Did you almost forget about Paul Manafort? The Roger Stone and Lee Atwater partner in ratfuckery with the closet of a color-blind pimp and the charisma of a nursing home orderly who swipes the residents’ jewelry while they’re at bingo? Well, buckle up, because that bish might just be back.
The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey reports that Trump has been in talks to bring back the convicted felon who once ran his first campaign for “free” before he was sent to prison. Hear that, Allen Weisselberg? You could get out of your second stint at Rikers and step into a job as the next secretary of the Treasury!
Reports WaPo, “The job discussions have largely centered around the 2024 Republican convention in Milwaukee in July and could include Manafort playing a role in fundraising for the presumptive GOP nominee’s campaign.”
Who better to get out there and shake the cans? Russia, if you’re listening, your man’s got exactly one week to come up with $467,327,900-ish! Hopefully Pauly Mallnuts has improved his money laundering skills since he went to prison for being bad at money laundering.
Yes, as we now know, Manafort was not running the Trump campaign for actually free. He got millions from pro-Russian Ukrainians, which he laundered through Cypriot bank accounts, and also used to falsify loan applications and didn’t report to the US government or pay taxes on. That’s how The Man gets ya! He not-so-coincidentally served SOME KIND of very strange conduit between Trump and Russia, passing Trump polling data to Russian/Ukrainian spy Konstantin Kilimnik, who gave it to Manafort's former Russian oligarch boss Oleg Deripaska, one of Putin's literal butt hairs.
Manafort was in on that 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Junior, Jared and a Russian lawyer where they talked “adoptions,” with no more sanctions and Ukraine being the baby Russia hoped to adopt. In exchange they’d help Trump get elected, vis-a-vis digging up Hillary Clinton dirt for release “later in the summer.” (They hacked her emails and only found John Podesta’s risotto recipe, but never mind.)
Eventually, Paul ended up convicted on eight charges of tax and bank fraud, pleading guilty to two charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States and witness tampering, and agreed to cooperate. Then violated his plea deal, and ultimately found himself sentenced to 90 months in the pokey. He only served 23, though, and Trump later pardoned him.
In his spare time he wrote a 400-page memoir called Political Prisoner, where he reports that a fellow prisoner asked him what he did:
“For something I didn’t do,” Manafort replies. “I was set up. ‘Business crimes.’”
“We all set up by the man!” B.B. tells him.
“He was 100 percent right. I had been set up by ‘the man’—the Office of Special Counsel, Weissman, Mueller, Hillary, Obama, the MSM. The list went on.”
It was lonely in prison, and he listened to Limbaugh, which ran MyPillow ads:
“Mike Lindell became my surrogate family. In fact, each night as I fell asleep using a rolled-up wool blanket covered by a cotton T-shirt as my pillow, I dreamt of getting my four-pillow special.”
Poor Paul! He spent his whole career doing nothing but trying to help poor autocrats get by and torture their subjects in peace, but thanks, Obama. Supporting Ferdinand Marcos, lobbying for coup-doer Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaïre, helping Pakistan cover up terrorism, and nobody likes him, not even his kids. But one man does! Trump pardoned him for the criming, they reconciled, and Trump praised his loyalty. “You are a man … you are a real man.”
Can’t wait to see what manly things these two do together next!
Here, have a shot of that $18,500 ostrich jacket he spent his ill-gotten gains on, just for old time’s sake. Wonder if it still fits?
[WaPo]
Andrea Junker
@Strandjunker
Trump is so broke that even his reality check bounced.
Accepting a pardon is legally an admission of guilt.