Two new reports out Wednesday offered new revelations about Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s ties to pro-Russian interests in Ukraine. Coinciding with news that Breitbart News chief Stephen Bannon had joined the Trump campaign as its new “chief executive,” the bombshell accounts detailed Manafort’s alleged involvement with a potential felony, secret payments from a foreign political party, and staged pro-Russian protests.
The Associated Press is reporting that Manafort and his associate Rick Gates, while working as consultants for Ukraine’s pro-Russia Party of Regions in 2012, facilitated a relationship between two American lobbying firms and a nonprofit aligned with then-Ukranian President Viktor Yanukovych and his aforementioned party. According to the press, the nonprofit then allegedly paid the two firms $2.2 million “in a way that effectively obscured the foreign political party's efforts to influence U.S. policy.” Obscuring work for foreign political entities is a felony under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act...
A second report from the Times of London alleges that Manafort was allocated more than $12 million in secret payments from Party of Regions and that Manafort organized the staging of pro-Russia protests in Crimea 10 years ago according to one Ukrainian official. From the Times:
The Associated Press is reporting that Manafort and his associate Rick Gates, while working as consultants for Ukraine’s pro-Russia Party of Regions in 2012, facilitated a relationship between two American lobbying firms and a nonprofit aligned with then-Ukranian President Viktor Yanukovych and his aforementioned party. According to the press, the nonprofit then allegedly paid the two firms $2.2 million “in a way that effectively obscured the foreign political party's efforts to influence U.S. policy.” Obscuring work for foreign political entities is a felony under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act...
A second report from the Times of London alleges that Manafort was allocated more than $12 million in secret payments from Party of Regions and that Manafort organized the staging of pro-Russia protests in Crimea 10 years ago according to one Ukrainian official. From the Times:
The payments designated for the man who would later become Donald Trump's campaign chief were detailed in the "black" accounting ledger of Viktor Yanukovych's ousted regime. The ledger was used to record $2 billion allegedly handed out "under the table" to political consultants, election commissioners, ministers, parliamentarians, judges and journalists from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukrainian investigators. Officers believe the money was taken from a clandestine cash reserve made up of bribes paid to party officials, but have yet to prove their theory.
The entries obtained by The Times were made between 2009 and 2012 and are individually listed as payments for Mr Manafort 's contract or expenses. Detectives from the Ukrainian National Anti-Corruption Bureau have said that a further ten entries bring the total amount of payments designated for Mr Manafort to $12.7 million.
The Times goes on to say that a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Manafort wrote in a leaked report last year that Manafort had organized pro-Russia and anti-NATO protests for the Party of Regions in Crimea in 2006. That was a period of NATO operations in the region. “The protests forced planned NATO exercises there to be cancelled,” The Times’ Maxim Tucker writes. “No charges were pursued because of a lack of evidence after Crimea was annexed.”
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slat...o_russia_work_is_probed_in_two_bombshell.html
The Times goes on to say that a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Manafort wrote in a leaked report last year that Manafort had organized pro-Russia and anti-NATO protests for the Party of Regions in Crimea in 2006. That was a period of NATO operations in the region. “The protests forced planned NATO exercises there to be cancelled,” The Times’ Maxim Tucker writes. “No charges were pursued because of a lack of evidence after Crimea was annexed.”
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slat...o_russia_work_is_probed_in_two_bombshell.html
