Discourse that allows us to express a wide range of ideas, opinions, and analysis that can be used as an opportunity to critically examine and observe what our experience means to us beyond the given social/cultural contexts and norms that are provided us.
Living Space: John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Free Jazz, from Analog to Digital by Michael E. Veal Wesleyan University Press, 2024
[Publication date: April 9, 2024]
Examines John Coltrane's "late period" and Miles Davis's "Lost Quintet" through the prisms of digital architectureand experimental photography
Living Space: John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Free Jazz, from Analog to Digital
fuses biography and style history in order to illuminate the music of
two jazz icons, while drawing on the discourses of photography and
digital architecture to fashion musical insights that may not be
available through the traditional language of jazz analysis. The book
follows the controversial trajectories of two jazz legends, emerging
from the 1959 album Kind of Blue. Coltrane's odyssey through what became
known as "free jazz" brought stylistic (r)evolution and chaos in equal
measure. Davis's spearheading of "jazz-rock fusion" opened a door
through which jazz's ongoing dialogue with the popular tradition could
be regenerated, engaging both high and low ideas of creativity,
community, and commerce. Includes 42 illustrations.
REVIEWS:
"The
beauty of this book is Veal's laser focus on jazz that has often been
considered divisive music but is in reality revelatory and profound... A
fascinating and complex study of the musical evolution of two legendary
artists."―Library Journal
"A
major and singular contribution to the literature on jazz from one of
the foremost authorities of American music in the world. Because of the
longevity, breadth, and unmatched impact of his scholarship on the
academy and beyond, Veal's insights are always astonishing and
illuminating. The layers of his expertise unfold in this book through an
explosion of carefully argued original points and observations that
will broaden the interdisciplinary questions we ask of jazz music and
its figures."―Guthrie Ramsey, author of Who Hears Here? On Black Music Pasts and Present
"Equal parts musical analysis, history lesson, and extended parable, Michael E. Veal's Living Space
is a sublime rendering of the existential stakes around these epic but
largely misrendered narratives of black aesthetic formulation. A
profound decoding and subtly paradigm shifting rearticulation, Veal
spins extrapolations as potent as the music itself."―Arthur Jafa,
award-winning American cinematographer
"In its careful attention to innovative arrangement, and devoted and generative derangement, Living Space
hears space living in the music, hiding in plain black sight and song.
As phono-material field and feel, where continuous variation and the
intraplay of one and none just keep on raising sand and making waves,
Miles and Trane are not entangled particles but a vibrant fabric Veal
rides and wears with brilliant sensitivity."―Fred Moten, author of In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
MICHAEL E. VEAL (New York, NY) is Henry L. and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Music at Yale University. His books include Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon, Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae, and Tony Allen: Master Drummer of Afrobeat.
Frantz Fanon: Combat Breathing by Nigel C. Gibson Polity, 2024
[Publication date: June 17, 2024]
Revolutionary
humanist and radical psychiatrist Frantz Fanon was one of the greatest
Black thinkers of the twentieth century. Born in Martinique and known
for his involvement in the Algerian liberation movement, his seminal
books Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth are widely considered to be cornerstones of anti-colonial and anti-racist thought.
In
this essential introduction to Fanon’s remarkable life and philosophy,
Nigel C. Gibson argues that Fanon’s oeuvre is essential to thinking
about race today. Connecting Fanon’s writing, psychiatric practice, and
lived experience in the Caribbean, France, and Africa, Gibson reveals
(with startling clarity) his philosophical commitments and the vision of
revolution that he stood for. Despite his untimely death, the
revolutionary pulse of Fanon’s ideas has continued to beat ever more
strongly in the consciousness of successive revolutionary generations,
from the Black Panthers and the Black Power to Black Lives Matter.
As
Fanon’s thought comes alive to new activists thinking about their
mission to “humanize the world,” Gibson reminds us that that Fanon’s
revolutionary humanism is fundamental to all forms of anti-colonial
struggle, including our own.
This book
compels readers to step into ‘the glare of history’s floodlights.’ Nigel
Gibson expertly explores Fanon’s philosophy of liberation and makes a
riveting plea for us to listen to Fanon across the ages. Each generation
can and should find its revolution ‘no longer in future heaven,’ but
within their own collective consciousness.” --Jane Anna Gordon, author of Statelessness and Contemporary Enslavement
“Gibson
excavates Fanon like no other scholar. This book is a truly great read,
and a masterful rendering of how and why Fanon keeps coming to life
during revolutionary turning points in ever more diverse and
comprehensive ways.” --Lou Turner, co-author of Frantz Fanon, Soweto and Black American Thought
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Nigel C. Gibson is Professor
of Interdisciplinary Studies at Emerson College, Boston, and an expert
in the fields of Africana thought and postcolonialism. He is recognized
as one of the leading scholars on Frantz Fanon and has authored numerous
books on Fanon’s thought. Anactivist and scholar he was born in London and
was an active in the 1984-1985 Miners' Strike. While in London he also
met South African exiles from the Black Consciousness Movement and, in
conversation with the exiles, developed some influential academic work
on the movement. He later moved to the United States where he worked
with Raya Dunayevskaya in the Marxist Humanism movement, studied with
Edward Said and became an important theorist of Frantz Fanon on whom he
has written extensively. Gibson's work has been widely influential in
South Africa where it is often cited by academics and activists. In
recent years he has often written and spoken on the South African shack
dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo. He is a member of the
Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa and has addressed the United
Nations.
He was previously the Assistant Director of African
Studies at Columbia University and a Research Associate in
African-American Studies at Harvard University.
In
2009 he was awarded the Fanon prize by the Caribbean Philosophy
Association. According to the association "Gibson has set a high
standard in Fanon studies and historically-informed political thought on
Africa and the Caribbean."
Project 2025 is among the most profound threats to the American people.
We read Project 2025’s entire 900+ page “Mandate for Leadership” so that you don’t have to.
What we discovered was a systemic, ruthless plan to undermine the
quality of life of millions of Americans, remove critical protections
and dismantle programs for communities across the nation, and prioritize
special interests and ideological extremism over people.
From attacking overtime pay, student loans, and reproductive rights,
to allowing more discrimination, pollution, and price gouging, those
behind Project 2025 are preparing to go to incredible lengths to create a
country only for some, not for all of us.
If these plans are enacted, which Project 2025’s authors claim can
happen without congressional approval, 4.3 million people could lose
overtime protections, 40 million people could have their food assistance
reduced, 220,000 American jobs could be lost, and much, much, more. The
stakes are higher than ever for democracy and for people.
These threats aren’t hypothetical. These are their real plans.
The Heritage Foundation and the 100+ organizations that make up the
Project 2025 Advisory Board have mapped out exactly how they will
achieve their extreme ends. They aim to try and carry out many of the
most troubling proposals through an anti-democratic president and
political loyalists installed in the executive branch, without waiting
for congressional action. And, while many of these plans are unlawful,
winning in court is not guaranteed given that the same far-right
movement that is behind Project 2025 has shaped our current court
system.
To combat the threats posed by Project 2025, we have to first understand them.
What follows are some of the most dangerous proposals that make up
Project 2025, specifically those that they plan to implement through
federal agencies and a far-right executive branch.
The majority of Americans share the same values and priorities, but
Project 2025 wants to push an extreme, out-of-touch agenda on all of us.
By reading this guide and sharing it, we can begin to address these
threats and go on offense towards building a bold, inclusive democracy
for all people.
The Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project is a well-funded
(eight-figure) effort of the Heritage Foundation and more than 100
organizations to enable a future anti-democratic presidential
administration to take swift, far-right action that would cut wages for
working people, dismantle social safety net programs, reverse decades of
progress for civil rights, redefine the way our society operates, and
undermine our economy.
A central pillar of Project 2025 is the “Mandate for Leadership,” a
900+ page policy playbook authored by former Trump administration
officials and other extremists that provides a radical vision for our
nation and a roadmap to implement it.
Project 2025 Snapshot
Proposals from Project 2025, discussed in detail throughout
this guide, that they claim could be implemented through executive
branch action alone — so without new legislation — include:
Roll back civil rights protections across multiple fronts, including
cutting diversity, equity, and inclusion-related (DEI) programs and
LGBTQ+ rights in health care, education, and workplaces
PHOTO: Protesters enter the Senate Chamber on January 06, 2021 in Washington,
DC. Congress held a joint session today to ratify President-elect Joe
Biden’s 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump.
Pro-Trump protesters have entered the U.S. Capitol building after mass
demonstrations in the nation’s capital. | Win McNamee/Getty Images
In 1970, as political activist
Angela Davis languished in a jail cell for a crime she didn’t commit,
acclaimed writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin warned her and
us in an open letter “… If we know, then we must fight for your life as
though it were our own – which it is – and render impassable with our
bodies the corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.”
In 2023, women of childbearing age, young adults, children, African
Americans, undocumented immigrants and other marginalized communities
have the most to lose if Donald Trump wins a second term because he’s
coming for us.
Trump — aided and abetted by far-right extremists, MAGA supporters
and the remnants of the Republican Party — poses a clear and present
danger to the country. They are gearing up to reassert racial and
political dominance by upending the political system, eviscerating the
rule of law and wielding unconstrained power in service of the interests
of the far-right conservative and Christian nationalist minority.
The instrument they plan to use to implement this strategy is Project
2025. In a nutshell, as Harold Meyerson explained in a recent
article, Project 2025 is a blueprint for a conservative presidency.
“The actions of liberal politicians in Washington have created
a desperate need and unique opportunity for conservatives to start
undoing the damage the Left has wrought and build a better country for
all Americans in 2025,” the Project 2025 manifesto said.
“It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going
to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a
governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this
agenda out on day one of the next conservative administration.”
Former U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks during the Georgia state GOP convention at the Columbus Convention and Trade Center on June 10, 2023 in Columbus, Georgia. On Friday, former President Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury on 37 felony counts in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents probe. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
A vast and secretive dark money network
Project 2025 is a sweeping rightwing blueprint for the next
Republican president, Trump or not, to run the country for the
foreseeable future. Funded by The Heritage Foundation, Koch Brothers and
a vast and secretive dark money network, the project has recruited at
least 80 far-right organizations and entities to the cause.
Conservative warriors’ plan “to defund the Department of Justice,
dismantle the FBI, break up the Department of Homeland Security and
eliminate the Departments of Education and Commerce,” the 30-chapter,
920-page tome says.
The president would have “complete power over quasi-independent
agencies such as the FCC, which makes and enforces rules for television
and internet companies that have been the bane of Trump’s political
existence in the last few years. And they want to ensure that what
remains of this slashed-down bureaucracy is reliably MAGA conservative —
not just for the next president but for a long time to come — and that
the White House maintains total control of it.”
Project 2025 offers proposals to deregulate targeted industries,
privatize government functions and help American corporations to make
more money at the expense of American workers, the middle class and
everyone except the oligarchs and the 1%.
Meyerson, editor-at-large at The American Prospect, said far-right
conservatives and The Heritage Foundation have an extensive enemies’
list that includes “welfare recipients, lazy and liberal civil servants,
anti-business regulators, environmentalists, and union bosses,
“scientists, woke bureaucrats, woke educators, woke diplomats, woke
generals and admirals, woke G-men, and anyone who doesn’t indulge the
next Republican president’s every whim (an adaptation to the likelihood
of a Trump nomination),” in the commentary titled, “The Far Right Has a Plan to Remake America. They Even Wrote It Down.”
Those in charge in the incoming administration are prepared to purge
those deemed disloyal after identifying and interviewing “every Treasury
Department official who participated in its DEI (diversity, equity, and
inclusion) activities and programs, and make such activity ‘“per se grounds for termination of employment.”’
Leonard Leo, a major right-wing donor who significantly influenced
and shaped the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority under
Trump, has been a major fundraiser for Project 2025. (On Nov. 30, the
U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary voted to subpoena Leo “as part of an ethics probe into undisclosed financial ties to U.S. Supreme Court justices.”)
According to a press release from the nonprofit Accountable.US, recent reporting from NBC shows
that “The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, stepped up
efforts to boost its Project 2025 initiative by ramping up grants to the
venture aimed at creating a ‘government-in-waiting’ for the next
Republican presidential administration, according to a new tax filing.
“The foundation distributed over $1.67 million in grants in 2022 —
including a total of $965,000 to organizations on the advisory board of
Project 2025, tax records show. These donations accounted for 58% of
Heritage’s total grant-making in 2022.
“Project 2025’s board of more than 80 conservative organizations includes nearly 40 that have received funding from dark-money groups linked to Leonard Leo …
a prolific fundraiser, Leo is affiliated with an extensive network of
tax-exempt groups, including DonorsTrust, a donor-advised nonprofit that
directs money to other organizations and groups seeking to influence
policy.”
Vacillating on a knife’s edge
America is at an inflection point, vacillating on a knife’s edge because
of Trump, who has tapped into a deep reservoir of grievance, hatred and
resentment plans that will be fully unleashed in a second term. Trump’s
incendiary rhetoric – mirroring Hitler and Mussolini – is convincing
observers that he’s a fascist, to add to his authoritarian bent.
In interviews, rallies and on social media Trump has boasted of
unleashing political violence, targeting and crushing his enemies,
routing the media, appointing a special prosecutor to pursue President
Joe Biden and his family for alleged corruption, and snatching up
undocumented immigrants and holding them against their will in vast
concentration camps before deporting them.
In addition, a number of critics charge, during “Trump’s Revenge
Tour,” he and his allies are determined to establish a rightwing,
authoritarian, theocratic, white nationalist government.
Writing recently on Truth Social, Trump said:“Republicans are already
thinking about what we are going to do to Biden and the Communists when
it’s our turn.”
He elaborated further.
“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists,
fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the
confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,”
Trump said in a recent speech. “They’ll do anything, whether legally or
illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American Dream … the
threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave
than the threat from within. Our threat is from within …”
This anti-democratic, illiberal move to upend the U.S Constitution
and government should be cause for deep concern. I am not alone in
fearing that if Trump gets back to the White House, there may not be a
free and fair American election again in my lifetime.
Astonishingly, a year before the 2024 contest, Trump is running away
with the presidential nomination despite being impeached, indicted four
times and charged with 91 felonies in state and federal courts. He leads
the pack even though his former officials warn the electorate not to
vote for him and despite being called “morally bankrupt and lethally
incompetent” by a former Trump White House official.
Author and legal analyst James Zirin, said in an op-ed in The Hill
on Nov 13 Trump wants to “terminate the Constitution to restore himself
to power, an insurrectionary act in and of itself. That power would be
“in the hands of the president with neither checks nor balances.”
The pro-Trump insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 6, 2021 | Alex Kent
Trump has vowed on Day 1 to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy the
military to violently crush any protest or dissent. He plans to purge
the Justice Department of anyone deemed disloyal and deploy across four
federal agencies a 50,000-strong bloc of loyalists to defense, legal,
judicial and regulatory slots.
Political consultant and media strategist Rick Wilson expressed alarm at the Trump-induced danger that looms.
“He’s using the power of government, the state, to punish his
political enemies, use the power of the state to achieve his personal
political vengeance on people who he believes have wronged him,” said
Wilson, a former Republican, co-founder and board member of The Lincoln
Project, who lives in Tallahassee. This is not America, this is
something much darker, much different, much more dangerous.”
Alex Aronson, executive director of Court Accountability, a
nonpartisan judicial research and advocacy organization, said Americans
should be working assiduously and in concert to confront, disrupt and
obliterate this insidious plot.
“Project 2025 is a plan to destroy the U.S government,” said Aronson.
“It’s an enormous problem, a huge problem that the U.S government isn’t
standing up to this moment. It’s complicated and speaks to some
tensions on the Left.”
Aronson said no one should assume that the Republican Party is an
honest operator, explaining that the party and its allies are willing to
use violence and extremism to reach its ends.
And like James Baldwin, he said Americans are fighting for their very lives.
“The impulse is to work with these people and misconceive the nature
of their project which is a blueprint to destroy the U.S government. We
have to see this threat for what it is,” Aronson said.
Journalist
Barrington Salmon lived and wrote in Florida (Miami and Tallahassee)
for almost 20 years. He is a 2017 Annenberg National Fellow (University
of Southern California) who currently freelances for publications,
including the National Newspaper Publishers Association/Black Press USA,
Trice Edney Newswire and The Washington Informer. Salmon lives in the
nation's capital and can be heard on his video blog “Speak Freely with
Barrington Salmon and NNPA’s “Let It Be Known.”
The 2025 Presidential Transition Project paves the way for an effective conservative Administration based on four pillars: a policy agenda, Presidential Personnel Database, Presidential Administration Academy, and playbook for the first 180 days of the next Administration. Building now for a conservative victory through policy, personnel, and training. The actions of liberal politicians in Washington have created a desperate need and unique opportunity for conservatives to start undoing the damage the Left has wrought and build a better country for all Americans in 2025. It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on day one of the next conservative administration. This is the goal of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project. The project will build on four pillars that will, collectively, pave the way for an effective conservative administration: a policy agenda, personnel, training, and a 180-day playbook. The project is the effort of a broad coalition of conservative organizations that have come together to ensure a successful administration begins in January 2025. With the right conservative policy recommendations and properly vetted and trained personnel to implement them, we will take back our government. The 2025 Presidential Transition Project is being organized by The Heritage Foundation and builds off Heritage’s longstanding “Mandate for Leadership,” which has been highly influential for presidential administrations since the Reagan era. Most recently, the Trump administration relied heavily on Heritage’s “Mandate” for policy guidance, embracing nearly two-thirds of Heritage’s proposals within just one year in office. Paul Dans, former chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) during the Trump administration, serves as the director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project. Spencer Chretien, former special assistant to the president and associate director of Presidential Personnel, serves as associate director of the project. Project 2025 Team Paul Dans Director, Project 2025 The Heritage Foundation Spencer Chretien Associate Director, Project 2025 The Heritage Foundation Troup Hemenway Associate Director, Project 2025 The Heritage Foundation
A group of Congressional Democrats are joining forces in an effort to fight the far-right initiative known as Project 2025. Project 2025 is a policy plan to be enacted if Donald Trump returns to the White House -- crafted by the right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation and several former Trump administration officials. "Sunlight is the best disinfectant”, says Oversight member Democratic Representative Ayanna Pressley. She joins Ali Velshi to discuss her role in a new initiative to fight Project 2025 and why voters need to listen carefully to what the initiative’s creators are saying. “These extremists do not make threats, they make promises.”
“...At every level of domestic and foreign policy, the ghosts of fascism are evident, offering a glimpse of what horrors await us as the twenty-first century unfolds. At the level of foreign policy, blood gushes from the bombs, artillery, and tanks of rogue states in Gaza and Ukraine. Biden tells us that bringing diplomatic solutions to the dreadful warfare in Ukraine and the Middle East are less important than the profits and jobs created by death machines that constitute the defense industries feeding both wars. War culture and the language of hate fill the airwaves legitimating violence as a form of political opportunism. The cruel language and practices of human degradation and destructiveness now feed a growing fascist politics in the U.S. Fascist demagogues now boast about their racial fantasies, unchecked adoration of violence, and their aggressive lawlessness. What Ingmar Bergman once called “The Serpent’s Egg,” a metaphor for the birth of fascism is about to hatch. In a world shaped increasingly by emerging authoritarianism, it has become increasingly difficult to remember what a purposeful and substantive democracy looks like, or for that matter, what the idea of democracy might suggest. Democracy as an ideal, promise, and working practice is under assault, just as a number of far-right educational, market, military, and religious fundamentalisms are gaining ascendancy in American society. Increasingly, it becomes more challenging to inhabit those public spheres where politics thrives—where thinking, speaking, and acting subjects engage and critically address the major forces and problems bearing down on their lives. In this new moment in history, which too often resembles the nightmares of a fascist past with its banning of books, erasing of history, attack on trans people, and support of white nationalism and supremacy, the question of how society should imagine itself or what its future might hold has become more demanding given the eradication of social formations that place an emphasis on truth, social justice, freedom, equality, and compassion.
Historical and social amnesia have become the organizing principles of U.S. society. Lies morph into the celebration of violence and language become part of the machinery of social death, relegated to the sphere of consumer culture, and devoid of an ethical grammar that is banished to zones of political and social abandonment.
Subjectivity, identity formation, and the longing for community have become powerful elements of a politics of aggression. An ocular—image-based culture celebrates human misery, turns monsters into political celebrities who preach a language that accelerates the death of the unwanted, powerless, and what Judith Butler calls the ungrievable. The mainstream media normalizes alleged leaders in the fields of politics, entertainment, and education who thrive on the energies of the dead, weak, and disposable. Yet, what is often missed is the spread of fascist ideology, fear, rhetoric, symbols, and demonstrations that circulate in lesser political circles and at the level of everyday life in the United States. All of which speaks to how deeply embedded authoritarianism, violence, and the mobilizing passions of fascism are in American society and culture. Three recent examples speak to the dark current of fascist politics in the United States…As Bergman noted in a previous era, the abyss of fascism “looms menacingly.” Bergman’s words resonate with a fascist politics that now draws on the culture of everyday life and in doing so spreads its ideologies, values, social relations, and culture of cruelty in institutions, practices, policies, and experiences of domination that take on the hue of being commonplace, wrapped in the discourse of freedom, victimhood, gated mentalities and gated borders.
For the playwright and poet, Bertolt Brecht, “the serpent’s egg” suggests that beneath seemingly democratic societies lie dark, dangerous and volatile forces waiting to be unleashed by the dynamics of capitalism. For Brecht, no one can tell the truth about fascism without speaking out against the horrors of capitalism. The horrors of fascism lurk in the shadows of everyday life, and as Brecht observes “If anyone wishes to describe Fascism and war, great disasters which are not natural catastrophes, he must do so in terms of a practical truth. He must… write the truth about evil conditions, one must write it so that its avertible causes can be identified. If the preventable causes can be identified, the evil conditions can be fought.”[8]
Writing about the truth must begin by recognizing how the snake of fascism lays its eggs—the serpent’s eggs, which are often hatched in the limelight of the spectacularized image of ocular politics where their impending danger is overlooked. The challenge is to acknowledge how the seeds of fascism emerge in the shadows of everyday speech, practices, and social relations. The microaggressions of fascism are too often treated as if they reside solely in the theatricality of the overly dramatic, the exaggerated spectacle, or in the realm of self-serving attention-gripping mass hysteria. What is overlooked is the power of everyday practices in their overly stylized and calculating shock value, which slowly become normalized and accelerated, legitimized and expanded making the efficacy of the unspeakable a core element of everyday life. What is often dismissed as a minor public spectacle morphs into the horror of absolute evil in a world led by barbarians. In the current historical period, the eggs of the serpent are about to hatch keeping alive both its threat to end democracy, renew the legacy of colonialism, and once again let loose the politics of disposability, elimination, and death. Susan Sontag was right in her insistence on the need “to detect fascist longings in our midst.” Fascism now mobilizes people’s feelings in order to win them over either to the arena of hate and bigotry or to depoliticize them. Once we lose sight of how the dynamics of power hide in the language of the everyday. Fascism will arrive not with a thunderous bang but with the waving of the flag and the stench of death. The serpent’s egg will have hatched, and the lights will go out.” —Henry A. Giroux, “Everyday Fascism: Brecht’s Warning About the Serpent’s Egg”, Counterpunch, March 13, 2024
And therefore think him as a serpent’s egg Which hatch’d, would as his kind grow mischievous;
And kill him in the shell” – Brutus in Shakespeare’s 'Julius Caesar'
The brilliant scholar, Paul Gilroy, once stated that we live at a time when the “horrors of the past are much closer to us than we like to imagine.” [1] Gilroy’s words are more resonant today than they were when first written. At every level of domestic and foreign policy, the ghosts of fascism are evident, offering a glimpse of what horrors await us as the twenty-first century unfolds. At the level of foreign policy, blood gushes from the bombs, artillery, and tanks of rogue states in Gaza and Ukraine. Biden tells us that bringing diplomatic solutions to the dreadful warfare in Ukraine and the Middle East are less important than the profits and jobs created by death machines that constitute the defense industries feeding both wars. War culture and the language of hate fill the airwaves legitimating violence as a form of political opportunism. The cruel language and practices of human degradation and destructiveness now feed a growing fascist politics in the U.S. Fascist demagogues now boast about their racial fantasies, unchecked adoration of violence, and their aggressive lawlessness. What Ingmar Bergman once called “The Serpent’s Egg,” a metaphor for the birth of fascism is about to hatch.
In a world shaped increasingly by emerging authoritarianism, it has become increasingly difficult to remember what a purposeful and substantive democracy looks like, or for that matter, what the idea of democracy might suggest. Democracy as an ideal, promise, and working practice is under assault, just as a number of far-right educational, market, military, and religious fundamentalisms are gaining ascendancy in American society. Increasingly, it becomes more challenging to inhabit those public spheres where politics thrives—where thinking, speaking, and acting subjects engage and critically address the major forces and problems bearing down on their lives. In this new moment in history, which too often resembles the nightmares of a fascist past with its banning of books, erasing of history, attack on trans people, and support of white nationalism and supremacy, the question of how society should imagine itself or what its future might hold has become more demanding given the eradication of social formations that place an emphasis on truth, social justice, freedom, equality, and compassion.
Historical and social amnesia have become the organizing principles of U.S. society. Lies morph into the celebration of violence and language become part of the machinery of social death, relegated to the sphere of consumer culture, and devoid of an ethical grammar that is banished to zones of political and social abandonment.
Subjectivity, identity formation, and the longing for community have become powerful elements of a politics of aggression. An ocular—image-based culture celebrates human misery, turns monsters into political celebrities who preach a language that accelerates the death of the unwanted, powerless, and what Judith Butler calls the ungrievable. The mainstream media normalizes alleged leaders in the fields of politics, entertainment, and education who thrive on the energies of the dead, weak, and disposable. Yet, what is often missed is the spread of fascist ideology, fear, rhetoric, symbols, and demonstrations that circulate in lesser political circles and at the level of everyday life in the United States. All of which speaks to how deeply embedded authoritarianism, violence, and the mobilizing passions of fascism are in American society and culture. Three recent examples speak to the dark current of fascist politics in the United States.
First, I want to highlight the words of right-wing activist Jack Posobiec who in “his welcome speech at this year’s conference of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC,) stated: “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this right here.” He then held up a cross necklace and continued: “After we burn that swamp to the ground, we will establish the new American republic on its ashes, and our first order of business will be righteous retribution for those who betrayed America.”[2] This is fascism on steroids and yet it got little media coverage and when it did it was dismissed as a kind of rogue extremism. In actuality, it simply echoes a central ideology of MAGA Republicans.
Another example of how the embers of fascist politics have turned into a firestorm of authoritarian rhetoric and is downplayed or ignored in the mainstream media is visible in the ongoing rhetoric of the ignorant buffoon Mark Robinson who is running for the governorship of North Carolina. In the mainstream media, despite his extremist rhetoric, he is treated as a normal candidate even though he has referred to transgender and homosexual people as maggots and filth, stating that they “are equivalent to what the cows leave behind”[3] After a mass shooter in 2016 murdered 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, Robinson posted on Facebook “I would pray for the souls of all those killed…However, homosexuality is STILL an abominable sin and I WILL NOT join in celebrating gay pride.” He has stated that he wished for the days when women could not vote and called mass shootings “karma” for abortion. He has said that Christians must take control of public schools because children are being abused by teachers who are telling children “about transgenderism, homosexuality, and any of that filth.”[4] Robinson’s remarks make clear that willful ignorance is a precondition for fascist politics, and that a culture of cruelty and hate has become a normalized tool of political opportunism.
The third example draws upon the current authoritarian assault on higher education which is far worse than anything that could have been imagined with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. In light of this assault, how could the media largely ignore New College in Florida hiring Bruce Gilley, who has authored a book called The Case for Colonialism. Beyond the racist affirmation in book form supporting the genocidal legacy of colonialism, he has also stated publicly that “the transgender flag [is] a symbol of narcissistic sexual reductionism and the mutilation of children,” and that “virtually every indigenous leader in Canada is an identity fraud.” [5] Without any critical understanding of history, he has endorsed a video by the Blackwater mercenary company founder Erik Prince calling for putting “the imperial hat back on” to govern “pretty much all of Africa.”[6] There is more at work here than the hiring of a far-right colonialist parading as a professor, there is a clarion call alerting to how higher education is being transformed into indoctrination centers and rabid disimagination machines. James Baldwin was certainly right in issuing the stern warning in No Name in the Street that “Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”[7]
These events closely resemble Bergman’s notion of “The Serpent’s Egg,” an instructive metaphor for illuminating the conditions that gave rise to fascism. As Bergman noted in a previous era, the abyss of fascism “looms menacingly.” Bergman’s words resonate with a fascist politics that now draws on the culture of everyday life and in doing so spreads its ideologies, values, social relations, and culture of cruelty in institutions, practices, policies, and experiences of domination that take on the hue of being commonplace, wrapped in the discourse of freedom, victimhood, gated mentalities and gated borders.
For the playwright and poet, Bertolt Brecht, “the serpent’s egg” suggests that beneath seemingly democratic societies lie dark, dangerous and volatile forces waiting to be unleashed by the dynamics of capitalism. For Brecht, no one can tell the truth about fascism without speaking out against the horrors of capitalism. The horrors of fascism lurk in the shadows of everyday life, and as Brecht observes “If anyone wishes to describe Fascism and war, great disasters which are not natural catastrophes, he must do so in terms of a practical truth. He must… write the truth about evil conditions, one must write it so that its avertible causes can be identified. If the preventable causes can be identified, the evil conditions can be fought.”[8]
Writing about the truth must begin by recognizing how the snake of fascism lays its eggs—the serpent’s eggs, which are often hatched in the limelight of the spectacularized image of ocular politics where their impending danger is overlooked. The challenge is to acknowledge how the seeds of fascism emerge in the shadows of everyday speech, practices, and social relations. The microaggressions of fascism are too often treated as if they reside solely in the theatricality of the overly dramatic, the exaggerated spectacle, or in the realm of self-serving attention-gripping mass hysteria. What is overlooked is the power of everyday practices in their overly stylized and calculating shock value, which slowly become normalized and accelerated, legitimized and expanded making the efficacy of the unspeakable a core element of everyday life. What is often dismissed as a minor public spectacle morphs into the horror of absolute evil in a world led by barbarians. In the current historical period, the eggs of the serpent are about to hatch keeping alive both its threat to end democracy, renew the legacy of colonialism, and once again let loose the politics of disposability, elimination, and death. Susan Sontag was right in her insistence on the need “to detect fascist longings in our midst.” Fascism now mobilizes people’s feelings in order to win them over either to the arena of hate and bigotry or to depoliticize them. Once we lose sight of how the dynamics of power hide in the language of the everyday. Fascism will arrive not with a thunderous bang but with the waving of the flag and the stench of death. The serpent’s egg will have hatched, and the lights will go out.
Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department in Hamilton, Ontario Canada and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent books include: The Terror of the Unforeseen (Los Angeles Review of books, 2019), On Critical Pedagogy, 2nd edition (Bloomsbury, 2020); Race, Politics, and Pandemic Pedagogy: Education in a Time of Crisis (Bloomsbury 2021); Pedagogy of Resistance: Against Manufactured Ignorance (Bloomsbury 2022) and Insurrections: Education in the Age of Counter-Revolutionary Politics (Bloomsbury, 2023), and coauthored with Anthony DiMaggio, Fascism on Trial: Education and the Possibility of Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2025). Giroux is also a member of Truthout’s board of directors.
Representative Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) speaks during a press conference “Unions Demand Free Speech on Campus” on Capitol Hill on May 23, 2024, in Washington, DC.(Michael A. McCoy / Getty Images)
No event in the news today poses a more
immediate danger to world peace than the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza. In
addition to the lethal drones, missiles, and shells flying in Gaza,
charges and countercharges fly at the United Nations and the
International Criminal Court.
More important than the propaganda war, however, is the war on the
ground, in which, according to the Gazan Health Ministry, more than
37,000 civilians and fighters have been killed by Israeli air strikes
and shelling, including many women and children. According to the
Associated Press, “Israel is killing entire Palestinian families, a loss even more devastating than the physical destruction and the massive displacement.”
In the October 7 massacre at a music festival that triggered the
conflict, 1,139 Israelis were slaughtered. More than 300 Israeli Defense
Force soldiers have died in the subsequent fighting, a heavy toll for a
small nation.
In the United States, where the Biden administration has firmly
backed Israel with words and weapons, countercharges of Israeli
“genocide” are on the rise. According to the Anti-Defamation league,
even before the October 7 attacks, there has been a rise in antisemitic
incidents in America. The ADL, however, has itself become controversial.
Wikipedia’s editors voted to declare it “generally unreliable” on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, adding it to a list of banned and
partially banned sources. The writers’ organizations PEN and Authors
Guild have been riven by conflicting views on the war.
Recently, the war spilled over into a Democratic congressional
primary in Westchester County, in which the incumbent, Jamaal Bowman, is
fighting a challenger, Westchester County Executive George Latimer.
What has nationalized (Israelized, if you will) the race is the powerful
intervention by AIPAC, the well-heeled pro-Israel lobbying group that
has donated $14 million worth of anti-Bowman ads. Representative Bowman,
who is Black, is trailing by 17 percent according to a June poll. In a
recent debate between the two candidates, he declared, “[AIPAC is]
spending more money in this primary than any PAC has ever spent in US
history. Why? Because I’m an outspoken Black man. I fight against
genocide in Gaza, and I fight for justice right here.”
During interviews with the two candidates on his WNYC talk show,
Brian Lehrer asked Latimer if he is worried about being too closely tied
to AIPAC. Latimer responded (or rather didn’t respond), “If John Doe,
who lives in Westchester County donates to me, and he did it through an
AIPAC portal, I don’t believe it ties into the national donors to AIPAC,
or the international positions of AIPAC.”
But contrary to Latimer’s dodge, AIPAC’s intervention on his behalf is important. As The Washington Postobserved:
It’s hard to overstate the importance
of the Bowman vs. Latimer showdown for progressives. The outcome
represents much more than just the issue of money in politics. It raises
concerns about right-wing money being funneled into Democratic
primaries and tests the ability of AIPAC to shield Israel from
criticism. But bigger than that, it is a test of how far America’s right
wing will go to crush progressive movements. No one should be surprised
that a Black politician is the canary in the coal mine.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Richard Lingeman, a former senior editor of The Nation, covered books and writers for The New York Times Book Review in the 1970s. He is the author of the biographies Theodore Dreiser: An American Journey and Sinclair Lewis: Rebel From Main Street.
If Donald Trump Wins, Paul Manafort Will Be Waiting in the Wings
PHOTO: A suit admitted into evidence in the trial of Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman. Credit: Special Counsel Robert Mueller/Redux
by Brody Mullins and Luke Mullins June 20, 2024 New York Times
[Brody
Mullins is an investigative reporter who covers business, lobbying and
campaign finance. Luke Mullins is a journalist who focuses on politics
and power in Washington, D.C.]
A
few years ago, Paul Manafort was a disgraced political operative living
in a windowless cell. If Donald Trump wins in November, Mr. Manafort is
likely to re-emerge as one of the most powerful people in Washington.
Because
of Mr. Trump’s transactional nature and singular method of wielding
power, as president, he would probably empower a small group of
lobbyists who could profit from their access. Though no one elected
them, these gatekeepers could exercise sweeping influence over U.S.
policy on behalf of corporations and foreign governments, at the expense
of regular Americans who can’t afford their services.
Rather
than drain the swamp, an unleashed President Trump would return the
lobbying industry to the smoke-filled rooms of the 1930s, an era
unchallenged by the decades of reforms since Watergate.
And
Mr. Manafort, whose career has been based on lobbying the same people
he helped put in office, would be at the center. “A new Trump
administration would be a bonanza for Paul,” says Scott Reed, a
Republican political strategist who hired Mr. Manafort to work on Bob
Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign. “Trump is the Manafort model: access
at the highest levels for his clients and friends.”
A second Trump
term, with the likelihood of yes-men and lackeys having more sway than
political professionals and civil servants, would all but return
Washington to an era when the nation’s laws were negotiated over steak
dinners and golf. In the early 1970s, the leaders of a U.S. tool and die
company worried about losing a Defense Department contract. They met
with the era’s top lobbyist, Tommy Corcoran, who had worked in the White
House for President Franklin Roosevelt and later advised Presidents
John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.
Mr.
Corcoran picked up the phone and called a Pentagon contact. After a
brief exchange, he hung up. “Your problems are over,” he told his new
clients. His $10,000 bill is roughly the equivalent of $75,000 today.
After
Watergate, voters elected lawmakers who took federal power out of the
hands of the president and congressional leaders and spread it out among
legislative committees, subcommittees and other officials. That spelled
the end of the Corcoran era. No lobbyist, no matter how connected or
wealthy, could get anything done alone.
Over
50 years, Washington’s lobbying industry evolved from a tiny club of
well-connected insiders to a sophisticated economy of P.R. gurus, social
media experts, political pollsters, data analysts and grass-roots
organizers. That development was encouraged by a major ethics reform law
passed by Congress in 2007 that sought to diminish personal ties by
prohibiting members of Congress or government officials from receiving
dinners, golf outings, sports tickets and anything else of value from
lobbyists.
When Mr. Trump took office
in 2017, the old cozy club reasserted itself. He reconsolidated federal
policymaking in the Oval Office. For lobbyists, Congress no longer
mattered as much. Neither did most of the executive branch. The only
person who mattered in Washington was Mr. Trump. And the most effective
way to lobby him was the most straightforward: hire someone who knew him
well.
America’s
founders envisioned that lobbyists would work to bend government policy
to their liking. In the Federalist Papers, James Madison predicted that
advocates for many interest groups, which he called factions, would be
equally balanced and free to compete with one another in an open market
of ideas. Corporate interests would battle with organized labor.
Consumer groups would face off with representatives of industry.
The
way Mr. Trump seems likely to govern gives lobbyists for certain
well-heeled companies and countries a huge advantage. Fewer members of
Congress and government officials would have the opportunity to weigh
in. The same goes for interest groups. It is unlikely to be the kind of
fair fight Madison expected. Look how Mr. Trump backed off his
opposition to TikTok after the Club for Growth hired his former adviser
Kellyanne Conway to be an advocate for the company.
Mr.
Manafort learned the value of access while working on Ronald Reagan’s
1980 election. Then 31 years old, Mr. Manafort formed a lobbying firm
with the Reagan aides Roger Stone and Charlie Black, which became the
dominant outfit of the Reagan era. (Mr. Trump was a client.) The
lobbyists created a legally separate firm to help Republicans win
office. Employees of the firms had a saying: “Elect ’em on the second
floor. Lobby ’em on the third floor.”
In
the mid-2000s, Mr. Manafort moved the model overseas. After helping
elect Viktor Yanukovych as prime minister of Ukraine in 2006 and
president in 2010, Mr. Manafort made around $60 million in fees and
loans from oligarchs close to Mr. Yanukovych, according to legal
filings. That money train stopped in 2014 after Mr. Yanukovych was
ousted from power.
Mr. Manafort
returned to the United States deeply in debt and without any major
source of income. In the spring of 2015 his wife, Kathy, confronted him
about an affair with a woman more than three decades his junior. He
broke down, begged his wife for forgiveness and checked into an Arizona
sex addiction clinic.
He
saw Mr. Trump’s 2016 White House bid as his path to redemption. Mr.
Manafort secured a salary-free job on the team, and when the campaign
manager was fired that June, Mr. Manafort got the top post.
Nearly
everyone who works for a presidential campaign hopes to land a job in
the administration. Instead, Mr. Manafort’s primary objective, his
longtime deputy Rick Gates told us when we interviewed him for our book,
was to get Mr. Trump elected so that he could use his new lobbying
clout to escape his financial hole. “He was immediately thinking about
how to monetize this,” Mr. Gates said.
At
one point during the campaign, according to Mr. Gates, who later
testified against Mr. Manafort in federal court, the would-be president
approached Mr. Manafort with a question: “Hey, if we actually win this
thing, what cabinet position do you want? I’ll give you anything that
you want.” Mr. Manafort said he had no interest. For this inveterate
political hustler, there was only one destination after a successful
presidential campaign: K Street.
Things
didn’t work out as Mr. Manafort had hoped, of course. He was forced to
step down as campaign chairman amid a firestorm over his work for
pro-Russian interests in Ukraine. As a result, he soon emerged as a
central figure in Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s influence
on the 2016 election.
The eventual
charges against him weren’t directly related to interference in the
election. In 2018 he was convicted of or pleaded guilty to numerous
federal counts mostly related to his work in Ukraine, including tax
fraud and bank fraud, and was sentenced to more than seven years in
prison.
"What's Past is Prologue…"
[NOTE: The following article was originally posted on this site on March 8, 2019]
REMINDER: THIS IS THE PATHOLOGICAL CRIMINAL THAT THE SCUMBAG-IN-CHIEF ADMIRES, PRAISES AND SEEKS TO PROVIDE A PARDON FOR…
Trump’s former campaign chair has always acted with impunity, as if the laws never applied to him.
by Franklin Foer
March 7, 2019
The Atlantic
PHOTO: Paul Manafort, thug, thief, sociopath, liar and lawless enabler and propagandist for mass murderers, thieves, thugs, and dictators. Jacquelyn Martin / AP
“He has lived an otherwise blameless life,” said Judge T. S. Ellis as he sentenced Paul Manafort to just 47 months in prison on Thursday.
In an otherwise blameless life, Paul Manafort lobbied on behalf of the tobacco industry and wangled millions in tax breaks for corporations.
In an otherwise blameless life, he helped Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos bolster his image in Washington after he assassinated his primary political opponent.
In an otherwise blameless life, he worked to keep arms flowing to the Angolan generalissimo Jonas Savimbi, a monstrous leader bankrolled by the apartheid government in South Africa. While Manafort helped portray his client as an anti-communist “freedom fighter,” Savimbi’s army planted millions of land mines in peasant fields, resulting in 15,000 amputees.
In an otherwise blameless life, Manafort was kicked out of the lobbying firm he co-founded, accused of inflating his expenses and cutting his partners out of deals.
Read: Paul Manafort, American hustler
In an otherwise blameless life, he spent a decade as the chief political adviser to a clique of former gangsters in Ukraine. This clique hoped to capture control of the state so that it could enrich itself with government contracts and privatization agreements. This was a group closely allied with the Kremlin, and Manafort masterminded its rise to power—thereby enabling Ukraine’s slide into Vladimir Putin’s orbit.
In an otherwise blameless life, Manafort came to adopt the lifestyle and corrupt practices of his Ukrainian clients as his own.
In an otherwise blameless life, he produced a public-relations campaign to convince Washington that Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was acting within his democratic rights and duties when he imprisoned his most compelling rival for power.
In an otherwise blameless life, he stood mute as Yanukovych’s police killed 130 protesters in the Maidan.
In an otherwise blameless life, he found himself nearly $20 million in debt to a Russian oligarch. Instead of honestly accounting for the money, he simply stopped responding to the oligarch’s messages.
In an otherwise blameless life, he tried to use his perch atop the Trump campaign to help salvage his sorry financial situation. He installed one of his protégés as the head of the pro-Trump super PAC Rebuilding America. His friend allegedly funneled $125,000 from the super PAC to pay off one of Manafort’s nagging debts.
In an otherwise blameless life, Manafort was found guilty of tax evasion on an industrial scale. Rather than paying his fair share to help fund national defense and public health, he kept his cash in Cyprus and wired it home to buy more than $1 million in bespoke clothing.
In an otherwise blameless life, he disguised his income as loans so that he could bamboozle banks into lending him money.
In an otherwise blameless life, he attempted to phone a potential witness in his trial so that they could align their stories.
In an otherwise blameless life, he systematically lied to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors, after he promised them his full cooperation.
In an otherwise blameless life, he acted with impunity, as if the laws never applied to him. When presented with a chance to show remorse to the court, he couldn’t find that sentiment within his being. And with Ellis’s featherweight punishment, which deviated sharply downward from the sentencing guidelines, Manafort managed to bring his life’s project to a strange completion. He had devoted his career to normalizing corruption in Washington. By the time he was caught, his extraordinary avarice had become so commonplace that not even a federal judge could blame him for it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Franklin Foer is a staff writer for The Atlantic. He is the author of World Without Mind and How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization.
"What's Past is Prologue…"
WHO IS PAUL MANAFORT, REALLY?...
(The following commentary and Manafort’s wikipedia entry was originally posted on this site June 8, 2018):
All,
This loathsome human being has an absolutely notorious background as a straightup professional gangster, mob lawyer, political fixer, and corrupt foreign emissary for some of the most despicable dictators and political thugs in the world (especially in Eastern Europe, South America, Asia, and Africa) since the early 1970s. His resume also strongly suggests that he was not only a profiteering mercenary but an active liasion for the CIA. In fact the only way a so-called private American citizen could have such major access to and then actively work for such murderous tyrants as Mobutu, Savimbi, Marcos, and Yanukovych is through global intelligence agencies like the CIA and the State Department. The fact that he is of Italian American descent in the historical period that he emerged seals the deal. His entire professional life looks like something straight out of central casting from a classic Scorsese or Coppola flick about the Cosa Nostra in the infamous and extremely violent 1970-1990 period of organized crime in the U.S. What an utterly bizarre fucking time we’re living in…
On November 26, 2018, Mueller reported that Manafort violated his
plea deal by repeatedly lying to investigators. On February 13, 2019,
D.C. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson concurred, voiding the plea deal.[21][22][23] On March 7, 2019, Judge T. S. Ellis III sentenced Manafort to 47 months in prison.[24][25][26] On March 13, 2019, Jackson sentenced Manafort to an additional 43 months in prison.[27][28][29] Minutes after his sentencing, New York state prosecutors charged Manafort with sixteen state felonies.[30] On December 18, 2019, the state charges against him were dismissed because of the doctrine of double jeopardy.[31][32][33] The Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee
concluded in August 2020 that Manafort's ties to individuals connected
to Russian intelligence while he was Trump's campaign manager
"represented a grave counterintelligence threat" by creating
opportunities for "Russian intelligence services to exert influence
over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump campaign."[34]
In mid-March 2024, Manafort re-emerged on the political scene, with reports of him potentially joining the Trump 2024 campaign.[39][40][41]
His prospects with the Trump campaign may be complicated, however, by
his business dealings in China since his release from prison.[42]
Early life and education
Paul John Manafort Jr. was born on April 1, 1949,[43] in New Britain, Connecticut. Manafort's parents are Antoinette Mary Manafort (née Cifalu; 1921–2003) and Paul John Manafort Sr. (1923–2013).[44][45] His grandfather immigrated to the United States from Italy in the early 20th century, settling in Connecticut.[46] He founded the construction company New Britain House Wrecking Company in 1919 (later renamed Manafort Brothers Inc.).[47] His father served in the U.S. Army combat engineers during World War II[45] and was mayor of New Britain from 1965 to 1971.[5] His father was indicted in a corruption scandal in 1981 but not convicted.[48]
In February 2016, Manafort approached Trump through a mutual friend, Thomas J. Barrack Jr.
He pointed out his experience advising presidential campaigns in the
United States and around the world, described himself as an outsider not
connected to the Washington establishment, and offered to work without
salary.[55] In March 2016, he joined Trump's presidential campaign to take the lead in getting commitments from convention delegates.[56] On June 20, 2016, Trump fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski
and promoted Manafort to the position. Manafort gained control of the
daily operations of the campaign as well as an expanded $20 million
budget, hiring decisions, advertising, and media strategy.[57][58][59]
On June 9, 2016, Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner were participants in a meeting with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya and several others at Trump Tower. A British music agent, saying he was acting on behalf of Emin Agalarov and the Russian government, had told Trump Jr. that he could obtain damaging information on Hillary Clinton if he met with a lawyer connected to the Kremlin.[60] At first, Trump Jr. said the meeting had been primarily about the Russian ban on international adoptions (in response to the Magnitsky Act)
and mentioned nothing about Mrs. Clinton; he later said the offer of
information about Clinton had been a pretext to conceal Veselnitskaya's
real agenda.[61]
In August 2016, Manafort's connections to former Ukrainian PresidentViktor Yanukovych and his pro-Russian Party of Regions
drew national attention in the US, where it was reported that Manafort
may have received $12.7 million (~$15.8 million in 2023) in
off-the-books funds from the Party of Regions.[62]
On August 17, 2016, Trump received his first security briefing.[63]
The same day, August 17, Trump shook up his campaign organization in a
way that appeared to minimize Manafort's role. It was reported that
members of Trump's family, particularly Kushner, who had originally been
a strong backer of Manafort, had become uneasy about his Russian
connections and suspected that he had not been forthright about them.[64]
Manafort stated in an internal staff memorandum that he would "remain
the campaign chairman and chief strategist, providing the big-picture,
long-range campaign vision".[65] However, two days later, Trump announced his acceptance of Manafort's resignation from the campaign after Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway took on senior leadership roles within that campaign.[66][67]
Upon Manafort's resignation as campaign chairman, Newt Gingrich stated, "nobody should underestimate how much Paul Manafort did to really help get this campaign to where it is right now."[68]
Gingrich later added that, for the Trump administration, "It makes
perfect sense for them to distance themselves from somebody who
apparently didn't tell them what he was doing."[69]
In January 2019, Manafort's lawyers submitted a filing to the
court in response to the allegation that Manafort had lied to
investigators. Through an error in redacting, the document accidentally
revealed that while he was campaign chairman, Manafort met with Konstantin Kilimnik,
a likely Russian intelligence officer and an alleged operative of the
"Mariupol Plan" which would separate eastern Ukraine by political means
with Manafort's help.[70]
The filing says Manafort gave him polling data related to the 2016
campaign and discussed a Ukrainian peace plan with him. Most of the
polling data was reportedly public, although some was private Trump
campaign polling data. Manafort asked Kilimnik to pass the data to
Ukrainians Serhiy Lyovochkin and Rinat Akhmetov.
The Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in
August 2020 that Manafort's contacts with Kilimnik and other affiliates
of Russian intelligence "represented a grave counterintelligence threat"
because his "presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created
opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over,
and acquire confidential information on, the Trump campaign."[71][72][34]
During a February 4, 2019, closed-door court hearing regarding
false statements Manafort had made to investigators about his
communications with Kilimnik, special counsel prosecutor Andrew Weissmann told judge Amy Berman Jackson
that "This goes, I think, very much to the heart of what the special
counsel's office is investigating," suggesting that Mueller's office
continued to examine a possible agreement between Russia and the Trump
campaign.[73]
While Manafort served within the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, it is alleged that Manafort, via Kyiv-based operative Konstantin Kilimnik, offered to provide briefings on political developments to Deripaska.[74][75] Behaviors such as these were seen by writers at The Atlantic as an attempt by Manafort "to please an oligarch tied to" Putin's government.[76]
Manafort left BMSK (then a subsidiary of Burson-Marsteller) in 1995 to join Richard H. Davis and Matthew C. Freedman in forming Davis, Manafort, and Freedman.[78]
Association with Jonas Savimbi
Manafort has represented Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi.
In 1985, Manafort's firm, BMSK, signed a $600,000 (~$1.44 million in 2023) contract with Jonas Savimbi, the leader of the Angolan rebel group UNITA,
to refurbish Savimbi's image in Washington and secure financial support
on the basis of his anti-communism stance. BMSK arranged for Savimbi to
attend events at the American Enterprise Institute (where Jeane Kirkpatrick gave him a laudatory introduction), The Heritage Foundation, and Freedom House; in the wake of the campaign, Congress approved hundreds of millions of dollars in covert American aid to Savimbi's group.[79]
Allegedly, Manafort's continuing lobbying efforts helped preserve the
flow of money to Savimbi several years after the Soviet Union ceased its
involvement in the Angolan conflict, forestalling peace talks.[79]
Lobbying for other foreign leaders
Between June 1984 and June 1986, Manafort was a FARA-registered lobbyist for Saudi Arabia.
The Reagan Administration refused to grant Manafort a waiver from
federal statutes prohibiting public officials from acting as foreign
agents; Manafort resigned his directorship at OPIC in May 1986. An
investigation by the Department of Justice found 18 lobbying-related activities that were not reported in FARA filings, including lobbying on behalf of The Bahamas and Saint Lucia.[80]
Manafort was a lobbyist for former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos.Manafort lobbied on behalf of former Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko.
Manafort's firm, BMSK, accepted $950,000 yearly to lobby for then-president of the PhilippinesFerdinand Marcos.[81][82] He was also involved in lobbying for Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaïre,[83] securing a US$1 million (~$2.14 million in 2023) annual contract in 1989,[84] and attempted to recruit Siad Barre of Somalia as a client.[85] His firm also lobbied on behalf of the governments of the Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya (earning between $660,000 and $750,000 each year between 1991 and 1993), and Nigeria
($1 million in 1991). These activities led Manafort's firm to be listed
amongst the top five lobbying firms receiving money from human-rights
abusing regimes in the Center for Public Integrity report "The Torturers' Lobby".[86]
Manafort wrote the campaign strategy for Édouard Balladur in the 1995 French elections, and was paid indirectly.[88] The money, at least $200,000, was transferred to him through his friend, Lebanese arms-dealer Abdul Rahman al-Assir, from middle-men fees paid for arranging the sale of three French Agosta-class submarines to Pakistan, in a scandal known as the Karachi affair.[79]
Association with Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence Agency
Manafort received $700,000 from the Kashmiri
American Council between 1990 and 1994, supposedly to promote the
plight of the Kashmiri people. However, an FBI investigation revealed
the money was actually from Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence
(ISI) agency as part of a disinformation operation to divert attention
from terrorism. A former Pakistani ISI official claimed Manafort was
aware of the nature of the operation.[89] While producing a documentary as part of the deal, Manafort interviewed several Indian officials while pretending to be a CNN reporter.[90]
HUD scandal
In the late 1980s, Manafort was criticized for using his connections at HUD to ensure funding for a $43 million rehabilitation of dilapidated housing in Seabrook, New Jersey.[91]
Manafort's firm received a $326,000 fee for its work in getting HUD
approval of the grant, largely through personal influence with Deborah Gore Dean, an executive assistant to former HUD Secretary Samuel Pierce.[92]
Transition to Ukraine
Manafort's involvement in Ukraine can be traced to 2003, when Russian oligarchOleg Deripaska
hired Dole, Manafort's prior campaign candidate, to lobby the State
Department for a waiver of his visa ban, primarily so that he could
solicit otherwise unavailable institutional purchasers for shares in his
company, RusAL.[93][94] Then in early 2004, Deripaska met with Manafort's partner, Rick Davis,
also a prior campaign adviser to Bob Dole, to discuss hiring Manafort
and Davis to return the former Georgian Minister of State Security, Igor Giorgadze, to prominence in Georgian politics.[95]
By December 2004, however, Deripaska shelved his plans in Georgia
and dispatched Manafort to meet with Akhmetov in Ukraine to help
Akhmetov and his holding firm, System Capital Management, weather the
political crisis brought by the Orange Revolution.[95] Akhmetov would eventually flee to Monaco
after being accused of murder, but during the crisis Manafort
shepherded Akhemtov around Washington, meeting with U.S. officials like Dick Cheney.[93][94][95] Akhmetov introduced Manafort to Yanukovych, to whose political party, the Party of Regions, Akhmetov was a contributor.[96]
Lobbying for Viktor Yanukovych and involvements in Ukraine
Pro-Russia Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, for whom Manafort lobbied
Manafort worked as an adviser on the Ukrainian presidential campaign of Yanukovych (and his Party of Regions during the same time span) from December 2004 until the February 2010 Ukrainian presidential election,[96][97][98] even as the U.S. government (and U.S. Senator John McCain) opposed Yanukovych because of his ties to Russia's leader Vladimir Putin.[54] Manafort was hired to advise Yanukovych months after massive street demonstrations known as the Orange Revolution overturned rigged Yanukovych's victory in the 2004 presidential race.[99]Borys Kolesnikov,
Yanukovych's campaign manager, said the party hired Manafort after
identifying organizational and other problems in the 2004 elections, in
which it was advised by Russian strategists.[98] Manafort rebuffed U.S. Ambassador William B. Taylor Jr. when the latter complained he was undermining U.S. interests in Ukraine.[79] According to a 2008 U.S. Justice Department
annual report, Manafort's company received $63,750 from Yanukovych's
Party of Regions over a six-month period ending on March 31, 2008, for
consulting services.[100] In the 2010 election, Yanukovych managed to pull off a narrow win over Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko,
a leader of the 2004 demonstrations. Yanukovych owed his comeback in
Ukraine's presidential election to a drastic makeover of his political
persona, and—people in his party say—that makeover was engineered in
part by his American consultant, Manafort.[98]
In 2007 and 2008, Manafort was involved in investment projects
with Deripaska—the acquisition of a Ukrainian telecommunications
company—and Ukrainian oligarchDmytro Firtash—redevelopment of the site of the former Drake Hotel in New York City).[101]
Manafort negotiated a $10 million (~$15 million in 2023) annual
contract with Deripaska to promote Russian interests in politics,
business, and media coverage in Europe and the United States, starting
in 2005.[102]
A witness at Manafort's 2018 trial for fraud and tax evasion testified
that Deripaska loaned Manafort $10 million in 2010, which to her
knowledge was never repaid.[48]
At Manafort's trial,
federal prosecutors alleged that between 2010 and 2014 he was paid more
than $60 million by Ukrainian sponsors, including Akhmetov, believed to
be the richest man in Ukraine.[48]
Manafort then returned to Ukraine in September 2014 to become an adviser to Yanukovych's former head of the Presidential Administration of UkraineSerhiy Lyovochkin.[96] In this role, he was asked to assist in rebranding Yanukovych's Party of Regions.[96] Instead, he argued to help stabilize Ukraine. Manafort was instrumental in creating a new political party called Opposition Bloc.[96]
According to Ukrainian political analyst Mikhail Pogrebinsky, "He
thought to gather the largest number of people opposed to the current
government, you needed to avoid anything concrete, and just become a
symbol of being opposed".[96] According to Manafort, he has not worked in Ukraine since the October 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election.[117][118]
However, according to Ukrainian border control entry data, Manafort
traveled to Ukraine several times after that election, all the way
through late 2015.[118] According to The New York Times, his local office in Ukraine closed in May 2016.[62] According to Politico, by then Opposition Bloc had already stopped payments for Manafort and this local office.[118]
In an April 2016 interview with ABC News, Manafort stated that the aim of his activities in Ukraine had been to lead the country "closer to Europe".[119]
Ukrainian government National Anti-Corruption Bureau
studying secret documents claimed in August 2016 to have found
handwritten records that show $12.7 million in cash payments designated
for Manafort, although they had yet to determine if he had received the
money.[62]
These undisclosed payments were from the pro-Russian political party
Party of Regions, of the former president of Ukraine Yanukovych.[62] This payment record spans from 2007 to 2012.[62]
Manafort's lawyer, Richard A. Hibey, said Manafort didn't receive "any
such cash payments" as described by the anti-corruption officials.[62]
The Associated Press reported on August 17, 2016, that Manafort
secretly routed at least $2.2 million in payments to two prominent
Washington lobbying firms in 2012 on Party of Regions' behalf, and did
so in a way that effectively obscured the foreign political party's
efforts to influence U.S. policy.[10]
Associated Press noted that under federal law, U.S. lobbyists must
declare publicly if they represent foreign leaders or their political
parties and provide detailed reports about their actions to the Justice
Department, which Manafort reportedly did not do.[10] The lobbying firms unsuccessfully lobbied U.S. Congress to reject a resolution condemning the jailing of Yanukovych's main political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko.[120]
Financial records certified in December 2015 and filed by
Manafort in Cyprus showed him to be approximately $17 million
(~$21.4 million in 2023) in debt to interests connected to interests
favorable to Putin and Yanukovych in the months before joining the Trump
presidential campaign in March.[121] These included a $7.8 million debt to Oguster Management Limited, a company connected to Deripaska.[121]
This accords with a 2015 court complaint filed by Deripaska claiming
that Manafort and his partners owed him $19 million in relation to a
failed Ukrainian cable television business.[121] In January 2018, Surf Horizon Limited, a Cyprus-based company tied to Deripaska, sued Manafort and his business partner Richard "Rick" Gates,
accusing them of financial fraud by misappropriating more than $18.9
million that the company had invested in Ukrainian telecom companies,
known collectively as the "Black Sea Cable".[122] An additional $9.9 million debt was owed to a Cyprus company that tied through shell companies to Ivan Fursin [uk], a Ukrainian Member of Parliament of the Party of Regions.[121]
Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni maintained in response, "Manafort is
not indebted to Deripaska or the Party of Regions, nor was he at the
time he began working for the Trump campaign."[121] During the 2016 Presidential campaign,
Manafort, via Kilimnik, offered to provide briefings on political
developments to Deripaska, though there is no evidence that the
briefings took place.[74][123]
A July 2017 application by the FBI for a search warrant revealed that a
company controlled by Manafort and his wife had received a $10 million
(~$12.2 million in 2023) loan from Deripaska.[124][125]
According to leaked text messages between his daughters, Manafort
was also one of the proponents of violent removal of the Euromaidan
protesters, which resulted in police shooting dozens of people during 2014 Hrushevskoho Street riots.
In one of the messages, his daughter writes that it was his "strategy
that was to cause that, to send those people out and get them
slaughtered."[126]
Manafort has rejected questions about whether Kilimnik, with whom
he consulted regularly, might be in league with Russian intelligence.[127] According to Yuri Shvets, Kilimnik previously worked for the GRU, and every bit of information about his work with Manafort went directly to Russian intelligence.[128]
2017 activities
Registering as a foreign agent
Lobbying for foreign countries requires registration with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act
(FARA). Manafort did not do so at the time of his lobbying. In April
2017, a Manafort spokesman said Manafort was planning to file the
required paperwork; however, according to Associated Press reporters, as of June 2, 2017, Manafort had not yet registered.[8][10] On June 27, he filed to be retroactively registered as a foreign agent.[11]
Among other things, he disclosed that he made more than $17 million
between 2012 and 2014 working for a pro-Russian political party in
Ukraine.[129][130]
The sentencing memorandum submitted by the Office of Special Council on
February 23, 2019, stated that the "filing was plainly deficient.
Manafort entirely omitted [his] United States lobbying contracts... and a portion of the substantial compensation Manafort received from Ukraine."[131]
China, Puerto Rico, and Ecuador
Early in 2017, Manafort supported Chinese efforts at providing development and investment worldwide and in Puerto Rico and Ecuador.[132] Early in 2017, he discussed possible Chinese investment sources for Ecuador with Lenín Moreno who later obtained loans worth several billion US dollars from the China Development Bank.[132] In May 2017, Manafort and Moreno discussed the possibility of Manafort brokering a deal for Ecuador to relinquish Julian Assange to American authorities in exchange for concessions such as debt relief from the United States.[133]
Manafort acted as the go between for the China Development Bank's investment fund to support bailout bonds for Puerto Rico's sovereign debt financing and other infrastructure items.[132] Also, he advised a Shanghai construction billionaire Yan Jiehe [zh] (严介和), who owns the Pacific Construction Group (太平洋建设) and is China's seventh richest man with a fortune estimated at $14.2 billion in 2015, on obtaining international contracts.[132][134][135]
Manafort's
work in Ukraine coincided with the purchase of at least four prime
pieces of real estate in the United States, worth a combined $11
million, between 2006 and early 2012.[141] In 2006, Manafort purchased an apartment on the 43rd floor of Trump Tower for a reported $3.6 million (~$5.24 million in 2023).[142] Manafort, however, purchased the unit indirectly, through an LLC named after him and his partner Rick Hannah Davis, "John Hannah, LLC."[143] That LLC, according to court documents in Manafort's indictment, came into existence in April 2006,[144] roughly one month after the Ukrainian parliamentary elections that saw Manafort help bring Yanukovych back to power on March 22, 2006.[145] According to Afghan-Ukrainian journalist Mustafa Nayyem,
Akhmetov, the Ukrainian oligarch sponsoring Yanukovych, paid the $3
million purchase price for Manafort's Trump Tower apartment for helping
win the election.[93] It was not until March 5, 2015, when Manafort's income from Ukraine dwindled,[146]
that Manafort would transfer the property out of John Hannah, LLC, and
into his own personal name so that he could take out a $3 million loan
against the property.[147] The Trump Tower residence was claimed as Manafort's primary residence in order to receive a tax abatement, though Manafort also listed a Florida residence as his primary residence, also to gain tax breaks.[148] The property was since seized by the federal government, and listed for sale in 2019.[149]
Since 2012, Manafort has taken out seven home equity loans worth
approximately $19.2 million (~$25.2 million in 2023) on three separate
New York-area properties he owns through holding companies registered to
him and his then son-in-law Jeffrey Yohai, a real estate investor.[150] In 2016, Yohai declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy for LLCs tied to four residential properties held with the actor Jake Hoffman; Manafort holds a $2.7 million (~$3.36 million in 2023) claim on one of the properties.[151]
As of February 2017, Manafort had about $12 million in home
equity loans outstanding. For one home, loans of $6.6 million exceeded
the value of that home; the loans are from the Federal Savings Bank of
Chicago, Illinois, whose CEO, Stephen Calk, was a campaign supporter of Donald Trump and was a member of Trump's economic advisory council during the campaign.[150]
In July 2017, New York prosecutors subpoenaed information about the
loans issued to Manafort during the 2016 presidential campaign. At the
time, these loans represented about a quarter of the bank's equity
capital.[152]
The Mueller investigation is reviewing a number of loans that
Manafort has received since leaving the Trump campaign in August 2016,
specifically $7 million (~$8.71 million in 2023) from Oguster Management
Limited, a British Virgin Islands-registered company connected to
Deripaska, to another Manafort-linked company, Cyprus-registered LOAV
Advisers Ltd.[153]
This entire amount was unsecured, carried interest at 2%, and had no
repayment date. Additionally, NBC News found documents that reveal loans
of more than $27 million from the two Cyprus entities to a third
company connected to Manafort, a limited-liability corporation
registered in Delaware. This company, Jesand LLC, bears a strong
resemblance to the names of Manafort's daughters, Jessica and Andrea.[154]
The FBI reportedly began a criminal investigation into Manafort in 2014, shortly after Yanukovych was deposed during Euromaidan.[155]
That investigation predated the 2016 election by several years and is
ongoing. In addition, Manafort is also a person of interest in the FBI
counterintelligence probe looking into the Russian government's interference in the 2016 presidential election.[8]
On January 19, 2017, the eve of Trump's presidential inauguration, it was reported that Manafort was under active investigation by multiple federal agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Director of National Intelligence, and the financial crimes unit of the Treasury Department.[156] Investigations were said to be based on intercepted Russian communications as well as financial transactions.[157]
CNN reported in September 2017 that Manafort was wiretapped by the FBI
"before and after the election ... including a period when Manafort was
known to talk to President Donald Trump." The surveillance of Manafort
reportedly began in 2014, before Donald Trump announced his candidacy
for President of United States. According to a subsequent CNN editor's
note, however: "On December 9, 2019, the Justice Department Inspector General
released a report regarding the opening of the investigation on Russian
election interference and Donald Trump's campaign. In the report, the
IG contradicts what CNN was told in 2017, noting that the FBI team overseeing the investigation did not seek FISA surveillance of Paul Manafort".[158][159]: 357 [160]
Former Trump attorney John Dowd denied March 2018 reports by The New York Times and The Washington Post that in 2017 he had broached the idea of a presidential pardon for Manafort with his attorneys.[167][168]
Congressional investigations
In May 2017, in response to a request of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), Manafort submitted over "300 pages of documents...
included drafts of speeches, calendars and notes from his time on the
campaign" to the Committee "related to its investigation of Russian
election meddling."[169] On July 25, he met privately with the committee.[170]
A congressional hearing on Russia issues, including the Trump campaign-Russian meeting, was scheduled by the Senate Committee on the Judiciary
for July 26, 2017. Manafort was scheduled to appear together with Trump
Jr., while Kushner was to testify in a separate closed session.[171]
After separate negotiations, both Manafort and Trump Jr. met with the
committee on July 26 in closed session and agreed to turn over requested
documents. They are expected to testify in public eventually.[172]
The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded in its August 2020 final report that as Trump campaign manager "Manafort worked with Kilimnik
starting in 2016 on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that
Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election" and to direct such
suspicions toward Ukraine. The report characterized Kilimnik as a
"Russian intelligence officer" and said Manafort's activities
represented a "grave counterintelligence threat."[173] The investigation found:
Manafort's
presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities
for the Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and
acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign. The Committee
assesses that Kilimnik likely served as a channel to Manafort for
Russian intelligence services, and that those services likely sought to
exploit Manafort's access to gain insight [into] the Campaign...On
numerous occasions over the course of his time of the Trump Campaign,
Manafort sought to secretly share internal campaign information with
Kilimnik...Manafort briefed Kilimnik on sensitive campaign polling data
and the campaign's strategy for beating Hillary Clinton.[174][175]
The
Committee did not definitively establish Kilimnik as a channel
connected to the hacking and leaking of DNC emails, noting that its
investigation was hampered by Manafort and Kilimnik's use of
"sophisticated communications security practices" and Manafort's lies
during SCO interviews on the topic.[176]
The report noted: "Manafort's obfuscation of the truth surrounding
Kilimnik was particularly damaging to the Committee's investigation
because it effectively foreclosed direct insight into a series of
interactions and communications which represent the single most direct
tie between senior Trump Campaign officials and the Russian intelligence
services."[176]
In April 2021, a document released by the U.S. Treasury Department
announcing new sanctions against Russia confirmed a direct pipeline from
Manafort to Russian intelligence, noting: “During the 2016 U.S.
presidential election campaign, Kilimnik provided the Russian
Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign
strategy”.[177][178]
The fifth and final volume of the August 2020 Senate Intelligence
Committee report, in a section on Manafort, noted: "Manafort had direct
access to Trump" as well as the Trump campaign's senior officials,
strategies, and information," and "Manafort, often with the assistance
of Gates, engaged with individuals inside Russia and Ukraine on matters
pertaining both to his personal business prospects and the 2016 U.S.
election."[179][180]
The report found that beginning around 2004, Manafort began to work for
Deripaska and pro-Russian oligarchs in Ukraine, and that this
involvement led to Manafort's involvement in the victory of Yanukovych
in the 2010 Ukrainian elections.[179][180]
The committee report stated: "The Russian government coordinates with
and directs Deripaska" as part of the influence operations that Manafort
assisted with, and that "Manafort's influence work for Deripaska was,
in effect, influence work for the Russian government and its interests."[179][180]
The Trump–Russia dossier, also known as the Steele dossier,[181] is a private intelligence report comprising investigation memos written between June and December 2016 by Christopher Steele.[182]
Manafort is a major figure mentioned in the Steele dossier, where
allegations are made about Manafort's relationships and actions toward
the Trump campaign, Russia, Ukraine, and Viktor Yanukovych. The dossier
claims:
that "the Republican candidate's campaign manager, Paul
MANAFORT" had "managed" the "well-developed conspiracy of co-operation
between [the Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership," and that he
used "foreign policy adviser, Carter PAGE, and others as
intermediaries."[183][184][185][186] (Dossier, p. 7)
that Yanukovych told Putin he had been making untraceable[187] "kick-back payments" to Manafort, who was Trump's campaign manager at the time.[188] (Dossier, p. 20)
Indictments and charges
Plea agreement by Paul Manafort providing full cooperation with the Special Counsel, Sep 14, 2018Statement of charges Paul Manafort pleaded guilty to and agreed were true
On October 30, 2017, Manafort was arrested by the FBI after being indicted by a federal grand jury as part of Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign.[189][190] The indictment against Manafort and Rick Gates charged them with engaging in a conspiracy against the United States,[14][191] engaging in a conspiracy to launder money,[14][191] failing to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts,[14][191][b] acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign principal,[14][191] making false and misleading statements in documents filed and submitted under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA),[14][191] and making false statements.[14][191]
Prosecutors claimed Manafort laundered more than $18 million
(equivalent to $22,374,152 in 2023), money he had received as
compensation for lobbying and consulting services for Yanukovych.[191][198]
Manafort and Gates pleaded not guilty to the charges at their court appearance on October 30, 2017.[199][200] The US government asked the court to set Manafort's bail at $10 million and Gates at $5 million.[200] The court placed Manafort and Gates under house arrest after prosecutors described them as flight risks.[201] If convicted on all charges, Manafort could face decades in prison.[202][203]
Following the hearing, Manafort's attorney Kevin M. Downing
made a public statement to the press proclaiming his client's innocence
while describing the federal charges stemming from the indictment as
"ridiculous".[204]
Downing defended Manafort's decade-long lobbying effort for Yanukovych,
describing their lucrative partnership as attempts to spread democracy
and strengthen the relationship between the United States and Ukraine.[205]
Judge Stewart responded by threatening to impose a gag order, saying "I
expect counsel to do their talking in this courtroom and in their
pleadings and not on the courthouse steps."[206]
Revealed on September 13, 2018, Manafort and Donald Trump had signed a
joint defense agreement allowing their attorneys to share information
during the Mueller investigations and, previously, joint defense
agreements had been arranged between Donald Trump and both Michael Cohen
and Michael Flynn.[207][208]
On November 30, 2017, Manafort's attorneys said that Manafort had
reached a bail agreement with prosecutors that would free him from the
house arrest he had been under since his indictment. He offered bail in
the form of $11.65 million worth of real estate.[209]
While out on bond, Paul Manafort worked on an op-ed with a "Russian who
has ties to the Russian intelligence service", prosecutors said in a
court filing[210] requesting that the judge in the case revoke Manafort's bond agreement.[211]
On January 3, 2018, Manafort filed a lawsuit challenging
Mueller's broad authority and alleging the Justice Department violated
the law in appointing Mueller.[212]
A spokesperson for the department replied that "The lawsuit is
frivolous but the defendant is entitled to file whatever he wants".[212]
On February 2, 2018, the Department of Justice filed a motion
seeking to dismiss the civil suit Manafort brought against Mueller.[213]
Judge Jackson dismissed the suit on April 27, 2018, citing precedent
that a court should not use civil powers to interfere in an ongoing
criminal case. She did not, however, make any judgment as to the merits
of the arguments presented.[214]
On February 22, 2018, both Manafort and Gates were further
charged with additional crimes involving a tax avoidance scheme and bank
fraud in Virginia.[215][216] The charges were filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia,
rather than in the District of Columbia, as the alleged tax fraud overt
actions had occurred in Virginia and not in the District.[217]
The new indictment alleged that Manafort, with assistance from Gates,
laundered over $30 million through offshore bank accounts between
approximately 2006 and 2015. Manafort allegedly used funds in these
offshore accounts to purchase real estate in the United States, in
addition to personal goods and services.[217]
On February 23, 2018, Gates pleaded guilty in federal court to
lying to investigators and engaging in a conspiracy to defraud the
United States.[218]
Through a spokesman, Manafort expressed disappointment in Gates'
decision to plead guilty and said he had no similar plans. "I continue
to maintain my innocence," he said.[219]
On February 28, 2018, Manafort entered a not guilty plea in the
District Court for the District of Columbia. Jackson subsequently set a
trial date of September 17, 2018, and reprimanded Manafort and his
attorney for violating her gag order
by issuing a statement the previous week after former co-defendant
Gates pleaded guilty. Manafort commented, "I had hoped and expected my
business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to
prove our innocence."[220]
On March 8, 2018, Manafort also pleaded not guilty to bank fraud
and tax charges in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Judge T. S. Ellis III of the Eastern District of Virginia set his trial on those charges to begin on July 10, 2018.[221] He later pushed the trial back to July 24, citing a medical procedure involving a member of Ellis's family.[222]
Ellis also expressed concern that the special counsel and Mueller were
only interested in charging Manafort to squeeze him for information that
would reflect on Mr. Trump or lead to Trump's impeachment.[223] Ellis later retracted his comments against the Mueller prosecution.[224][225]
Friends of Manafort announced the establishment of a legal defense fund on May 30, 2018, to help pay his legal bills.[226]
On June 8, 2018, Manafort and Kilimnik were indicted for obstruction of justice and witness tampering.[227]
The charges involved allegations that Manafort had attempted to
convince others to lie about an undisclosed lobbying effort on behalf of
Ukraine's former pro-Russian government. Since this allegedly occurred
while Manafort was under house arrest, Judge Jackson revoked Manafort's
bail on June 15 and ordered him held in jail until his trial.[228] Manafort was booked into the Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Virginia, at 8:22 PM on June 15, 2018, where he was housed in the VIP section and kept in solitary confinement for his own safety.[229][230][231][232] On June 22, Manafort's efforts to have the money laundering charges against him dismissed were rejected by the court.[233][234] Citing Alexandria's D.C. suburbia status, abundant and significantly negative press coverage, and the margin by which Hillary Clinton won the Alexandria Division in the 2016 presidential election, Manafort moved the court for a change of venue to Roanoke, Virginia on July 6, 2018, citing Constitution entitlement to a fair and unbiased trial.[235][236] On July 10, Judge T. S. Ellis ordered Manafort to be transferred back to the Alexandria Detention Center, an order Manafort opposed.[237][238]
In February 2023, Manafort agreed to pay $3.15 million to settle a
civil suit brought by the Justice Department in 2022 regarding
undisclosed foreign bank accounts.[239]
New York State indictment
On
March 13, 2019, the same day on which he was sentenced in the
Washington case, Manafort was indicted by the Manhattan District
Attorney on 16 charges related to mortgage fraud. District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said the charges stemmed from an investigation launched in March 2017.[240]
Unlike his previous convictions, these were levied by the State of New
York, and therefore a presidential pardon cannot override or affect the
sentence in the event of conviction.[30]
NBC News reported in August 2017 that a state investigator was
exploring jurisdiction to charge potential defendants in the Mueller
probe with state crimes, and that such charges could provide an end run
around any presidential pardons.[241] On December 18, 2019, Justice Maxwell Wiley of the New York Supreme Court, Criminal Term, New York County, dismissed the charges against Manafort.[31][32][33]
On August 20, 2020, the New York County District Attorney's Office appealed the dismissal to the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division.[242][243] In October 2020, a panel of the Appellate Division unanimously upheld the dismissal.[244][245]
After Manafort was pardoned in December 2020, the Manhattan District
Attorney's Office announced it would continue to seek appellate
remedies.[246] On February 4, 2021, the New York Court of Appeals declined to hear the appeal of the Appellate Division's decision.[247][248]
The numerous indictments against Manafort were divided into two trials.
Eastern District of Virginia
Manafort
was tried in the Eastern District of Virginia on eighteen charges
including tax evasion, bank fraud, and hiding foreign bank accounts -
financial crimes uncovered during the special counsel's investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 election.[18] The trial began on July 31, 2018, before U.S. District Judge T. S. Ellis III.[249][250] On August 21, the jury found Manafort guilty on eight of the eighteen charges, while Ellis declared a mistrial on the other ten.[18]
He was convicted on five counts of tax fraud, one of the four counts of
failing to disclose his foreign bank accounts, and two counts of bank
fraud.[251]
The jury was hung on three of the four counts of failing to disclose,
as well as five counts of bank fraud, four of them related to the
Federal Savings Bank of Chicago run by Stephen Calk.[252] Mueller's office advised the court that Manafort should receive a sentence of 20 to 24 years,[253]
a sentence consistent with federal guidelines, but on March 7, 2019,
Ellis sentenced Manafort to just 47 months in prison, less nine months
for time already served, adding that the recommended sentence was
"excessive" and that Manafort had lived an "otherwise blameless life."
However, Ellis noted that Manafort had not expressed "regret for
engaging in wrongful conduct".[254][255][256]
District of Columbia
Manafort's trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia was scheduled to begin in September 2018.[220]
He was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, money
laundering, failing to register as a foreign lobbyist, making false
statements to investigators, and witness tampering.[257]
On September 14, 2018, Manafort entered into a plea deal with
prosecutors and pleaded guilty to two charges: conspiracy to defraud the
United States and witness tampering.[258] He also agreed to forfeit to the government cash and property worth an estimated $11-$26 million,[259] and to co-operate fully with the Special Counsel.[260] A tentative sentencing date for Manafort's guilty plea in the D.C. case has been set for March 2019.[261]
Mueller's office stated in a November 26, 2018, court filing that
Manafort had repeatedly lied to prosecutors about a variety of matters,
breaching the terms of his plea agreement. Manafort's attorneys
disputed the assertion.[262]
On December 7, 2018, the special counsel's office filed a document with
the court listing five areas in which they say Manafort lied to them,
which they said negated the plea agreement.[261]
DC District Court judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled on February 13, 2019,
that Manafort had violated his plea deal by repeatedly lying to
prosecutors.[263]
In a February 7, 2019, hearing before U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Amy Berman Jackson,
prosecutors speculated that Manafort had concealed facts about his
activities to enhance the possibility of his receiving a pardon. They
said that Manafort's work with Ukraine had continued after he had made
his plea deal and that during the Trump campaign, he met with his
campaign deputy Rick Gates, who also had pleaded guilty in the case, and
with alleged Russian Federation intelligence agent, Konstantin Kilimnik, in an exclusive New York cigar bar. Gates said the three left the premises separately, each using different exits.[264]
On March 13, 2019, Jackson sentenced Manafort to 73 months in
prison, with 30 months concurrent with the jail time he received in the
Virginia case, for a resultant sentence of an additional 43 months in
jail (30 additional months for conspiracy to defraud the United States
and 13 additional months for witness tampering). Manafort also
apologized for his actions.[28][29][265]
As part of his pardon, some of his forfeitures were unwound. He
was able to retain his large house in Water Mill, New York, his
brownstone in Brooklyn, his apartment on the edge of Manhattan’s
Chinatown, and assets seized in an account at Federal Savings Bank. He
did not retain assets that were already forfeited and sold, such as an
apartment in Trump Tower in Manhattan, a bank account and a life
insurance policy.[270]
Law licenses
In
2017, Massachusetts lawyer J. Whitfield Larrabee filed a misconduct
complaint against Manafort in the Connecticut Statewide Grievance
Committee, seeking his disbarment on the basis of "conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation."[271]
In 2018, after Manafort pleaded guilty to conspiracy, the Connecticut
Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel brought a case against Manafort.[272]
In January 2019, ahead of a disbarment hearing, Manafort resigned from
the Connecticut bar and waived his right to ever seek readmission.[273][274][275]
Manafort was disbarred from the DC Bar on May 9, 2019.[276]
The Rise and Fall of Paul Manafort: Greed, Deception, Ego
by Sharon LaFraniere, Kenneth P. Vogel and Maggie Haberman
August 12, 2018
New York Times
PHOTO: The arc of Paul Manafort’s life has taken him from the son of a small-town mayor to a jet-setting international political consultant to Trump campaign chairman and now to prisoner in a Virginia jail awaiting a jury verdict. Credit: Yuri Gripas/Reuters
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A week before the Trump presidential campaign announced that it had hired Paul Manafort, a Yankees ticket specialist alerted him that his annual season tickets would soon be arriving at his 43rd-floor apartment at Trump Tower in New York.
“Will you and Kathy be attending opening day?” the specialist asked in an email in late March 2016, referring to Mr. Manafort’s wife. “Yes, Kathy and I will be attending,” Mr. Manafort replied. The four seats — prime spots behind the Yankees’ dugout, with access to the owner’s suite — cost $210,600 for the season.
But Mr. Manafort didn’t have the money to pay for them. Six months later, he still had not paid the American Express bill that included the charge.
He didn’t have money to make payments on the $5.3 million loan he had just taken out against his Brooklyn brownstone, either, which was heading toward foreclosure as he ran the Trump campaign. His political consulting firm was at least $600,000 in debt and had not had a single client after taking in more than $60 million in five years from the Ukrainian oligarchs funding the country’s pro-Russia president.
The whole trajectory of Mr. Manafort’s life — from the son of a blue-collar, small-town mayor to a jet-setting international political consultant to Trump campaign chairman and now to prisoner in an Alexandria, Va., jail awaiting a jury verdict — is a tale of greed, deception and ego. His trial on 18 charges of bank and tax fraud has ripped away the elaborate facade of a man who, the story went, had moved the swimming pool at one of his eight homes a few feet to catch the perfect combination of sun and shade, and who worked for the Trump campaign at no charge to intimate that for a man of his fabulous wealth, a salary was trivial.
His trial also underscores questions about how someone in such deep financial trouble rose to the top of the Trump campaign, spreading a stain that has touched the president’s innermost circle. The formidable parade of more than 20 witnesses and hundreds of exhibits has further eroded the notion, advanced by President Trump, that the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, Robert S. Mueller III, is on a “witch hunt.”
The trial is also a spectacle of small humiliations for Mr. Manafort, 69. His once perfectly coifed dark hair, admired by Mr. Trump, is now gray and shaggy without the benefit of a stylist. His shirts, which he once bought by the half dozen for $1,500 each, are now delivered by his wife to his lawyer in a white plastic bag. Their communication consists of him winking at her or forming a silent kiss as he is led in and out of the courtroom. He has been admonished not to turn around in his courtroom seat to look at her.
A subplot of the saga is the betrayal of Mr. Manafort by his longtime deputy Rick Gates, who had been at his side for the last dozen years. A former senior official of both the Trump campaign and the Trump inaugural committee, Mr. Gates has testified that he helped execute Mr. Manafort’s fraudulent schemes while simultaneously stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from him, apparently because he felt that Mr. Manafort was not dividing the riches from Ukraine fairly.
Mr. Gates, 46, has pleaded guilty to two felony charges and is hoping that by helping Mr. Mueller prosecute Mr. Manafort, he might receive probation despite the long list of additional crimes with which he has been charged. On the witness stand Tuesday, he sneaked a furtive glance at Mr. Manafort at a moment when his former boss was looking at his notes. In testimony, he stated that he had decided to come clean, but that Mr. Manafort had decided otherwise.
Some of Mr. Manafort’s associates now say they had predicted that greed would be his downfall. Blessed with extraordinary political instincts and his Georgetown Law School degree, Mr. Manafort built his political consultancy into a power center in Reagan-era Washington, where the name of Black, Manafort and Stone became synonymous with string-pulling, insider access and electoral success.
But along the way, many say, he became a mercenary, willing to serve brutal dictators and corrupt industrialists as long as they paid handsomely. Riva Levinson, an international lobbyist who worked for Mr. Manafort from 1985 to 1995, said she initially accepted his explanation that he served strongmen to push them closer to Western democratic ideals. But “as time went on,” she said in an interview, “it seemed to me, he became all about money, big money.”
The Russia-aligned oligarchs backing Viktor F. Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president whose rise to power Mr. Manafort helped stage-manage, provided very big money for at least five years. But when a popular uprising forced Mr. Yanukovych from power in 2014 and that financial spigot shut off, the government claims, Mr. Manafort resorted to bank fraud rather than give up his lifestyle.
“Paul never believed that the rules applied to him,” said Ms. Levinson, who described him as “brilliant” in her 2016 memoir. “They were for others who couldn’t outsmart the system.”
Video: 2:53
Paul Manafort’s Trail of Scandals
President Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, has now been accused by the special counsel of violating his plea deal by repeatedly lying to federal prosecutors. But this wasn’t Mr. Manafort’s first scandal. Credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
A Power Player
Paul John Manafort Jr. was born in New Britain, Conn., about 12 miles from Hartford. He caught the political bug from his father, the town’s mayor, when P.J., as Paul was then known, was in high school. His father was indicted over accusations of perjury in a municipal corruption scandal in 1981 but never convicted.
As an undergraduate and then a law student at Georgetown University, Mr. Manafort gravitated toward Republican politics. By the time he married Kathleen Bond, a George Washington University graduate, in 1978, he had already worked on Gerald Ford’s presidential campaign, and he would soon be hired by Ronald Reagan’s.
Tall, good-looking, with an authoritative air, Mr. Manafort thrived in political boiler rooms. But he distinguished himself even more as a lobbyist. He and two colleagues from his days with the Young Republicans and the Reagan campaign created two linked consulting firms that broke the mold in Washington, achieving legendary success. Shrewd and aggressive, Mr. Manafort, Charlie Black and Roger J. Stone helped elect politicians, then scored contracts to lobby those same politicians on behalf of businesses and foreign interests.
“After Reagan won the election, we started getting calls from people who wanted to know if we wanted to lobby,” Mr. Black said. “I didn’t think much of it,” he added, but Mr. Manafort “knew that it could be profitable.”
He also began to indulge his expensive tastes. He was attracted to displays of “opulence,” Mr. Stone said. “Manafort thought that if something was expensive, it meant it was good.”
His partners objected to some of his business expenses, questioning his Concorde flights to Paris and suites at the city’s lavish Hôtel de Crillon. In 1995, Mr. Manafort struck out on his own, focusing in part on clients in the former Soviet states where a clutch of oligarchs exercised control over entire industries. Washington seemed less hospitable. Mr. Manafort later told one associate that Karl Rove, the longtime Republican Party strategist, had “banished” him from the capital. In a 2016 memo seeking a position on Mr. Trump’s anti-establishment campaign, he cast his distance from the Republican elite as a positive.
By 2005, Mr. Manafort had forged bonds with two oligarchs in the former Soviet bloc. One was Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate who is close to President Vladimir V. Putin. One witness in Mr. Manafort’s trial testified that Mr. Deripaska lent Mr. Manafort $10 million in 2010, saying she saw no evidence it was ever repaid. Later, Mr. Deripaska sued him.
The other oligarch was Rinat Akhmetov, who with estimated assets of more than $12 billion was the richest man in Ukraine. At Mr. Akhmetov’s urging, Mr. Manafort agreed to try to engineer a political comeback for Mr. Yanukovych, a former coal trucking director, twice convicted of assault, who had lost a bid for the presidency in 2004.
In the words of federal prosecutors, Mr. Akhmetov and several other oligarchs backing Mr. Yanukovych became Mr. Manafort’s “golden goose.” Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian citizen who prosecutors have said had ties to Russian intelligence, served as Mr. Manafort’s man on the ground in Kiev.
“Thank you for your unexpected generosity,” Mr. Manafort wrote to Mr. Yanukovych in an email with the subject line “bonuses” in 2010, the year that Mr. Yanukovych became Ukraine’s president.
Prosecutors allege that between 2010 and 2014, Mr. Manafort was paid more than $60 million from his Ukrainian patrons and hid much of that income in secret foreign bank accounts in the names of 15 or more shell companies. He avoided paying taxes on at least $16.5 million of it, they allege. The remainder, they said, might be considered nontaxable business expenses, construed broadly enough to include $45,000 for cosmetic dentistry.
Mr. Manafort used his tax-free dollars, prosecutors have said, to support a lifestyle of staggering extravagance. In 2012 alone, he bought three homes.
Mr. Gates has testified that he helped Mr. Manafort conceal his true income, hiding the foreign bank accounts from his accountants and disguising several million dollars in income as nontaxable loans from companies that Mr. Manafort secretly controlled.
At the same time, he admitted, he embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from Mr. Manafort’s accounts by falsifying his expense reports. A father of four, he suggested to others later that it seemed unfair that Mr. Manafort paid him an annual salary of $240,000 while raking in tens of millions.
A subplot of the saga is the betrayal of Mr. Manafort by his longtime deputy Rick Gates, who had been at his side for the last dozen years.CreditErin Schaff for The New York Times
For his part, Mr. Manafort seemed to trust Mr. Gates implicitly to handle both his business and personal finances. When he joined the Trump campaign in 2016, Mr. Manafort introduced Mr. Gates as “my deputy in the campaign” and “my deputy in my life.”
Money Dries Up
Mr. Yanukovych’s fall from power in Ukraine in 2014 was cataclysmic for Mr. Manafort. Even though the oligarchs regrouped to fund a new political party for which Mr. Manafort worked, the payments to him dwindled fast, and he complained about unpaid bills. When Mr. Gates told him in April 2015 about his estimated tax bill for the previous year’s earnings, he erupted in anger. “WTF,” Mr. Manafort demanded in an email. “How could I be blindsided like this.”
“This is to calm down Paul,” Mr. Kilimnik, the Russian aide in Ukraine, wrote to Mr. Gates in mid-2015 in an email that promised that $500,000 would be wired soon.
Ukrainian prosecutors had begun investigating the payments to Mr. Manafort and others, turning to the F.B.I. for help. Agents interviewed both Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates in 2014, but considered them only witnesses to the theft of Ukrainian government funds.
At about the same time, Mr. Manafort’s family confronted him over an affair he was having with a much younger woman, whose rent and credit card bill they believed he was paying, according to interviews and text messages hacked from one of his daughters. He entered an Arizona clinic to try to put his life back together, texting his younger daughter that he had emerged with newfound self-awareness.
But prosecutors claim that his schemes continued. They say he and Mr. Gates kept accountants at two firms and officials at three banks busy with a round robin of made-up explanations and doctored financial records.
For example, Mr. Manafort had falsely reported $1.5 million in income from Ukraine as a loan to lower his tax bill. He then claimed the same nonexistent loan had been “forgiven” in order to inflate his income so banks would agree to lend to him.
Mr. Manafort’s deceptions grew increasingly convoluted throughout 2016, prosecutors say, but the Trump campaign appears to have been oblivious to that. Like nearly everyone else hired by the campaign, Mr. Manafort was not vetted. The recommendation of Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a private equity investor who has been close to Mr. Trump for years, was enough. Also in his favor was Mr. Manafort’s offer to work at no charge, both because Mr. Trump is a notorious skinflint and because Mr. Manafort apparently thought Mr. Trump would be more likely to hire a man of seeming great wealth like himself.
How Prosecutors' Allegations Overlap With The Time Manafort and Gates Worked for Trump
Paul Manafort and Rick Gates attempted to get Mr. Manafort out of financial trouble while they were working on the president’s campaign and inauguration, prosecutors say.
Trump campaign
Financial schemes
MARCH
2016
Paul Manafort is hired to manage Donald J. Trump’s strategy for the Republican convention. Rick Gates joins as his deputy.
Mr. Manafort secures a $3.4 million mortgage loan using false information, hid other debt and inflated his income with the help of Mr. Gates and his accountant.
APRIL
An expanded campaign role for Mr. Manafort is announced.
Mr. Manafort obtains a $1 million business loan from Banc of California using false information.
MAY
Mr. Manafort’s promotion to campaign chairman and chief strategist is announced.
Mr. Gates helps Mr. Manafort attempt to secure a fraudulent construction loan.
JUNE
JULY
Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates attend the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
Stephen M. Calk, the founder and chief executive of the Federal Savings Bank of Chicago, helps expedite a loan approval for Mr. Manafort. Days later, Mr. Manafort asks for his résumé.
AUG.
The Times reports on a ledger listing undisclosed cash payments earmarked for Mr. Manafort from a pro-Russian political party.
SEPT.
Mr. Trump hires Stephen K. Bannon as campaign chief, and Mr. Manafort resigns two days later. Mr. Gates becomes a liaison between the Republican National Committee and the campaign.
Mr. Manafort tells Mr. Calk that he must have had a “blackout” when he misrepresented his debts to him during a lunch.
OCT.
Mr. Gates helps Mr. Manafort doctor profit-and-loss statements to inflate his income for lenders.
Mr. Trump is elected. Mr. Gates eventually works on his inaugural committee.
NOV.
Mr. Calk helps secure a $9.5 million loan to Mr. Manafort. His bank later approves another $6.5 million loan.
Mr. Manafort asks Mr. Gates to promote Mr. Calk for a position in the administration.
By The New York Times
Mr. Manafort soon had plenty of detractors among the campaign staff. He won few points by calling Mr. Trump “Donald” in his first CNN appearance, as if he were Mr. Trump’s peer. Some aides suggested he was unfamiliar with all the changes in politics — most notably the rise of the internet — since 1996, when he last worked on an American presidential campaign. Others described him as lazy, carefully noting when he took off on Fridays for the Hamptons. Mr. Manafort said he had built a television studio at his home there so he could appear on Sunday talk shows remotely.
He lasted only five months, three of them as campaign chairman. When The New York Times revealed that a ledger found by Ukrainian investigators had listed $12.7 million in off-the-books cash payments to Mr. Manafort’s firm, one former campaign aide said that Mr. Trump was enraged. But another article detailing how Mr. Manafort and others were begging Mr. Trump to stop picking public fights equally angered Mr. Trump. When Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, told Mr. Manafort he was out, Mr. Trump was barely speaking to him.
By then, Mr. Manafort’s financial house of cards was on the verge of collapse. Less than two weeks after he left the campaign, one lender informed him that it had started to foreclose on his Brooklyn brownstone. He had paid cash for it when he was financially flush four years earlier, then borrowed $5.3 million against it that February. Five months had passed with no payments.
Mr. Gates managed to retain his affiliation to Mr. Trump as a liaison between the campaign and the Republican National Committee, although Mr. Trump disliked him so much that he was barred from flying on the candidate’s private plane. Mr. Manafort tried to use his lingering connection to Mr. Trump to land consulting work and to persuade banks to bail him out. He dangled a possible cabinet secretary post in front of Stephen Calk, chairman of Federal Savings Bank in Chicago, pressing Mr. Gates to promote him as a possible secretary of the Army.
He continued to treat Mr. Gates as his aide, asking him how to convert profit-and-loss statements from PDF format into Word in order, prosecutors said, to inflate his income and appear more creditworthy to banks. After the election, Mr. Calk approved two loans to Mr. Manafort for a total of $16 million. Mr. Manafort used some of it to save his Brooklyn property from foreclosure.
But even Mr. Calk was getting worried. On Dec. 7, 2016, he wrote to another top bank official: “Nervousness is setting in.” Less than a year later, Mr. Mueller’s team filed the first of a series of indictments against Mr. Manafort. Mr. Mueller granted a plea deal to Mr. Gates and immunity from prosecution to five of the nearly dozen witnesses for the prosecution.
On Sunday, Mr. Manafort celebrated his 40th wedding anniversary in jail. He was allowed three visits limited to 30 minutes each. A notice on the website for his legal defense fund read: “Paul and his family are reaching out to anyone who can assist him at this time.”
Correction: Aug. 13, 2018
Earlier versions of this article incorrectly identified an international lobbyist who worked for Mr. Manafort. She is Riva Levinson, not Rita Levinson.
Emily Baumgaertner contributed reporting, and Jack Begg contributed research.
A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 12, 2018, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: A String Puller Toppled by Ego And Deception. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper
Related Coverage:
Top Trump Campaign Aides Are Portrayed as Corrupt at Manafort Trial
Aug. 7, 2018
Top Trump Campaign Aides Are Portrayed as Corrupt at Manafort Trial
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Kofi Natambu, editor of The Panopticon Review, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He is the author of a biography MALCOLM X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: THE MELODY NEVER STOPS (Past Tents Press) and INTERVALS (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of SOLID GROUND: A NEW WORLD JOURNAL, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology NOSTALGIA FOR THE PRESENT (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
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