Manafort is toast

The case against Manafort is too strong for anything but guilty verdicts.
But the type of charges are interesting.
I would have guessed he was up to his eyeballs in Russian collusion.
Maybe he is.
Maybe he can implicate others.
Maybe that's why the charges against him are confined to financial misdeeds that are easily proven, and have been. Manafort is a big league political whore, and a political whore who worked with nasty folks. Manafort's considerable expertise helped make some awful stuff happen.
He is facing decades in prison, and will probably buckle to the pressure of a plea bargain.
Mueller is looking for something bigger, as we all know.
From Mueller you get to the Trump son and son-in-law, and maybe even to the president.
Mueller and Cohen and Stone together will reveal whether or not there really is a case against the president for collusion with the Russians. I suspect Donald Trump's business practices will involve crimes not much different than Mueller's. But that's what all these high flying con men do -- they skirt laws and figure out ways to avoid paying their taxes. That's why President Trump did not want his taxes made public. You make that shit public and skillful journalistic investigators prove it is bogus in a hurry. Mueller already knows that Trump's financial house is in compete disarray, and is brimming with illegalities, just like Manafort's, just like Cohen's. We will be witnessing a slow, painful squeeze starting with Manafort's convictions.

The case against Manafort is too strong for anything but guilty verdicts.
But the type of charges are interesting.
I would have guessed he was up to his eyeballs in Russian collusion.
Maybe he is.
Maybe he can implicate others.
Maybe that's why the charges against him are confined to financial misdeeds that are easily proven, and have been. Manafort is a big league political whore, and a political whore who worked with nasty folks. Manafort's considerable expertise helped make some awful stuff happen.
He is facing decades in prison, and will probably buckle to the pressure of a plea bargain.
Mueller is looking for something bigger, as we all know.
From Mueller you get to the Trump son and son-in-law, and maybe even to the president.
Mueller and Cohen and Stone together will reveal whether or not there really is a case against the president for collusion with the Russians. I suspect Donald Trump's business practices will involve crimes not much different than Mueller's. But that's what all these high flying con men do -- they skirt laws and figure out ways to avoid paying their taxes. That's why President Trump did not want his taxes made public. You make that shit public and skillful journalistic investigators prove it is bogus in a hurry. Mueller already knows that Trump's financial house is in compete disarray, and is brimming with illegalities, just like Manafort's, just like Cohen's. We will be witnessing a slow, painful squeeze starting with Manafort's convictions. Originally Posted by Muy Largo

Ever notice how muy loco's posts are all the same?

Every one of them is just a long-winded, bloviating way to say:

I HATE TRUMPY - AND I'M FRUSTRATED BECAUSE I AIN'T GOT SHIT ON HIM!

Manafort is a big league political whore, and a political whore who worked with nasty folks. Manafort's considerable expertise helped make some awful stuff happen. Originally Posted by Muy Largo

^^^ Notice muy loco's trademark innuendo at work here. Never does the asshole get specific about anything.

Gee, I wonder what political whore "big league" did the Podesta brothers play in?

Maybe muy loco would like to tell us why Mueller is offering immunity to Tony Podesta for many of the same crimes Manafort is on trial for.

How many millions of dollars did the Podesta Group, led by the brother of hildebeest's campaign chairman John Podesta, collect for lobbying on behalf of Russia's largest bank and the same pro-Russian Ukrainian folks that Manafort did?

Want to talk about that, muy loco?

Or will you ignore the question, just like you have ignored every previous question I've posed to you, chickenshit?

You're the OP, now show us what you're made of.

That's why President Trump did not want his taxes made public. You make that shit public and skillful journalistic investigators prove it is bogus in a hurry.... Originally Posted by Muy Largo

Hahaha... Trumpy gets audited by the IRS every fucking year. Muy loco is so stupid he thinks "journalistic investigators" have degrees in accounting and auditing but IRS agents don't!

I would have guessed he was up to his eyeballs in Russian collusion... Originally Posted by Muy Largo

You guessed right... Obama, Brennan and hildebeest are indeed up to their eyeballs in collusion, muy loco!


Did Obama, Brennan And Clinton Illegally Collude To Take Trump Down?


7/23/2018

Russia Investigation:

As the saying goes, a fish rots from the head down. Well, so do bad governments. Recent revelations about the behavior of President Obama and his CIA director John Brennan in pushing the bogus Russian collusion investigation suggest that's been the case.

The release of the FISA application by the FBI to investigate alleged collusion between Russia and President Trump's campaign and recent comments made by top officials are eye-opening.

Not only did President Obama know about the investigation, he seems to have pushed it from the very beginning.

But don't take our word for it. Here's what Obama's Director of National Intelligence, the nation's former spy master, James Clapper, told CNN's Anderson Cooper:

"If it weren't for President Obama we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that set up a whole sequence of event which are still unfolding today, including Special Counsel (Robert) Mueller's investigation. President Obama is responsible for that. It was he who tasked us to do that intelligence community assessment in the first place."

Why didn't this get more attention in the media? Obama and Brennan not only knew the dubious nature of the allegations against Trump, but pushed them anyway.

As Kimberley Strassel wrote in the Wall Street Journal, Brennan in particular has revealed himself to be a total anti-Trump partisan to an extent that's shocking for a public official. His animus is raw and deep, as his actions suggest.

"The record shows (Brennan) went on to use his position — as head of the most powerful spy agency in the world — to assist Hillary Clinton's campaign (and keep his job)," Kimberley Strassel wrote last week in the Wall Street Journal.

Brennan's manic partisanship could be seen last week in an over-the-top, bizarrely unhinged tweet following Trump's press conference after his mini-summit with Vladimir Putin. Brennan called Trump's remarks "nothing short of treasonous" and said they exceeded "the threshold of 'high crimes & misdemeanors.' "


Russia Scandal: Did Hillary Clinton Run FBI's Trump Investigation?

While Brennan's hate for the GOP nominee may be public now, it wasn't in the summer of 2016. His evidence for collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia was so weak neither the FBI nor Clapper would commit to it.

Knowing his role as CIA head forbade him from intervening in domestic spying and trying to take the investigation from a low simmer to a high boil, Brennan got the ball rolling in August of 2016 by telling then former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid a tale of Russians interfering in our election on Trump's behalf.

It worked. Pushed on by Brennan, Reid, then the most powerful person in Congress, wrote a letter to FBI Director James Comey citing "evidence of a direct connection" between the Trump campaign and seeking an investigation.

Not only did Brennan share intelligence with the FBI, but soon after, the Democrat-linked opposition research firm Fusion GPS began leaking the "Trump Dossier" to the media. The fix was in.

As the release late last week of the FBI's FISA court application used to spy on former Trump aide Carter Page indicates, the dossier was used extensively for the application. That's contrary to what the FBI had maintained.

Moreover, an influential article written by Michael Isikoff detailing the dossier's contents and Harry Reid's letter to the FBI were likewise used to get approval for the FISA court application.

What do they all have in common? They all go back to the same phony dossier, written by former British spy Christopher Steele for Fusion GPS. It was never verified or validated by the FBI. It was bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton and her pals at the Democratic National Committee, solely to smear Trump.


The FBI Misled The Court To Wiretap Trump Campaign, FISA Application Shows

Give Hillary credit: She was adept at insinuating her phony oppo research document into the public record and at using it to weaponize U.S. intelligence agencies on behalf of her failed campaign.

But then, we all knew this had happened. What's stunning is the casual way Clapper let us know that President Obama "was responsible" for the whole shebang.

If that's so, there are really only two possibilities:

One, that a gullible Obama was fed phony information from Brennan and the Hillary Clinton campaign. He then over-reacted by tasking the intelligence community to look into it.

Or, two, that Obama knew he was dealing with tainted information. Instead of halting a bogus investigation, he let Brennan carry it forward. Why? He thought it would help elect Hillary Clinton — and cement his own presidential legacy for posterity.

At a minimum, what seems obvious is that the deep state triad of Obama, Clinton and Brennan colluded. They did it to damage Trump's campaign with allegations of Russian interference in the election. And they got the FBI and, later, a special prosecutor, to conduct a high-profile investigation.

Such collusion, if only in the political sphere, wouldn't be a crime. However, using federal assets and personnel and misrepresenting what you're doing to a FISA court to influence an election are crimes. Felonies, in fact.


Investigation Without End

The investigation of Trump is now entering its third year with nothing to show for the effort. We don't know if there'll be some kind of sweeping indictment released by Mueller just before the midterm elections, but given the degree of politicization of this investigation so far it wouldn't surprise us at all.

But instead of investigating Trump, shouldn't we investigate those who subverted our democracy for rank partisan purposes to influence a presidential election? That's Obama, Brennan and Clinton.

Questions abound: Did they plan this? Who coordinated it all? Did they do it all with a nod and a wink to keep it clean? Or did they meet and discuss it? Or did it all come together at the insistent prodding of a virulently anti-Trump Brennan? America needs to know.

Removing security clearances for those in the Obama administration who lied or were guilty of misconduct and political bias would be a minimum. These crimes, if real, are bigger than Watergate.

The only real question is whether our justice system is too compromised to bring those who committed real crimes, not imaginary ones, to justice. And whether our equally compromised and biased media are capable of reporting it.

https://www.investors.com/politics/e...investigation/

i'm just gonna have a little fun with a few lines of your colorful commentary...

I suspect Donald Trump's business practices will involve crimes not much different than Mueller's.

I'm guessing here but you really meant Manafort??

You make that shit public and skillful journalistic investigators prove it is bogus in a hurry. . Originally Posted by Muy Largo

like this one?




hhahahahahahaahhahaaaaa

like this one?



hhahahahahahaahhahaaaaa Originally Posted by The_Waco_Kid

Hahahaha.... so let's talk about how much the Donald actually paid in 2005 federal income/payroll taxes. Was it:

a) $3.80

b) $38,000

c) $3.8 million

d) $38 million


Come on, muy loco, hit the buzzer! You know the correct answer!

For extra credit - has any previous POTUS ever paid as much in federal taxes as the Donald has? Yes or no.

I am assuming that others on this board have been following the Manafort case, and the evidence against Manafort regarding financial crimes has been amply presented. I don't need to rehash that shit. What interests me is not Manafort's financial wrongdoing, it's the political stuff, and the possible connection of campaign wrongdoing with others in the campaign he directed for a rather substantial period of time. Those who elevate the president to heroic status will undoubtedly point out Manafort's service time frame, but it came at a critical point and candidate Trump was proud to have him on board. Manafort's potential troubles were evident to many who knew what he was up to in the years before his service to Trump. If he had steered clear of the Trump campaign he might have avoided the scrutiny he brought to himself. I have pointed out a potential scenario, nothing more. If you disagree, fine. Explain why. But instead I am attacked as an Obama supporting lib-tard. It's all so boring and simple-minded, this name-calling and side-taking. I think Manafort is either going to prison for awhile or he will sing and go to prison or do soft time. Gates is lucky. He wasn't the bigger fish. Stone, Bannon and the Trump family awaits. Meanwhile, the Russians continue to hack and probe.

If you don't think that high-level investigative journalists and their employers retain or have rapid access to capable, reputable auditors, financial forensic experts and other expertise to help with stories you don't have a clue about journalism. Just a reminder about these journalists and the so-called "fake news" --if these fake news outlets hadn't revealed the meeting between Trump's campaign team and the Russians in Trump Tower we would never have known about it, the President would never have had to lie about it, then take back his lie, lie again, and then come back at us with yet another version of what happened. The first lie should make you suspicious.

The IRS won't find the stuff an independent highly focused analysis can find. Manafort's tax returns revealed what to the IRS? Gate's tax returns revealed what to the IRS? Mueller and his team found things, it is clear, the IRS did not know.

But instead I am attacked as an Obama supporting lib-tard. Originally Posted by Muy Largo

Poor widdle baby, always a victim. I didn't call you an "Obama supporting libtard", not in this thread anyway. I did call you chickenshit. And you just proved it (again), by not even acknowledging my question, let alone trying to answer it.


I'll even give you a second chance:

How many millions of dollars did the Podesta Group, led by the brother of hildebeest's campaign chairman John Podesta, collect for lobbying on behalf of Russia's largest bank and the same pro-Russian Ukrainian folks that Manafort did?


And don't forget to take a stab at my multiple choice question too:

How much did the Donald pay in 2005 federal income/payroll taxes? Was it:

a) $3.80

b) $38,000

c) $3.8 million

d) $38 million

Go ahead, take a wild guess, muy loco... you have a 25% chance of being correct.

The IRS won't find the stuff an independent highly focused analysis can find. Manafort's tax returns revealed what to the IRS? Gate's tax returns revealed what to the IRS? Mueller and his team found things, it is clear, the IRS did not know. Originally Posted by Muy Largo

So the IRS is incompetent and everyone should cheat on their taxes because the IRS is incompetent and they won't catch tax cheats because the IRS is incompetent.


interesting take on that, Loco.

If you don't think that high-level investigative journalists and their employers retain or have rapid access to capable, reputable auditors, financial forensic experts and other expertise to help with stories you don't have a clue about journalism. Just a reminder about these journalists and the so-called "fake news" --if these fake news outlets hadn't revealed the meeting between Trump's campaign team and the Russians in Trump Tower we would never have known about it, the President would never have had to lie about it, then take back his lie, lie again, and then come back at us with yet another version of what happened. The first lie should make you suspicious.

The IRS won't find the stuff an independent highly focused analysis can find. Manafort's tax returns revealed what to the IRS? Gate's tax returns revealed what to the IRS? Mueller and his team found things, it is clear, the IRS did not know. Originally Posted by Muy Largo

The first two weeks of the trial of former Donald Trump presidential campaign chairman Paul Manafort on 18 counts of tax evasion and bank fraud charges have failed to implicate Trump or his campaign in any alleged criminal conduct.
Prosecutors working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller – who is investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election – are expected to call their final witness Monday at Manafort’s trial in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. If convicted on all counts, Manafort could face a maximum sentence of 305 years in prison.



So far we’ve learned that the prosecution’s star witness, former Manafort employee Rick Gates, is a liar, a serial adulterer and a thief who embezzled funds from Manafort.

And we’ve learned that Manafort is alleged to have evaded paying taxes on income that he and Gates earned through secret offshore bank accounts, shell companies and fraudulent bank loans.
But when it comes to the mandate given to Mueller on May 17, 2017, we’ve learned absolutely nothing. Mueller was charged with investigating “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.”
But neither Gates nor any other witness at the Manafort trial has testified about the Russian election interference or any alleged collusion between the Trump campaign – or Trump himself – with the Russians.
Manafort was with the Trump presidential campaign for just under five months. That’s a tiny sliver of the long career of the 68-year-old.
All of the testimony at the Manafort trial has addressed events that occurred long before Manafort went to work for 2016 Trump campaign. The testimony has focused on Manafort’s and Gates’s activities as alleged “unregistered agents” representing the Ukrainian government starting in 2006.
It would be absurd to argue that Manafort’s other clients in the 12 years since then are somehow to blame for any criminal activity he may have engaged in – and prosecutors aren’t even trying to point the finger at President Trump for these activities.
Manafort’s lawyers claim that Gates was the actual wrongdoer, and they subjected him to a punishing cross-examination.
Under questioning, Gates was forced to admit that he lied to the investigators from the special counsel’s office; embezzled huge amounts of money from Manafort and prior employers; and used the stolen funds in part to pay for extramarital affairs and a “secret life” that included an apartment and a girlfriend in London.
Through their cross-examination, Manafort’s lawyers pushed the idea to the jury that Gates got accountants to falsify Manafort’s tax returns in order to cover up the embezzling. Gates’ fraud apparently included submitting fraudulent personal expenses to the Trump inauguration committee.
Prosecutors tried to counter this with testimony by an FBI forensic accountant, an Internal Revenue Service agent, and Manafort’s own accountant. The accountant testified under a grant of immunity that although she worked with Gates a lot, she believed Manafort “knew what was going on.”
At a prior hearing in this case, the presiding federal judge – the very colorful T.S. Ellis III – said that Mueller is prosecuting Manafort in part because he wants Manafort to “sing” – in other words, testify against President Trump on other unrelated matters.
Ellis said at the earlier hearing that Mueller set out to “turn the screws and get the information you really want” from Manafort. And that information, according to the judge, is what “Manafort can give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump and lead to his prosecution or impeachment.”
It is certainly possible that Gates has some kind of evidence relevant to the Russian collusion allegation that Mueller has not yet made public. And perhaps Manafort also has similar evidence.
But so far at least, Manafort has chosen not to cooperate with Mueller. There was a hint of this in the trial with regard to Gates after the judge issued an order on Thursday at the request of the government. The order sealed portions of a “sidebar” conference the lawyers had with the judge to avoid “revealing substantive evidence pertaining to an ongoing government investigation.”
If Gates is the one with this “secret” evidence against the Trump campaign, the government will face a severe witness-credibility problem, given his embarrassing admissions on the stand in the Manafort trial.
Moreover, Gates admitted that he was threatened with 290 years in prison by Mueller’s team –but was promised he could get off with just probation if he agreed to testify against Manafort. That certainly gives Gates an enormous incentive to allege criminal conduct by Manafort. It’s hard to believe that prosecutors would offer Gates a “get out of jail free card” if he testified that Manafort did nothing wrong.
If Manafort is found guilty of tax evasion and bank fraud, some will try to use his very brief association with the Trump campaign to tar the president. But such criticism would ignore two crucial facts.
First, presidential campaigns are not law enforcement agencies. They have neither the capacity nor the resources to do detailed background investigations on the thousands of individuals who volunteer to work with a campaign.
Second, Manafort appeared to be a successful, ethical businessman. Even the government – including the IRS, the FBI and our intelligence agencies – had no idea that he was allegedly engaging in any wrongdoing for a foreign government through an elaborate scheme of offshore bank accounts and shell companies, until Mueller’s office started investigating him.
In an odd point in the trial, Gates testified that he and Manafort actually told the FBI about their offshore bank accounts in Cypress back in 2014. At the time, the FBI was investigating the former Ukrainian president. Gates and Manafort disclosed the accounts to the agent, because that is how the Ukrainian government paid them.
Yet the FBI apparently did nothing about this and did not notify the IRS. There has been no explanation from the government as to why it took no action at that time.
And surely the Trump campaign cannot be legitimately criticized for not knowing, as the federal government did not know, what Manafort and Gates were supposedly doing vis a vis their personal finances and income tax liability.
The bottom line is this: The Manafort trial is about alleged criminal activity by Manafort and Gates. If Manafort had not spent less than five months working as a volunteer on the Trump presidential campaign he might never have even been charged with a crime.
However, Manafort’s short time in a high-visibility role with the campaign placed all his past activities – having nothing to do with Donald Trump – under the microscope.
In the unlikely event Manafort had been charged with the same crimes but had never joined the Trump campaign his trial would no doubt have attracted only a small amount of media attention. Only his association with Trump has turned his trial into a major news story.
The Manafort trial is complicated. It is receiving enormous news coverage. Most Americans don’t have the time or interest to follow every detail on a daily basis. So it’s understandable that many people assume the trial has something or other to do with President Trump and his campaign.
But that assumption is a mistake. Whether you support President Trump or oppose him, the simple and indisputable fact is that nothing in the Manafort trial so far has revealed any evidence of collusion with Russia or any other misconduct by President Trump or his campaign.
This trial is about Paul Manafort and Rick Gates – not Donald Trump.

you need to find a shrink for your TDS

Just a reminder about these journalists and the so-called "fake news" -- if these fake news outlets hadn't revealed the meeting between Trump's campaign team and the Russians in Trump Tower we would never have known about it... Originally Posted by Muy Largo

Maybe you can explain why your favorite news outlets didn't show the same zeal to uncover the fact that Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya had meetings with Fusion GPS smear merchant Glenn Simpson immediately before and after her Trump Tower meeting.

Maybe you can explain why they aren't showing the same eagerness to find out why DOJ official Bruce Ohr colluded with Russian oligarch/Putin pal Oleg Deripaska to obtain a visa allowing him to enter the US despite a ban in 2016.

Maybe you can explain why they pedaled the lie that the infamous Steele dossier was originally commissioned by Trump's GOP primary opponents, when it was ENTIRELY commissioned by hildebeest and paid for by DNC lawyers?

Maybe you can tell us why they.... awww fuck it, I forgot you can't handle SPECIFICITY like this, can you muy loco?

Hey Lusty, I'm impressed you can google President Trump's 2005 taxes.
Man, that's some stunning revelation.

Rod, You're right. This Manafort proceeding has not dealt with Trump. But we know how these special investigations have worked in the past. The investigators find illegal activity and they will not ignore it. They will use it to steer back to their original mandate -- if they can. And in this case they will. The Gates rationale pursued by Manafort's defense is full of holes and is not even logical. It's a desperate ploy. It's a strategy when there are no other strategies. Scum bags like Gates and Manafort have lots of baggage. Manafort will be found guilty not because of Gates but because of an irrefutable paper trail. Then the squeeze will start. These assholes are loyal to no one other than themselves. That's why Manafort tried to trade some banker a position in the US government for favors. These guys are money-over-country merchants.