Guilty of five counts of false income tax returns, two counts of bank fraud, and one for failing to report foreign accounts. That is what a Virginia jury has concluded in their guilty verdict of President Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort.
Manafort’s did not report any of the money that he made working with the pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Yanukovych in his income tax returns. Manafort failed to report any of his offshore accounts to the Treasury Department, and making false statements to try and get loans from U.S. banks.
Upon arriving in West Virginia, just hours after Manafort had been found guilty, Donald Trump called Manafort a “good man,” and to once again use to call Mueller’s investigation as a “witch hunt.” “Paul Manafort is a good man. He was with Ronald Reagan. He was with a lot of different people over the years. I feel very sad about that. It doesn't involve me but I still feel -- you know it's a very sad thing that happened,” said Trump. “You know, this has nothing to do with Russian collusion.”
It’s odd times that we live in when the President is describing someone as a “good man” just a mere couple of hours of being found guilty on 8 counts of being a shady fuck. Furthermore, the President said that Manafort’s guilty verdict has nothing to do with Russian meddling. He’s right and wrong. This case was not about the Russian meddling, but his next case will be.
On September 17, Paul Manafort will begin his second trial, that will be in Washington D.C.
Manafort is a man of interest in Mueller’s Russia investigation for the following reasons:
-Worked for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska
-A former Manafort employee Konstantin Kilimnik has alleged ties to Russian intelligence
-Worked in Ukraine for the pro-Russian political party, the Party of Regions
-Attended the Trump Tower Meeting on June 9, 2016
-Conducted “curious, cryptic” with Kilimnik about getting in touch with Deripaska during the campaign.
One day Clint Watts, a former FBI analyst, was watching CNN’s Jake Tapper interview Paul Manafort during the campaign. The list of insane shit Trump has said, is easy to forget. In this interview Tapper was asking Manafort about Trump’s comment of “Second Amendment people” might have to stop Hillary Clinton’s judicial nominee from getting on to the Supreme Court. Tapper asked Manafort if Trump was suggesting the use of violence, Manafort said that Trump was not, and that this was further proof of news bias towards Trump.
For the rest of the story, here’s an excerpt from the book Russian Roulette:
“I mean, there’s plenty of news to cover this week that I haven’t seen covered,” he (Manafort) said. “You had the NATO base in Turkey being under attack by terrorists.”
A terrorist attack in Turkey? What was Manafort talking about? There had been no such incident. But when Watts, a counterintelligence expert, saw the exchange, he knew immediately what this was about: a piece of Russian disinformation that had been ricocheting around the world on social media sites for weeks.
In late July, RT and Sputnik, the Russian news outlets, had reported a story about protest at the U.S. air base in Incirlik, Turkey…
…These stories-aimed at stirring tensions between the U.S. and Turkey-were amplified on RT and Sputnik’s Twitter feeds and websites…
..But now a mangled version of this Russian propaganda was being repeated on national television by the campaign chairman of one of the two major party presidential candidates. “What the hell?” Watts thought. And later recalled, “That’s when we knew something weird was going on.” Pg. 197-98
Something weird is going on, and it’s why our corrupt president is shitting his pants… Because not only was Manafort found guilty by a Virginia jury, but his own personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, has reached a plea guilty with federal prosecutors. Cohen pleaded guilty to eight federal felonies, which included tax evasion and making a false statement to a financial institution. Oh wait, there was also the paying off women for Donald Trump, like that “whole Stormy Daniels thing.”
Trump can’t tell his base that this is a “witch hunt,” Hannity can on television and repeat his masters words, but if God is good, most of America should see that Trump does business with people just like him, crooks…
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