Adam Weinstein now has enough information about Paul Manafort to string a narrative. Here’s where his Twitter thread starts. I’m going to try to make it into sentences and paragraphs, because I have desperately been looking for some narrative.
There is a new Wall Street Journal article out on Manafort. I don’t know what it says beyond what Weinstein tweets because I can’t access WSJ articles. Don’t tell me about the tricks – they don’t work.
We know that Manafort worked for Victor Yanukovich and his Party of Regions in Ukraine. They were openly supported by Vladimir Putin. Manfort consulted on the March 2006 parliamentary elections, which the PoR carried. That made Yanukovich a contender for Prime Minister. Later that summer, the Communist Party flipped to ally with him.
Between March and late summer, there was an incident in which people in Eastern Ukraine threw rocks and gas bottles at Marines on a NATO exercise. The basis for the protest was that NATO was interfering with Ukrainian sovereignty. Presumably the NATO exercise had full approval of the government in Kyiv.
The State Department believed that the PoR and the Communist Party were behind the demonstration. The WSJ reports that Manafort advised the PoR to “stoke [Yanukovich’s] base in the Russia-friendly Ukrainian east” and oppose NATO cooperation just before that demonstration.
So it appears that Manafort advised the PoR to mount a demonstration against US military. IANAL, but this looks to me like it should be illegal for a US citizen to promote violence against the US military.
If it is indeed illegal, this may explain Robert Mueller’s interest in Manafort. Actual crimes would be prioritized for investigation so that people can be flipped or prosecuted.
There are so many loose ends in the Donald Trump relationships with Russia that I’ve long thought that the most damning information is likely to come out of left field. Be ready for more weird stuff.