Paul Manafort has always been a weasel. After decades of making millions of dollars shilling for evil foreigners like Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, Angolan rebel Jonas Savimbi and pro-Russian Ukrainian dictator Viktor Yanukovich, Manafort agreed to run Trump's presidential campaign for free.
Nothing suspicious about that. No sirree.
Manafort lasted only a few months: he was ousted when his name was discovered in a Ukrainian ledger indicating he received $12.7 million in secret payments from a pro-Russian Ukrainian political party. By that time, however, Manafort had already accomplished his main goal: removing the pro-Ukrainian independence plank from Republican Party platform at the Republican convention.
Despite receiving tens of millions of dollars from foreign dictators over the years Manafort was heavily in debt (perhaps because he spent his money on nonsense like a $15,000 ostrich-skin jacket).
Manafort's legal problems really cranked up when prosecutors got hold of emails he sent to his buddy Rick Gates, asking him for help in creating fraudulent profit and loss statements so he could avoid taxes. Manafort couldn't figure out how to covert a PDF file to Word format.
And that wasn't the last time PDF caused Manafort problems. Yesterday Manafort's lawyers submitted a PDF file that tried but failed to redact an embarrassing revelation: While running Trump's campaign Manafort gave internal campaign polling data to Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian operative with connections to the Kremlin.
Manafort and Kilimnik also discussed a Ukrainian "peace plan," which would mean dropping sanctions on Russia for the invasion Crimea and the ongoing occupation of eastern Ukraine.
These details, plus the Trump Tower meeting with Jared Kushner, Don Jr., and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya (who was indicted yesterday in an unrelated case that firmly establishes her ties to the Kremlin), and literally dozens of other contacts between Trump campaign operatives and Russian officials, spies and other organizations like the NRA, make it abundantly clear that the Trump campaign and associated PACs conspired with the Russian government to steal the presidential election.
It also doesn't help that Trump constantly repeats pro-Russian propaganda, such as his comments on Montenegro ("Very aggressive people") and Afghanistan ("The Soviets invaded to fight terrorists"), as if Trump was Putin's ventriloquist's dummy.
Trump apologists, such as Rudy Giuliani, have essentially admitted to all the facts above, and have been reduced to claiming that "collusion is not a crime." The thing is, collusion is just another word for conspiracy.
And conspiracy is a crime: Trump conspired to commit campaign fraud in the form of hush money payments to porn stars and Playboy playmates.
It is a crime for foreigners to spend money to influence American elections: it's an illegal in-kind campaign donation. The Trump campaign clearly conspired with Russians who funded vast social media campaigns to sway Americans to vote for Donald Trump or Jill Stein, and to defame Hillary Clinton and dissuade black Americans from voting at all.
In essence, Giuliani and Trump's apologists are going for the "pussy-grabbing" defense: everyone knew Trump was a sexual predator in November 2016, and he won the election anyway, so he should be able to get away with it.
Since "everyone knew" Trump was in bed with the Russians before the election because "everyone knew" that Manafort was a Russian plant and "everyone knew" about Trump's numerous connections to Russian oligarchs and mobsters, the American people obviously didn't care he conspired with a foreign power to steal the election.
Trump's defense, in the end, will be that his conspiracy with the Russians is "old news," and it should just go away.
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