Financial records filed last year in the secretive tax haven of Cyprus, where Paul J. Manafort kept bank accounts during his years working in Ukraine and investing with a Russian oligarch, indicate that he had been in debt to pro-Russia interests by as much as $17 million before he joined Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign in March 2016.
The loans for the 377 Union property totaled 6.5 million and were for a property that Manafort initially bought for less than $3 million.
Between the Hamptons property and the Brooklyn property the Federal Savings Bank loaned Manafort $16 million or 5 percent of all of the bank’s loans, according to records kept by the FDIC.
Manafort owed Oleg Deripaska somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 or 17 million dollars. That’s the same amount of money he borrowed once he lost his job with the Trump campaign.
When he was still employed by the campaign, he tried offering Deripaska private briefings and otherwise monetizing his access and position. Then he got fired.
On Aug. 19, 2016, Manafort left the Trump campaign amid media reports about his previous work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine, including allegations he received millions of dollars in payments.
That same day, Manafort created a holding company called Summerbreeze LLC. Several weeks later, a document called a UCC filed with the state of New York shows that Summerbreeze took out a $3.5 million loan on Manafort’s home in the tony beach enclave of Bridgehampton.
This doesn’t look all that complicated. Manafort owed a Russian oligarch approximately 16 million dollars. He’d been stiffing him for a few years. He came up with a desperate idea to repay him which was a priority due to Deripaska’s connections to organized crime. He would offer to work for Trump for no pay. Then he would begin paying Russia back in other ways. A change in the Republican platform. Private briefings on the inner workings of Trump’s circle. But he got exposed and fired. The same day, he began scrounging for $16 million using the connections he’d made to secure the highly dubious loans.
This, too, has been exposed. And now Manafort is up shit’s creek.
In court filings Friday related to Manafort’s bail, federal prosecutors said they have “substantial evidence” that a loan made from the bank to Manafort using the Virginia and Hamptons properties as collateral was secured through false representations made by Manafort, including misstatements of income…
Friday’s filing by prosecutors regarding Manafort’s bail indicates that once again Mueller’s team has interest in the loans.
Mueller’s team told a federal judge in response to the filing that at the next bail hearing, “We can proffer to the Court additional evidence related to this and the other bank frauds and conspiracies, which the Court may find relevant to the bail risk posed by Manafort.”
Trump could argue that he was unaware of Manafort’s hidden agenda. I might even believe him. But he’d have to show some actual anger about what Manafort did. So far, he hasn’t done even that.
He knows he can pardon Manafort, so why bother with anger?
A shitload of Manafort’s crimes are violations of New York State law and AG Eric Schneiderman is ready to take over the prosecution at any time; pardon won’t help. Manafort is better off facing the charges in federal court, where he can make a plea deal because he has so much Mueller wants.
Mueller Examines Manafort Loans
Special counsel is probing whether Trump’s former campaign chairman engaged in a quid pro quo arrangement
Secretary of the Army? Good gravy, the graft and bribery potential of that job is staggering!
Once Manafort is pardoned, he loses his 5th Amendment right to avoid self-recrimination. IOW, he’d be required to answer every question truthfully under oath.
Trump doesn’t want that.
All the best people.
Yes, this is really coming together.
I can’t believe Trump knew or knows even now very much about what was being done, because he’s too stupid to understand it and too stupid not to blurt it out in some way, but there are two signs he must know something: the fact that he keeps working personally and steadfastly on not imposing sanctions on Russia or saying anything negative about Putin on the one hand (all he’d have to know to make that happen, perhaps, would be that the pee tape exists); and that strange moment where he actually took charge of something, on the plane from Germany after the Group of 20, drafting the lies Donald Jr. would tell about the June 9 2016 meeting (for that he needed to really know something of both what the real purpose of the meeting was and what was the agreed-on cover story).
But… He did blurt it out. Repeatedly. Trump indicted himself, on camera, over and over again. His actions, public actions that we already know, demonstrate his guilt.
MattY had a good article on this today but it’s the same point I’ve been flogging for a while now. We already know more than enough to demand removal from office.
Yes, but his friends and employees own the congress. So unless he literally shot someone on fifth avenue, he is in for the duration. He confessed quite publicly to stealing the e mails. But he covered it up nicely with that crooked Hillary talk. So he did a public service they will say. All is forgiven. I suspect the pee tape is something that he definitely does not want released. Plus perhaps some Russian financing scandal. ( Insert Manafort and Gates here) And Putin will use those to ensure relations stay favorable to him.
Yes, his allies will cover for him. Media will “report the controversy” and “cover both sides”.
But we don’t have to play along.
The broad outline of Trump’s coordination with Russian intelligence operations during the election is all out in the open. Maybe the New York Times feels the need to pretend it’s still an open question.
But it’s not. We’re waiting for Mueller to bring the indictments that force action, but the basic facts are already there.
I love that article but Matt says Trump is good at keeping secrets and it actually convinced me. What he blurts isn’t ever usable as evidence, however much it reveals he’s disgusting. (That famous “If Russia is listening” remark was very cagy in that sense, teasing his audience and daring his opponents to accuse him, while also dumb in the sense he didn’t know which emails he was talking about.)
This is a lot more direct than I expected. I figured he’d be cozied up with shady Russians hiding money and doing deals together, not be in a desperate rush to raise an enormous sum of money to avoid a polonium cocktail.
Now the question becomes why the Trump campaign wanted to hire him. There’s probably a really interesting story there too.
Manafort’s partner Roger Stone (Trump’s fellow Roy Cohn acolyte) vouched for him. He’s worked for the best clients–Marcos, Idi Amin, Yanukovych, Reagan… And Trump literally cannot resist anything for free (remember when he cashed Graydon Carter’s 13-cent check?)
This framing is interesting. Maybe it helps explain why a Russian spy operation seems like swiss cheese. The interfaces to Mr Trump are really Russian “Mafia” or mobster syndicates. They’re hooked up with FSB and its associated agencies, but this is not the Soviet Union and Putin is not Czar of all the Russias either, it’s more like feudal France. These syndicates aren’t the KGB, they may not have very good security and it may not matter to them too much (any problems? 2 bullets for you). They have considerable latitude – perhaps.
Mueller has a long history with US Mafia investigations. He and his team probably understand the psychology and behavior patterns better than anyone else.
Perhaps that’s why the Trump campaign organization connected so haphazardly (apparently) as noted elsewhere – they weren’t really used to dealing with the Russian security services, they were used to dealing with mobsters and they had enough savvy and standing to pick and choose with them.
Just my guessing game. Any of this reasonable?
“Trump could argue that he was unaware of Manafort’s hidden agenda. I might even believe him. But he’d have to show some actual anger about what Manafort did. So far, he hasn’t done even that.”
Yes, that seems to make sense. Except — if so, why has Trump been kissing Putin’s ass every chance he gets? Maybe Trump isn’t directly mixed up in Manafort’s problems, but then you would tend to think that Trump himself owes some of Putin’s people bigly; and one of these possibilities doesn’t necessarily exclude the other.
It’s well known that Manafort came onto the Trump campaign only at the end of March 2016. What’s less noticed is that Trump and Manafort have known each other much longer than that — probably from as far back as 1980.
This is helpful.
I always thought Manfort’s loans were for services rendered as there were no repayment provisions in these loans. So, will the donald pardon him for treason?
He can’t do that. It would put him in checkmate.
The NBC News story on Trump before the SOTU indicated Trump’s confidence that Manafort would never flip:
Why is Trump so confident? Does he figure that Manafort can’t cross the Russians without putting his life and his family’s at extreme risk? Should Manafort be on suicide watch?
Interesting. But of course that was three weeks ago — a lot has happened since then. Rick Gates and Alex van der Zwaan will soon be singing like canaries, which will put Manafort under intense pressure.
The most interesting thing about that story for me was the way it publicly shows Trump knows he’s a criminal.
Without any hedging. “Yeah, he knows stuff that would destroy me, but he’ll never talk.” I thought it was just mobster talk, like omertà, honor among thieves. Or it could be fear of Russians, it could be fear of the same kind of blackmail as Trump is afraid of for himself. Or he could be bluffing, or maybe Ty Cobb told him that. “Don’t worry, Mr. President, he’s as true as steel. And the Mueller investigation will be over by April Fool’s.”
So much to explore…
The new indictment has been unsealed, and it says that Gates and Manafort laundered over $30 million in the past 10 years. And he still owed $16 million.
Manafort must be epically bad with money.