fire in Syria.

“He (Trump) should give John Kerry a call,” McFaul said. “They’ve been literally talking for three years. Maybe Trump has some incredible skills of negotiating with Putin that have yet to be revealed.”

McFaul said he was alarmed by Trump’s remarks over the summer that he would look at recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which the United States has denounced. Only Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Syria, Afghanistan and North Korea have supported Russia’s intervention.

“That’s not a goal that I want him to use his good relations with Putin to achieve,” McFaul said.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politic ... rylink=cpy

[Big RR]

But trust Pence, it was just speaking boldly; he really isn't advocating dictatorship.

[Lord Jim]

“I was just thinking about all of the presidents that would just be looking at one another in total astonishment,” Clinton told reporters on Thursday morning, referring to Trump's controversial comments about U.S. generals, Russia and Middle East oil at the forum.

“What would Ronald Reagan say about a Republican nominee who attacks America's generals and heaps praise on Russia's president? I think we know the answer.”

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/pre ... d-by-trump

He'd repeal his 11th Commandment... (Except of course Donald Trump isn't really a Republican, so speaking ill of him doesn't actually violate the commandment)...

[Bicycle Bill]

He'd repeal his 11th Commandment... (Except of course Donald Trump isn't really a Republican, so speaking ill of him doesn't actually violate the commandment)...

For those of you who don't remember, Reagan's so-called "11th Commandment" — "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican" — was something he coined and used during his 1966 gubernatorial campaign in California.  And as LJ said, Trump isn't really a Republican.

In fact, most actual card-carrying Republicans today are nothing at all like the 1950s and 1960s Reagan and other Republicans; and even they were already unrecognizable from their Lincoln-era, "little white schoolhouse in Wisconsin" roots.



-"BB"-