Ok, so Paul Manafort and protégé Rick Gates are officially the first casualties of the Mueller probe.
Earlier Monday, both were told to surrender to federal authorities and videos immediately surfaced of Manafort, dressed in one of his expensive suits, driving past a throng of photographers and cameramen in a black SUV on the way from his Alexandria, Virginia home to far less hospitable environs. For his part, Gates is expected to surrender today as well.
Manafort faces charges for tax crimes and other offenses. Specifically, he and Gates have been indicted on 12 counts:
- conspiracy against the United States
- conspiracy to launder money
- unregistered agent of a foreign principal
- false and misleading FARA statements
- false statements
- and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts.
You can read the full indictment embedded at the end of this post.
One thing that’s important to note here is that Gates remained on the Trump campaign after Manafort’s ouster last year. “Mr. Gates survived Mr. Manafort’s purge last summer amid allegations that his mentor had taken millions of dollars from Kremlin allies, retaining a central role on Mr. Trump’s campaign and inaugural committee,” a New York Times piece from June reads.
As we noted earlier today, his name can be found on documents tied to companies that Manafort’s firm established in Cyprus in order to receive payments from Eastern European politicians.
Of course Cyprus is a favorite tax shelter for Russian oligarchs which is why a whole lot of people think this is laughably suspicious.
“During the pair’s heady days in Ukraine, it was Mr. Gates who flew to Moscow for meetings with associates of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch,” The Times documented in the same June piece linked above.
Deripaska has close ties to Putin and was denied a U.S. visa on grounds he has connections to organized crime. Gates interacted with the Cypriot law firm that set up the shell companies which were designed to streamline business deals with Deripaska.
So you can see why this is so fucking suspect (figuratively and literally in this case). And of course all of this dates back to efforts to prop up that Kremlin-backed buffoon Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine.
But here’s where it gets really funny. Via The Times again:
In the spring of 2016, when Mr. Trump found himself outmaneuvered in the arcane battle for Republican convention delegates, he turned to Mr. Manafort. Mr. Gates came along as his deputy – the man behind the man in charge. In a campaign known for its factionalism, Mr. Gates won over colleagues by managing the mundane but essential work of daily operations. He traveled often with Mr. Trump and forged relationships with Reince Priebus, the future chief of staff, and Brad Parscale, the campaign’s digital director.
“What made him valuable was, people trusted him, No. 1, and No. 2, he was effective,” said Richard F. Hohlt, a longtime Republican lobbyist who worked on Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee.
Those ties enabled Mr. Gates to outlast his mentor last summer, when Mr. Manafort was ousted. Mr. Gates moved to the Republican National Committee, helping iron out joint fund-raising agreements and other contracts with Mr. Trump’s campaign.
Mr. Gates was soon established in Mr. Trump’s circle. Before the first presidential debate, he glad-handed with Michael Flynn.
Here’s a picture that underscores the relationship (Gates on the left of Trump):
As you can see, this does not bode well for this administration.
Full indictment
Asha said it BEST!
Now we find out that the owner of casinos, beauty pageants, pro wrestling, and dozens more unrelated world wide businesses hob nobs and deals regularly with criminal international businessmen. Who knew?
American voters knew, apparently, as the indictments are a complete non-event reflected in the markets. The Donald is still the old Donald that we all expected. Like he said, he could probably shoot somebody on 5th Avenue, grab a pussy or three, and be forgiven.
H-man, we just have to deal with it. The Op-eds of the NYT and WaPo can tut tut all they want, but America says “Fuck Yeah!”
Markets don’t mean a thing. A majority of Americans understand that Trump is everything and more that’s assessed in this book: https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Case-Donald-Trump-Psychiatrists/dp/1250179459, and can readily observe the fact that “evidence” had arrived that Trump and his minions were deeply involved with conspiring with a foreign state and America’s enemy to alter the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.
That there were (and are today even a lesser number of) a minority of American voters that supported a mentally deranged criminal is nothing new. We saw that with Nixon. We see it again with Trump Nixon ran out of town with his hair on fire. So will Trump. With every tweet comes a man falling apart from fear. He’s terrified. His nightmares have become reality. “Who’s next?” He thinks to himself? “Me? My Ivanka? Jr?” Like the emotionally unstable 13 year old he’s been for 57 years, he’s probably screaming at the TV, spitting up curse words, and bullying everyone in sight. Trapped like a rat with nowhere to turn while thinking about pardoning everyone in sight, only to be told that Manafort and Gates can be indicted for willful tax evasion under NY and VA law by their respective AGS who are democrats.
Trapped like a rat.
> American voters knew, apparently, as the indictments are a complete non-event reflected in the markets
Precisely. But some people are ignorant of Socioeconomics and even dumber about markets. So they just don’t get it. The “expendables” in the immortal words of the early Steve Jobs.
An irony is that Trump will nominate Obama’s Fed appointee Jerome “we have a printing press” Powell for Fed Chair, as bad as the previous worst two Bernanke and Burns. Powell will do all possible with his printing press to levitate markets no matter what, thereby perpetuating the Don’s teflon coating as the GOP cruises to a stunning defeat of the Dems in next year’s election, relegating them to political obscurity. At least the latter per the musings of the wildly accurate Stray Reflections by the witty, global macro star Jawad Mian.
Yes Marty, trapped like the rat that he is…and on a sinking ship! Everything I have read makes me think that Manafart used trump to get his Russian (debt collectors) friends to trade info he could provide as pymt of loans or favors he owed them. He got caught in his own mess – I don’t think Mueller was looking for Manafart specifically until some of his money shenanigans came to light and Deutsche or Cypress Bank was coming up a whole bunch – even Kushner’s $285 million loan to bail him out on his 666 building — incredible coincidence with that awful address! And one thread lead to another, easily connected by Mueller’s highly qualified team.
Manafart and these 2 other slugs are just the beginning. I would assume Mueller’s team have far more than we know about today and I sure as hell hope that Jr. and Mr. Ivanka are also caught! I expect more than one will spill their guts to save their ass. trump should hear the footsteps getting closer every day.
It is over for trump, in one way or another. His greed and ignorance took him. Now, we wait for the other shoe to drop.
Exactly, Murphy. We have seen that Trump has zero boundaries and the law is certainly is no exception, to include criminal treason, He’s a psychopath who does whatever he wants to do as long as it satisfies he’s need to fill his egocentric addiction to fill his bottomless pit of no-self esteem, and in this case it was his desire to become King of the World by being elected.
So the idea of hooking up with Putin, Russia and the Oligarchs to help him win the Kingdom and then help him and his family accumulate emoluments now and after he leaves office was an easy decision. So, in a blink of an eye, he used Michael Flynn, Michael G. Flynn, Manafort, Gates, Papadopoulos, Don Jr., Kushner, Page, and the rest to make that happen. Once he did it all and realized how easily he was going to be caught he fired Comey and Yates, he wanted to fire Sessions (because he rescued himself) and wanted to replace him with someone else to fire Mueller, and still wants to fire Muller.
Trump is as guilty as they come and as a guilty as they go. It’s time for him to go.
I just can’t wait for the day that Mueller says….. “Get me Roger Stone”
He said that today, for all of us to hear, Paul. He was speaking loud and clear to Paul Manafort.