Exclusive: Manafort flight records show deeper Kremlin ties than previously known

[DonViejo]

Source: McClatchy DC Bureau




BY PETER STONE AND GREG GORDON
[e-mail]

NOVEMBER 27, 2017 05:00 AM


WASHINGTON- Political guru Paul Manafort took at least 18 trips to Moscow and was in frequent contact with Vladimir Putin’s allies for nearly a decade as a consultant in Russia and Ukraine for oligarchs and pro-Kremlin parties.

Even after the February 2014 fall of Ukraine’s pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych, who won office with the help of a Manafort-engineered image makeover, the American consultant flew to Kiev another 19 times over the next 20 months while working for the smaller, pro-Russian Opposition Bloc party. Manafort went so far as to suggest the party take an anti-NATO stance, an Oppo Bloc architect has said. A key ally of that party leader, oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, was identified by an earlier Ukrainian president as a former Russian intelligence agent, “100 percent.”

It was this background that Manafort brought to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, which he joined in early 2016 and soon led. His web of connections to Russia-loyal potentates is now a focus of federal investigators.

Manafort’s flight records in and out of Ukraine, which McClatchy obtained from a government source in Kiev, and interviews with more than a dozen people familiar with his activities, including current and former government officials, suggest the links between Trump’s former campaign manager and Russia sympathizers run deeper than previously thought.

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/article186102003.html

[bluestarone]

1. never never never

let this man out

[Roland99]

2. Faux is even reporting this already

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/11/23/new-manafort-travel-docs-reveal-closer-ties-to-russia-report.html

[BumRushDaShow]

3. Instead of "spreading democracy around the world"

there have been real "deep state" RW actors who have spent years underground "spreading the concepts of oligarchy" around the world.

They did it in Japan after WW2, they did it in parts of the ME (like Saudi and the Emirates), they did it in India (which has taken over much of the IT world), they have been doing it in Russia (and its satellites) since Yeltsin, and that latter effort produced Putin... and they have been working China like mad (where much of the world's pharmaceutical and electronic components are made).

[lagomorph777]

4. Deeper and deeper it goes...

[ffr]

5. And this is only the portion of the iceberg journalists are able to dig up.

When tRump's Republican, I mean Russian ties are unearthed, it's going to be an Mt. Everest sized pile.