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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFranklin Foer - Paul Manafort - American Hustler..
Long,but good read...
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/paul-manafort-american-hustler/550925/
The clinic permitted Paul Manafort one 10-minute call each day. And each day, he would use it to ring his wife from Arizona, his voice often soaked in tears. Apparently he sobs daily, his daughter Andrea, then 29, texted a friend. During the spring of 2015, Manaforts life had tipped into a deep trough. A few months earlier, he had intimated to his other daughter, Jessica, that suicide was a possibility. He would be gone forever, she texted Andrea.
His work, the source of the status he cherished, had taken a devastating turn. For nearly a decade, he had counted primarily on a single client, albeit an exceedingly lucrative one. Hed been the chief political strategist to the man who became the president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, with whom hed developed a highly personal relationship. Manafort would swim naked with his boss outside his banya, play tennis with him at his palace (Of course, I let him win, Manafort made it known), and generally serve as an arbiter of power in a vast country. One of his deputies, Rick Gates, once boasted to a group of Washington lobbyists, You have to understand, weve been working in Ukraine a long time, and Paul has a whole separate shadow government structure
In every ministry, he has a guy. Only a small handful of Americansoil executives, Cold War spymasterscould claim to have ever amassed such influence in a foreign regime. The power had helped fill Manaforts bank accounts; according to his recent indictment, he had tens of millions of dollars stashed in havens like Cyprus and the Grenadines....
Botany
(70,483 posts).... picked by Putin/Russia because they already owned him.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)Putin told him to run.
Botany
(70,483 posts)After he (allegedly) got Trump w/the pee pee tape in Moscow 2013.
malaise
(268,885 posts)What a bunch of scumbags and mercenaries
Botany
(70,483 posts)Another alumnus of Manaforts firm answered my questions about the Marcos money with an anecdote. After the election of George H. W. Bush, Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly agreed to help organize the inauguration festivities. The firm commissioned a company from Rhode Island to sell memorabilia on the parade routeT-shirts, buttons, and the like. After crews had taken down the reviewing stand and swept up the debris, the alumnus recalled, a vendor showed up in the office with a bag full of cash. To the disbelief of his colleague, Manafort had arranged to take his own cut. It was a Paul tax, the former employee told me. I guess he needed a new deck. But this was classic: Somebody else does the work, and he walks away with the bag of cash.
malaise
(268,885 posts)In response to a questionnaire in The Washington Times, he declared Machiavelli the person he would most like to meet.
He clearly didn't read Machiavelli carefully because it is the mercenary part of his operation that has been his undoing. That's priceless.