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Wednesday, November 1, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
The Bunkhouse
Chronicle
Craig Rullman
Columnist
Jailbirds
The first True Bill in the
big collusion extravaganza
has finally been handed
down. Early Monday morn-
ing, in a showbiz fail, Paul
Manafort, former chair-
man of Trump’s presidential
campaign, made a strangely
unattended perp-walk with
his lawyer into the FBI’s
Washington D.C. field office.
M anafort, who was
clearly the first chair in a
sloppy money-laundering
symphony, was joined in
the indictment by Rick
Gates, a former deputy cam-
paign chair, accomplished
Moscow-mingler, and con-
vention delegate-wrangler.
In this column’s opinion
the charges we have all been
waiting for are remarkably
uninteresting, uninspiring,
and weak for the purpose of
climbing the collusion lad-
der. The indictment itself is
heavy on evidence of laun-
dering and tax fraud, solid on
evidence of failing to register
as a foreign agent, and laugh-
able on any evidence at all
of collusion with Russians to
influence the election.
Anyone hoping for slam-
dunk evidence of collusion
with the Rooskies is certainly
disappointed by the text of
the indictment, and if Mueller
is hanging the success of his
case on flipping Manafort
he’s chosen a particularly
flimsy spatula for the job.
Manafort has likely
known he was headed to
prison for months — his
whole scheme as described
in the indictment is amateur-
ish, not up to the laundering
expertise of even mid-level
narcotics traffickers — and so
one wonders what he has to
gain by cooperation—a tack
which presupposes he knows
anything at all about collu-
sion. I’ll hazard a guess: not
much, even with the exposure
for his alleged crimes as seri-
ous as it is.
Strangely enough, Gates
appears to be the far more
interesting piece in this open-
ing gambit, and one wonders
what tales he might tell about
his Moscow dalliances. There
might be a songbird in Gates’
coat-pocket, and time will tell
us how loud it sings.
The heart of former
Director Mueller’s effort
against Manafort is sum-
marized nicely on page 2
of the indictment: “In fur-
therance of the (laundering)
scheme, MANAFORT used
his hidden overseas wealth
to enjoy a lavish lifestyle in
the United States, without
paying taxes on that income.
MANAFORT, without report-
ing the income to his tax pre-
parer or the United States,
spent millions of dollars on
luxury goods and services
for himself and his extended
family through payments
wired from offshore nomi-
nee accounts to United States
vendors. MANAFORT also
used these offshore accounts
to purchase multi million dol-
lar properties in the United
States. MANAFORT then
borrowed millions of dollars
in loans using these prop-
erties as collateral, thereby
obtaining cash in the United
States without reporting and
paying taxes on the income.”
There is solid information
about Manafort and Gates
acting as unregistered agents
of the Ukranian government
— unsurprising — but pre-
cious little in the way of con-
crete allegations of direct,
or even indirect, collusion
with Russians. True believ-
ers in the collusion angle
will use every ounce of cir-
cumstantial evidence to cry
foul, but what’s in the indict-
ment doesn’t boost their case.
Which isn’t to say it didn’t
happen, or that Manafort
and Gates won’t ultimately
spill some goods; only that
the crimes they are formally
accused of are essentially tax
fraud and money laundering
charges — comparatively
lightweight stuff — and
if the government is pin-
ning its hopes on leverag-
ing these two mopes to find
hard evidence of Russians in
the White House pantry, it
doesn’t look promising.
If I were Manafort, or
Gates, or their respective
attorneys, I would negotiate
with the government — but
really only about what color
of jumpsuit I get to wear
in Martha Stewart Federal
Penitentiary.
How much money are
we talking about here?
According to the indictment,
a cool $75 million flowed
through banks in such gar-
den spots as Cyprus and the
Grenadines, which Manafort
must have thought was safe
enough from the prying eyes
of FinCen, which is why he
violated the FBAR (foreign
bank account reporting)
requirements so boldly.
FinCen
—
The
Department of the
Treasury’s Financial Crimes
Enforcement Network — is
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an authority you should prob-
ably know about. FinCen
is essentially the assassin
squad of financial crimes
enforcement, used often in
major dope cases to conduct
clandestine audits, which
is generally the best — and
sometimes the only —way
to prove that someone’s life-
style doesn’t match their
declared means, particularly
when that investigation must
remain invisible. If you are
structuring deposits, stuff-
ing cash into hidey-holes, or
buying a fleet of helicopters
with sleaze money, FinCen
can figure out how you are
doing it.
One wonders, by the way,
where Manafort might have
learned to execute such hand-
some real estate schemes. It’s
almost as if he knows people
who are big in real estate.
But that is a far cry
from collusion with for-
eign agents to sway an elec-
tion. In the comfort of our
modest homes we might all
form circumstantial conclu-
sions about what, if any,
influence the Russians had,
directly or indirectly on the
Trump campaign, and what
Trump knew or didn’t know
about Manafort’s financial
highwire act. But that isn’t
the same thing as hard evi-
dence of what — committed
knowingly and with intent
— amounts to treason. And
hard evidence is still the best
evidence in our courts of law.
Thus far, after months of
backfiring and scorched-earth
scrambling, we aren’t seeing
much beyond the suggestion
of Russians in the smoke —
though the true tale behind
the Steele Dossier and its
employment by the RNC, the
DNC, and Comey’s FBI is
yet to be unraveled.
This column believes that
if there is an intelligence
effort led by Russians to
influence our election, it’s
to be found in the sordid tale
of that document and how
it was ultimately used by
extremely powerful people
— across the full spectrum of
the American government. If
the Steele Dossier was essen-
tially created by Russian
agents, which is the allega-
tion, then THAT is the real
story, and it’s much, much
bigger than any single politi-
cal party, or Paul Manafort
buying a condo in SoHo with
slush money.
Wherever this ends up
going, and whoever ends up
going to prison, rest assured
that Putin has his feet up on
the furniture of his billion-
dollar Sochi compound, and
is grinning from ear to ear
because he’s already won —
by deeply undermining our
remaining faith in American
institutions.
More true bills are com-
ing. Mueller has hit a long
single into the gap with
Manafort and Gates, but if
the effort here is to find hard,
prosecutable evidence of
Russian collusion to influ-
ence an American election —
potentially treasonous acts by
anyone who committed them
— it’s time to start swinging
for the fences.
Et tu, General Flynn?