Posted by Viktor Yanukovych on Sun, 30 Sep 2018 15:43 | #

       
        Karmic wreath addresses Viktor Yanukovych.

Yes, Paul Manafort is on trial for crimes in the U.S. But his work in Ukraine helped to destroy a country

Washington Post, 17 Aug 2018:

By Diana Pilipenko

Diana Pilipenko is the associate director for anti-corruption and illicit finance at the Center for American Progress.

During Paul Manafort’s trial for tax evasion and bank fraud, the public has heard over-the-top tales of illicit trysts in London, ostrich leather jackets and overpriced antique rugs. Bankers, IRS agents and accountants have testified at length about how Manafort defrauded financial institutions and the U.S. government. Yet little attention has been paid to the constituency that perhaps suffered most from Manafort’s deeds: the people of Ukraine.

I grew up in Ukraine, and reading the court documents detailing Manafort’s work for the country’s former president, Viktor Yanukovych, left me disgusted and depressed. The people who suffered from Yanukovych’s corrupt regime are my relatives, my friends and my former neighbors. They are not abstractions or numbers on a ledger, and under Yanukovych their lives took a back seat to state-sponsored greed.

Many in Ukraine credit Manafort with the 2010 resurrection of Yanukovych, who lost a bid for president in 2004 after serious electoral fraud on his behalf was exposed, triggering massive protests.

“Manafort worked for a long time so that Yanukovych could come to power and use that power for his own corrupt schemes, not reform,” said Serhiy Leshchenko, a member of Ukraine’s parliament and the investigative journalist who published evidence of the $12 million in payments from Yanukovych’s Party of Regions to Manafort. As another Ukrainian reporter put it, what’s been happening in the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, is actually “the first serious trial to address political corruption in Ukraine under Yanukovych.”

Yanukovych defanged law enforcement and the courts, stifled the free press, undermined integration with the European Union, welcomed Kremlin influence and, along with his cronies, allegedly stole up to $100 billion from the country — equivalent to nearly 90 percent of Ukraine’s economic output last year. In March 2014, the U.S. Department of Treasury sanctioned Yanukovych as someone who contributed to destabilizing Ukraine, alongside his Russian allies. In this respect, Manafort also bears part of the blame for Russia’s illegal takeover of Crimea and Moscow’s bloody war in the east, which has claimed at least 10,000 lives and continues today.

Many have noted that Manafort’s two most recent high-profile clients, Yanukovych in 2010 and Donald Trump in 2016, both advanced the interests of the Kremlin. And Manafort’s trial has also shown that his work to elect Yanukovych — which earned him more than $60 million — was rooted in corruption. Many of Manafort’s campaign memos, such as those addressed to steel magnate Rinat Akhmetov, suggest that oligarchs’ financial interests took precedence over the interests of the Ukrainian people.

The corrupt oligarchic system that Yanukovych thrived in largely remains intact today. Unfortunately, Ukraine’s law enforcement and judiciary have not recovered enough from the hollowing out they suffered under Yanukovych — too much corruption and crime still goes unpunished and continues to sabotage reform.

Transparency International, an anti-corruption advocacy group, gives Ukraine one of its lowest rankings in Europe. Given the correlation between corruption and poverty, it is not surprising that Ukraine is also one of the continent’s poorest countries.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, the populations of Ukraine and Poland were similar in number, education levels and wealth. Yet by 2013, the year before Yanukovych was run out of power, Ukraine’s per capita gross domestic product was less than one-third of Poland’s. Poland was able to modernize and introduce market reforms after the fall of communism, while in Ukraine, according to the Financial Times, “deep structural reforms were repeatedly delayed,” and the “oligarchs who made millions from skewed privatizations were able to gain political sway and subvert the system.” It is these oligarchs, eager to maintain the status quo, who funded Manafort’s work on behalf of Yanukovych and his party.

Manafort’s defenders have described him as a brilliant political mind. But what those court documents showed me was something far more malignant: rank cynicism and a will to use people’s fears and struggles as weapons against them. Just as in the campaign he ran for Trump, Manafort counseled Yanukovych to not only inflame economic insecurities, but also to create fissures within Ukrainian society to be exploited for political advantage. Grievances of Yanukovych’s native Donbas region in the east, with industry in decline, were amplified. In a country where, historically, Russian and Ukrainian languages have coexisted, the citizens were pitted against each other across linguistic lines.

To be sure, corruption and abuses of power were present in Ukraine before Yanukovych assumed office. But his administration took it to a level that had not existed before. The year after Yanukovych was elected, the managing partner of a prominent law firm in Kiev told me that, under the previous government, those involved in court cases could win by paying the biggest bribe. Under Yanukovych, though, judges ruled only in favor of the interests of the regime. The power of the state was unrestrained.

Manafort is fortunate to be guaranteed a fair trial and an impartial jury in the United States. The people of Ukraine who lived under the regime of the man he helped elect in 2010 enjoyed no such privileges. It is a bitter lesson that we would do well to learn from.

Posted by Konstantin Kilimnik on Wed, 09 Jan 2019 15:24 | #

Beneath redacted parts of a document about Manafort meeting with Russian contacts, it would be revealed that:

1) Paul Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik, who has been tied to Russian intelligence, met in Madrid during the campaign. 2) Manafort shared polling data with Kilimnik. 3) They discussed a “Ukrainian peace plan.”

CNN, “Analysis: Unredacted Paul Manafort filing hints at collusion” 9 Jan 2019:

Washington (CNN)Lawyers working for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort accidentally revealed on Tuesday the clearest public evidence of coordination between the campaign and Russians, adding new details to the murky mosaic of potential collusion in 2016—including sharing polling data with an alleged Russian operative.

The explosive new information was buried in a court filing from Manafort’s lawyers, though the portions about his contacts with a shadowy Russian during the campaign were meant to be redacted.

[...]

Washington (CNN)Lawyers working for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort accidentally revealed on Tuesday the clearest public evidence of coordination between the campaign and Russians, adding new details to the murky mosaic of potential collusion in 2016—including sharing polling data with an alleged Russian operative.

The explosive new information was buried in a court filing from Manafort’s lawyers, though the portions about his contacts with a shadowy Russian during the campaign were meant to be redacted.

[...]

Polling data is a key part of any modern political operation—presidential campaigns and outside groups like super PACs spend millions of dollars on polls. These numbers can drive decisions on messaging, where to campaign and advertising, both on television and in the digital space.

Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale ran Trump’s data team in 2016. They’ve publicly touted about how they used data to target voters.

[...]

Ukraine peace plan…

The news that Manafort was in talks with Kilimnik about a “Ukraine peace plan” is interesting, because it’s not the first time the Ukraine conflict became an issue inside Trump’s orbit.

During the 2016 Republican National Convention, Trump campaign officials intervened to change language in the GOP platform about the Ukraine conflict. Their actions blocked a provision that called on the US to arm the Ukrainian government to fight the Russian proxies.

[...]

An informal “Ukraine peace plan” was hatched at a January 2017 meeting between Trump’s longtime attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, former Trump business partner Felix Sater and Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Artemenko. The proposal was seen by some as friendly to Moscow.

Cohen confirmed to CNN that the meeting took place but denied discussing Ukraine. In comments to other news organizations, Cohen acknowledged the so-called “peace plan” and said he delivered the proposal to the office of then-national security adviser Michael Flynn.

[...]

There aren’t any publicly known ties between Artemenko and Kilimnik, though Kilimnik is an insider in Ukrainian political circles and has relationships with many lawmakers there.

Wikipedia:

Konstantin Kilimnik
Native name
Russian: Константин Килимник
Ukrainian: Костянтин Кілімнік
Born 1970 (age 48–49)
Kriviy Rikh, Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, Soviet Union
Known for Suspected involvement in Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections

Employment by Manafort
Recruited by Philip M. Griffin as a translator for pro-Russia Ukrainian Rinat Akhmetov and seeking better pay than at IRI, Kilimnik met Paul Manafort in 2005 and became an employee of Manafort’s consulting firm.[4][8] After leaving IRI in April 2005, he lived and worked in Kiev and Moscow while his wife and two children remained in Moscow living in a modest house near the Sheremetyevo International Airport.[4] Some reports say Kilimnik ran the Kiev office of Manafort’s firm and was Manafort’s right-hand man in Kiev.[4] They began working for Viktor Yanukovych after the 2004 Orange Revolution cost him the Presidency. With help from Manafort and Kilimnik, the Russian backed Yanukovych became President in 2010. Kilimnik then spent 90% of his time inside the Presidential administration.[8] From 2011 to 2013 with liaison to Viktor Yanukovych’s chief of staff Serhiy Lyovochkin, Kilimnik, Manafort, Alan Friedman, Eckart Sager, who was a one time CNN producer, and Rick Gates devised a strategy to discredit Yulia Tymoshenko along with Hillary Clinton.[9] This effort supported the pro-Russia administration of then President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych.[9] Yanukovvych hired Paul Manafort’s company Global Endeavour, a St. Vincent and Grenadines based consulting and lobbying company, which during the end of Yanukovych’s presidency transferred $750,000 out of Ukraine and also paid Kilimnik $53,000 during November and December 2013.[10][11] When Yanukovych fled the country, Manafort and Kilimnik gained employment with the pro-Russia Ukrainian party Opposition Bloc which is backed by the same oligarchs who backed Yanukovych.[4] At some point Opposition Bloc stopped paying Manafort’s firm but even though the non-payment forced Manafort’s firm to shut down their Kiev office, Kilimnik continued to advise the party while working to collect unpaid fees for Manafort’s firm.[4]

Around 2010, Kilimnik collaborated with Rinat Akhmetshin when the Washington-based lobbyist was trying to sell a book disparaging one of Yanukovych’s opponents.[7]

In 2017 Kilimnik helped Manafort write an op-ed for a Kiev newspaper. A journalist in Ukraine, Oleg Voloshyn, has disputed this, stating that he and Manafort wrote the op-ed and that he e-mailed the rough draft to Kilimnik.[12] The op-ed may have violated a gag order issued against Manafort by a US court and may have been a breach of Manafort’s bail conditions.[1]

Mentions in court filings
Kilimnik has been reported by The New York Times to be the “Person A” in Court filings in December 2017 against Manafort and Gates.[13]

Court filings in late March 2018 allege that Rick Gates said he knew that Kilimnik was a former officer with the Russian military intelligence service. These came after Gates reached a plea deal in exchange for cooperation in the investigation.[14] The sentencing memo for Alex van der Zwaan filed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller states that Rick Gates told van der Zwaan that Person A, believed to be Kilimnik,[15] was a former intelligence officer with the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU).[16]

Kilimnik also featured in the documents filed by Special Counsel Mueller in early December 2018 that explained why he believed Paul Manafort had lied to investigators during the investigation conducted by Mueller’s team.[17][18]

Indictment
On June 8, 2018, Kilimnik was indicted by Special Counsel to the United States Robert Mueller on charges of obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice, in conjunction with Paul Manafort,[19][3] regarding unregistered lobbying work.[20]

Connection to Trump campaign
Through numerous regular email exchanges, Kilimnik conferred with Manafort after Manafort became Donald Trump’s campaign manager in April 2016 and requested that Manafort give “private briefings” about the Trump campaign to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire and close ally to Vladimir Putin.[11][21][22] In May 2016 and August 2016, Kilimnik met with Manafort to discuss “unpaid bills” and “current news”.[22] Kilimnik was still working for Russian intelligence when, during September and October 2016, he was known to be communicating with the Trump campaign. Both Rick Gates and Paul Manafort were in contact with him at the time.[8] Manafort has said that he and Kilimnik discussed the Democratic National Committee cyber attack and release of emails, now known to be undertaken by Russian hacker groups known as Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear.[16]

Kilimnik and Manafort had been involved in the Pericles Fund together, an unsuccessful business venture financed by Oleg Deripaska.[7] In July 2016, Manafort told Kilimnik to offer Deripaska private information in exchange for resolving multimillion-dollar disputes about the venture.[7]

The New York Times reported on August 31, 2018 that an unnamed Russian political operative and a Ukrainian businessman had illegally purchased four tickets to the inauguration of Donald Trump on behalf of Kilimnik. The tickets, valued at $50,000, were purchased with funds that had flowed through a Cypriot bank account. The transaction was facilitated by Sam Patten, an American lobbyist who had related work with Paul Manafort and pleaded guilty to failing to register as a foreign agent.[23]

Posted by Judge Andrew Napolitano on Sat, 12 Jan 2019 07:16 | #

Anchor, Legal Analyst, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Sees Evidence of ‘Collusion’ Between Trump Campaign and Russia

Fox News, January 10, 2019:

Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano says the evidence appears to increasingly show that the Donald Trump presidential campaign did collude with Russia during the height of the 2016 race and that Special Counsel Robert Mueller can prove it.

During an appearance with anchor Shepard Smith, Napolitano said that court papers, which Paul Manafort’s defense team forgot to fully seal, revealed that the former campaign chairman had been accused by federal prosecutors of lying about handing over confidential polling data during the campaign to a Putin-aligned Russian oligarch.

“This shows that Bob Mueller can demonstrate to a court without the testimony of Paul Manafort that the campaign had a connection to Russian intelligence and the connection involved information going from the campaign to the Russians,” Napolitano said. “The question is, was this in return for a promise of something from the Russians, and did the candidate, now the president, know about it?”

Also Read: Fox News Leads Coverage of Trump’s Border Wall Speech With 8.2 Million Viewers

“If this is collusion — though collusion isn’t a crime — this would be collusion,” Smith said.

“Yes,” Napolitano agreed. “Conspiracy is an agreement to commit a crime … Whether or not the thing of value arrives. The agreement is what is the crime.”

Once one of President Trump’s most stalwart boosters on the channel, Napolitano has turned sharply negative toward the billionaire in recent months with commentary that has increasingly electrified Trump critics. In December, the judge said it was possible the president has already been indicted by Mueller, but that it currently remains under seal.

“There’s ample evidence … to indict the president,” Napolitano said. “The question is do they want to do it. The DOJ has three opinions on this. Two say you can’t indict a sitting president, one says you can but all three address the problem of what do you do when the statute of limitations is about to expire. All three agree in that circumstance you indict in secret, keep the indictment sealed and release it the day they get out of office.”

In the past, Trump has lauded Napolitano’s legal acumen and even supposedly once considered him for appointment to the Supreme Court.

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Fox News Anchor, Legal Analyst See Evidence of ‘Collusion’ Between Trump Campaign and Russia At TheWrap