#Jeffrey Mankoff | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bountyofbeads · 5 years

Text

Giuliani consulted on Ukraine with imprisoned Paul Manafort via a lawyer

By Josh Dawsey, Tom Hamburger, Paul Sonne and Rosalind S. Helderman |

Published October 02 at 8:41 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 3, 2019 PM ET |

In his quest to rewrite the history of the 2016 election, President Trump’s personal attorney has turned to an unusual source of information: Trump’s imprisoned former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Rudolph W. Giuliani in recent months has consulted several times with Manafort through the federal prisoner’s lawyer in pursuit of information about a disputed ledger that would bolster his theory that the real story of 2016 is not Russian interference to elect Trump, but Ukrainian efforts to support Hillary Clinton.

The relationship, which Giuliani acknowledged in an interview this week with The Washington Post, stems from a shared interest in a narrative that undermines the rationale for the special counsel investigation. That inquiry led to Manafort’s imprisonment on tax and financial fraud allegations related to his work in Kiev for the political party of former president Viktor Yanukovych.

Giuliani’s effort is gaining traction on Capitol Hill. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, have announced their renewal of an inquiry into any coordination between Ukraine and Democratic Party officials.

Manafort, who is serving a 7½ -year term in a federal prison in Pennsylvania, has continued to express support for Trump, and Trump has never ruled out giving him a pardon.

Trump’s push on a July 25 call to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the matter, and also probe former vice president Joe Biden, triggered an impeachment inquiry in the House. Many of the accusations Giuliani has been making about Ukraine recycle those that Manafort’s team first promulgated.

Giuliani joined Trump’s legal team in April 2018 to help defend the president against special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe, and the former mayor said he launched his own investigation into Ukraine late last year, which led him to consult with Manafort. He said he has not spoken directly to Manafort in two years.

“It was that I believed there was a lot of evidence that the [Democratic National Committee] and the Clinton campaign had a close connection to Ukrainian officials,” Giuliani said, noting that he was never advocating for a pardon of Manafort. “It was all about Trump. I don’t think I could exonerate Manafort.”

Manafort’s lawyer, Kevin Downing, did not respond to a request for comment.

Giuliani said his consultation with Manafort centered on trying to ascertain the veracity of a secret black ledger obtained by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, which the New York Times revealed in an August 2016 story. The Times said the ledger recorded $12.7 million in cash payments from Yanukovych’s political party to Manafort. The revelation led Manafort to resign from the campaign.

Giuliani’s narrative recasts Ukrainian accusations in 2016 against Manafort and efforts by Democratic operatives to gather research on Manafort after he took a leading role in Trump’s campaign as a conspiracy involving both Ukrainian and American officials to swing the election for Clinton.

As part of that, Giuliani has focused on a theory that Manafort’s team was promoting as early as 2017: that the Ukrainian government separately interfered in the 2016 campaign on behalf of Clinton through the activities of a Ukrainian American contract worker for the DNC, Alexandra Chalupa.

Chalupa confirmed she worked part-time as an outreach worker for the DNC to Ukrainian Americans and others, and met with Ukrainian officials from the embassy in Washington during that time. She said she “sounded the alarm” on Manafort outside her duties for the DNC, and sought to circulate that information, because she said she was concerned about Manafort’s ties to Yanukovych, who was backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. She said the Ukrainian Embassy stayed clear of U.S. election matters, even with regard to Manafort.

“The White House has been pushing this narrative to distract from Donald Trump’s gross abuse of power in pressuring a foreign country to interfere in our elections,” DNC press secretary Adrienne Watson said in a statement.

There were Ukrainian Americans and people in the Ukrainian anti-corruption movement who were motivated to “shine a light” on Manafort’s activities in Ukraine during 2016, and some Ukrainian Americans were active on behalf of Clinton, said Jeffrey Mankoff, deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, but he said those activities aren’t equivalent to Russia’s state-sponsored intervention, which included the release of stolen emails and an extensive online disinformation campaign.

“One theory has been documented with extensive detail in the Mueller Report,” Mankoff said. “The other is something that Rudy Giuliani and people in his orbit have conjured up as a way to cast aspersions and confuse the story.”

Giuliani said he needed to consult with Manafort through the latter’s lawyer this spring to ask whether a black ledger ever existed.

“I said, ‘Was there really a black book? If there wasn’t, I really need to know. Please tell him I’ve got to know,’” Giuliani recalled asking Manafort’s lawyer. “He came back and said there wasn’t a black book.”

Giuliani said he was interested in the matter to prove his theory that the ledger’s release, which he has claimed was done in conjunction with U.S. officials, was part of a falsified pretext for U.S. authorities to reopen a case against Manafort.

The FBI, however, already had a case open against Manafort before the 2016 campaign, having interviewed him twice about his work in Ukraine in 2013 and 2014.

The special counsel’s office did not introduce the “black ledger” at Manafort’s trial in Virginia in August 2018, nor did Manafort's defense team mention the document during his trial on tax and financial fraud charges, or try to show that it had been forged.

After a jury convicted Manafort of eight felonies, the former Trump campaign chairman pleaded guilty in Washington to avoid a second trial. As part of his plea, Manafort acknowledged that he made more than $60 million in Ukraine, laundering more than $30 million of it through foreign companies and bank accounts to hide it from the IRS and cheating the government out of $15 million in taxes. He also agreed that he had lobbied in the United States on behalf of Ukrainian officials without registering and that he conspired to tamper with witnesses in his case.

Serhiy Leshchenko, a Ukrainian journalist, anti-corruption campaigner and former member of parliament, said the ledger “was obtained by an anonymous source in the burned-out ruins of the headquarters of Yanukovych’s party.” His involvement in the release of part of its contents at a news conference, he said, was motivated by a desire that Manafort be brought to justice for his activities in Ukraine.

“Giuliani’s entire approach is built on disinformation and the manipulation of facts,” Leshchenko said in an op-ed in The Post. “Giuliani has developed a conspiracy theory in which he depicts my revelations about Manafort as an intervention in the 2016 U.S. election in favor of the Democratic Party.”

In a text conversation with Manafort from August 2017 released by prosecutors, Fox News host Sean Hannity mentions “Ukraine interference” as one of the issues he was highlighting to attack Mueller. On his show that year, Hannity repeatedly claimed Ukraine had intervened in the 2016 election by sharing information on Manafort with a DNC contractor. Manafort did not respond directly to those claims but frequently encouraged and praised Hannity throughout the summer.

The White House also promoted the allegation.

“If you’re looking for an example of a campaign coordinating with a foreign country or a foreign source, look no further than the DNC, who actually coordinated opposition research with the Ukrainian Embassy,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in July 2017.

Grassley and Johnson, writing this week in a letter to Attorney General William P. Barr, again mentioned the allegations as a matter they intend to investigate.

“Ukrainian efforts, abetted by a U.S. political party, to interfere in the 2016 election should not be ignored,” the senators wrote. “Such allegations of corruption deserve due scrutiny, and the American people have a right to know when foreign forces attempt to undermine our democratic processes,” the senators wrote in the letter.

Rachel Weiner contributed to this report.

Rahm Emanuel: On impeachment, Pelosi has many good options

By Rahm Emanuel | Published October 02 at 4:00 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 3, 2019 PM ET |

Rahm Emanuel is a former mayor of Chicago and a former Democratic congressman from Illinois. He served as chief of staff to President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2010.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has turned her carriers into the wind. She has taken the historic — and consequential — step of launching an impeachment inquiry against a U.S. president because he sought help from a foreign power in his campaign against a domestic political rival. And like the admirals of old, she like everyone else cannot know how this ends. Her majority and her legacy hang in the balance.

Pelosi’s initial reluctance to move forward suggests she knows what’s at stake. She intends to counter President Trump’s incessant and erratic tweeting about a “Witch Hunt” and “treason” with a strategy that is evenhanded and fully appreciative of the gravity of the moment. She knows that, while impeachment is an inherently political process, the public will recoil if it appears as though Democrats are waging a political campaign. Even as recent polling reveals that support for impeachment and removal has risen quickly, all Democrats will be smart to mimic her steadiness as they step forward, serious in their manner, strategic in their direction.

What we are about to witness is a balancing act for both parties: Pelosi needs to move the process expeditiously — but the process needs to be seen as fair, not just fast. The charges must be clear, and the evidence needs to prove beyond any doubt that any proposed punishment fits the severity of the crime. Democrats will do themselves no favors if they fail to hold the president accountable; but they should be wary of overstepping as well. Republicans may fear conservative voters will punish them for criticizing Trump. But the GOP could lose everything if their party is seen to be marching in lockstep with a president who violated his oath.

Pelosi has never been keen to explain her strategy in public; you don’t get to be speaker by oversharing. But because this is an impeachment inquiry — not an actual impeachment — the key for Democrats at this stage will be to focus their efforts on fact-finding, not yet making a case for conviction. Particularly in these early days, our posture needs to be about bringing sunlight to a murky reality, not convincing the public that it should support any given outcome. Over time, more facts will come out. And when they do, they could lead investigators in any number of directions.

If by mid-November, the evidence makes a clear case that Trump has used the power of his office to coerce a foreign government and advance his electoral interests, impeachment will undoubtedly be in order. In the unlikely scenario that this is all smoke and no fire, Congress would be wise to set the matter aside. But if investigators determine that the president should be admonished without being evicted from the White House, the House has a third option at its disposal: The House can sanction and censure the president, as the Senate did President Andrew Jackson nearly 200 years ago.

Republicans could have taken the censure route in 1998 against President Bill Clinton. Instead, they got greedy, becoming obsessed with political retribution. Their hatred of Clinton twisted their judgment and left them to lose five seats in midterm elections that, by historic patterns, should have been a boon for the GOP. That’s a lesson for everyone: voters have a role here, too. Ignore them at your peril.

Republicans, meanwhile, have been more conspicuously closemouthed than Breitbart and Fox News would have you believe. Some members are privately appalled by the rough transcript of Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. There is no telling how many might support some kind of accountability if the Democrats conduct the proceedings fairly and equitably.

Pelosi is deftly navigating treacherous waters. Instead of splitting the inquiry among six committees, she has thrown her clout behind Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. That move promises to keep the inquiry focused on grave questions of national security and the invitation to foreign intervention in U.S. democracy.

If the House impeaches the president and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) shuts the proceeding down, Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) should demand a vote to censure the president instead. A count-by-count set of censure votes would be a difficult challenge for many Republicans. Each would have to make a stomach-churning choice between whitewashing despicable behavior and offending the president’s most ardent supporters.

No one is above the law. If other administration officials are implicated in the high crimes and misdemeanors, they too should face the appropriate consequences. But in these early days, Democrats will do themselves and the country the greatest service if they merely ensure the investigative process remains thorough, judicious and fair. There’s no shame in applying the lessons of 1834 and 1998 to today’s circumstance. And there’s no virtue rushing to judgment, no matter how much we believe Trump is running roughshod over the country.

Trump rides a roller coaster of grievances, victimhood and braggadocio as Finland’s leader looks on

By Toluse Olorunnipa | Published

October 02 at 7:55 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 3, 2019 12:49 PM

The rowdy, meandering and combative news conference Wednesday began with President Trump marveling at the media.

“Look at all the press that you attract,” he told Finnish President Sauli Niinisto as the two men faced a room of reporters. “Do you believe this? Very impressive.”

It ended with Trump excoriating the press as “corrupt people” who undermine U.S. democracy.

“If the press were straight and honest and forthright and tough we would be a far greater nation,” he said.

For the 40 minutes in between, the East Room of the White House played host to a roller coaster display of the grievances, victimhood, falsehoods and braggadocio that have come to define Trump’s presidency — a combustible mix that has only become more potent as the president faces the growing threat of impeachment.

Trump bared his frustrations in a heated exchange with a journalist who asked him about a July 25 phone call in which Trump pushed the Ukrainian government to investigate one of his potential Democratic challengers, former vice president Joe Biden.

“Are you talking to me?” Trump said, glaring at Jeff Mason of Reuters.

When Mason pressed ahead to ask what the president wanted the Ukrainians to do — a central question in the impeachment inquiry — Trump cut him off and told him to direct a question to Niinisto.

“Did you hear me? Did you hear me?” Trump said, raising his voice and telling Mason not to be “rude.” “I have answered everything. It’s a whole hoax and you know who’s playing into the hoax? People like you and the fake news media that we have in this country.”

It was the coda to a foreign leader visit that began and ended with Trump’s complaints on full display, starting with a sour venting session earlier in the day in the Oval Office.

As the targets of Trump’s anger grow in number, Trump’s public outbursts have also become more vitriolic.

The president described the whistleblower whose complaint alleges presidential abuse of power as “fake” and “vicious” and into “some bad things.” He accused the White House official who alerted the whistleblower about Trump’s call of being a “spy.” He said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who is running the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, was guilty of “treason.”

He blasted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — who earlier Wednesday urged her caucus to be somber and prayerful during the impeachment process — saying she “hands out subpoenas like they’re cookies.”

The afternoon news conference began with a sense of normalcy that defied the sense of chaos enveloping Washington as Democrats ramp up their impeachment inquiry with document requests, subpoenas and congressional hearings.

Trump, playing the role of statesman during his scripted opening remarks, offered condolences to Finland for a recent stabbing attack. He pledged to increase trade with the U.S. ally and encouraged Finnish companies to invest in the United States.

“We want Finnish companies to join in America’s extraordinary economic revival,” he said. “So many countries are coming in. It’s the hot place. We have the hottest economy in the world and it’s the hot place to be.”

But as the event turned to the unscripted question-and-answer session, Trump’s other personas emerged. He presented himself as a victim, a survivor, a “stable genius,” a ruthless counterpuncher and the most productive president in history.

Niinisto looked on, his face betraying his surprise and bewilderment at the dramatic arc of the Trump show. As Trump held court, the Finnish leader hardly got a word in. At one point, when Trump boasted of his wins before the World Trade Organization, Niinisto interjected: “I think the question is for me.”

Trump grew most animated as he listed his grievances and described all the forces he believed are arrayed against him and his presidency.

He repeated words like “hoax” “scam” and “fraud” as casually as another president might say NATO or “shared values.”

“So the political storm, I’ve lived with it from the day I got elected,” he said. “I’m used to it. For me, it’s like putting on a suit in the morning.”

He complained that after special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s extensive probe into Russian election meddling and potential obstruction of justice by the White House, he got only “three days of peace” before the threat of impeachment cast a cloud over the second half of his term.

“I’ve lived with this cloud now for almost three years,” he said.

The president lamented that former House speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) “would never give anybody a subpoena,” hesitating when Trump’s defenders wanted to use congressional powers to investigate Democrats and the FBI. By contrast, he said, Pelosi was a subpoena-approving machine.

Trump also embraced a sense of victimhood-by-proxy for his aides, some of whom were implicated in Mueller’s probe.

“They came down to Washington to do a great job,” he said of his aides, claiming that the investigations had “destroyed” them. “They left Washington dark.”

But Trump also presented himself as the battle-scarred victor who was uniquely capable of fighting back against his perceived enemies and on behalf of his supporters.

In describing how he has survived the “greatest hoax” in history and a “fraudulent crime on the American people,” he cited conservative media figures.

“People have said to me, how does he handle it?” Trump said. “Rush Limbaugh said, ‘I don’t know of any man in America that could handle it.’ Sean Hannity said the same thing.”

He suggested he was considering “bringing a major lawsuit” to respond to Mueller’s investigation, a suit that presumably would pit the head of the executive branch against his own Justice Department.

When a reporter asked Trump about a New York Times report that revealed contact between the whistleblower and Democratic staff on the House Intelligence Committee, Trump zeroed in on Schiff and accused him of orchestrating the entire episode.

“It shows that Schiff is a fraud and I love that question,” Trump said after taking a printed copy of the story from his suit jacket. “That’s big stuff; that’s a big story.”

Niinisto, who spoke for just a few minutes during the 40-minute news conference and 17-minute Oval Office meeting, talked about the greatness of U.S. democracy and encouraged Trump to “keep it going.” He also offered a mild rebuke of Trump’s constant berating of the European Union, which the president has said was formed to take advantage of the United States.

“I wanted to take up with the president the importance of trans-Atlantic cooperation,” he said. “We all know Europe needs U.S.A., but I say that U.S.A. needs also Europe. We know the price of everything. We should recognize also the value of everything.”

Trump did not seem to mind or notice the light criticism, and he spent much of the news conference boasting about various aspects of his presidency, which he said was the most productive in U.S. history. He credited himself for cutting taxes and regulations, celebrated the “booming” economy — even as the stock market fell nearly 500 points Wednesday — and celebrated veterans health-care legislation he signed.

He saved some of his most effusive praise for the controversial phone call he had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a conversation that has become a central component of the Democrats’ impeachment process.

At various points he described the call as “beautiful,” “perfect,” “great” and “100 percent.”

“Not a thing wrong with it,” he said of the call. “Believe it or not, I watch my words very carefully. There are those that think I’m a very stable genius, okay?”

When Mason asked Niinisto about a recent World Trade Organization case in which the United States prevailed, Trump jumped in and claimed that his presence was what helped tip the judgment in his government’s favor.

“You never had wins with other presidents, did you?” Trump said. “But we are having a lot of wins with WTO since I became president.”

In fact, the case started long before Trump became president, and previous presidents also have presided over successful WTO cases.

But such minor details didn’t stop Trump from engaging in his unique form of bragging.

“Because I know that I’m right and because I’m doing a great job for the American people,” he said. “I’m very, very happy living the way I’m living.”

0 notes

newsintodays-blog · 6 years

Text

Indictment of Russian officers puts pressure on Trump at Putin summit

New Post has been published on http://newsintoday.info/2018/08/11/indictment-of-russian-officers-puts-pressure-on-trump-at-putin-summit/

Indictment of Russian officers puts pressure on Trump at Putin summit

GLASGOW, Scotland (Reuters) – If U.S. President Donald Trump was inclined to be tentative when raising election meddling with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, the indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers with hacking in 2016 has made that approach a much harder sell.

U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as he holds a news conference after participating in the NATO Summit in Brussels, Belgium July 12, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

A federal grand jury on Friday alleged that officers of Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, secretly monitored computers and stole data from the campaign of Trump’s former rival, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The charges put an even greater spotlight on Trump’s treatment of Putin, who has denied making efforts to intervene in the U.S. election that Trump, a Republican, unexpectedly won.

Trump has called the investigation into whether his campaign colluded with Moscow a “witch hunt” and has shown an eagerness to get along with his Russian counterpart, repeatedly referring to the former KGB leader’s denials of such behavior.

“Trump has maybe a little less room to maneuver if he wants to downplay the issue or pretend that it’s not real,” said Jeffrey Mankoff, a Russia expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Trump has said he plans to raise the issue. When asked at a news conference in Britain on Friday whether he would tell Putin to stay out of U.S. elections, Trump said “yes”.

But the president indicated he did not expect much progress on the issue. “I will absolutely bring that up,” Trump told reporters. “I don’t think you’ll have any ‘Gee, I did it. I did it. You got me.’”

“NO IMPACT ON MEETING”

Critics said they were skeptical Trump would press the issue at all, despite the indictments.

“Even with today’s news, we can expect Trump to raise Putin’s attack on our democracy in a passing, perfunctory way before again taking – or at least claiming to take – Putin’s denials at face value,” said Ned Price, a former national security council spokesman for President Barack Obama.

Democratic lawmakers urged Trump to cancel the get-together with Putin. The president is spending the weekend at his golf property in Scotland before leaving on Sunday for Helsinki, where the meeting is scheduled to take place.

FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the their bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo/File Photo

Garrett Marquis, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said the release of the charges “has no impact on Monday’s meeting.”

But the summit, and the extent of Trump’s emphasis on election meddling, could highlight a divide between him and his own advisers, not to mention other Republicans, about the seriousness of Russia’s activities.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and national security adviser John Bolton, at least prior to joining the White House, have both been more critical of Moscow than the president they serve. And the administration’s broader policy toward Russia is harsher than the rhetoric employed by Trump, who recently suggested that Moscow be readmitted to what is now the Group of Seven, since Russia was kicked out of the bloc of industrialized countries for annexing Crimea from Ukraine.

“The administration has a pretty good policy towards Russia, just the president doesn’t agree with it,” said Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia under Obama. “I can’t remember a foreign policy debate that had this kind of disconnect between the president and literally every other person in his administration.”

PARTNERS WATCHING

Trump weighed in on the indictments on Saturday.

“The stories you heard about the 12 Russians yesterday took place during the Obama Administration, not the Trump Administration,” he tweeted. “Why didn’t they do something about it, especially when it was reported that President Obama was informed by the FBI in September, before the Election?”

Trump often blames Obama for problems affecting his presidency. He has repeatedly declined to hold Putin accountable for annexing Crimea, pointing to Obama instead for allowing it to happen under his watch.

Putin could play on those tendencies during their meeting and reject the charges against his agents as well.

Trump’s belief in a “Deep State” network of government and intelligence officials who are acting to damage him is another area Putin could exploit, using the timing of Friday’s announcement to play on Trump’s mistrust of the investigation into the 2016 election, CSIS’s Mankoff said.

U.S. partners will be watching to see whether Trump presses the meddling issue aggressively.

“Words will matter, especially if he goes soft on Putin after these indictments. That would rattle the allies,” said one U.S. diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “But the worst-case scenario, at least from our point of view, is that after the summit, he orders us to take actions that could undermine our allies’ confidence in NATO and in whether we still have their backs with Russia.”

Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton, James Oliphant and John Walcott in Washington; Editing by Leslie Adler and Kevin Liffey

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Source link

0 notes