In 2005, Manafort was working for mining tycoon Rinat Akhemetov along with Manafort partner Rick Gates, Konstantin Kilimnik, and the “International Republican Institute” of Moscow.30 Manafort represented Dmytro Firtash, a gas “tycoon” who is wanted by the U.S. Manafort was also named as a defendant in a civil racketeering case with Firtash filed by Yulia Tymoschenko, the golden-haired leader of the Orange Revolution. According to U.S. Ambassador William Taylor, in cables released by Wikileaks, Firtash admitted having ties to Seymon Mogilevich, an organized crime boss in Russia.31, 32
Manafort was sued in a Cayman Island court over abusing his investment money. The plaintiff was the president of the largest aluminum company in the world, Oleg Deripaska, who said Manafort has not accounted for the use of the funds or returned them.33 Russian investors filed a petition that claimed they invested $26 million into buying a Ukrainian cable company. Surf Horizons was trying to reclaim its investment from Pericles. Manafort was ordered to be deposed in that case in 2015.34 The U.S. government revoked Deripaska’s U.S. visa in July 2006, and he sought to have it restored. In 2007, Manafort and Deripaska sought to establish “Pericles Emerging Market Investors,” investing in Russia and Ukraine. Manafort helped to arrange meetings between Senator John McCain and Deripaska.
Manafort was a close paid advisor to Trump. On August 14, 2016, The New York Times published a story “Secret Ledger in Ukraine lists cash for Donald Trump’s campaign chief,” which detailed Manafort’s relationships with Viktor Yanukovych, the deposed president of the Ukraine and close Putin loyalist. Before his abrupt departure and exile in Russia, Yanukovych was a master manipulator of Ukrainian politics. He hired Manafort to help with some of that manipulation. When he escaped a popular uprising against him it was a severe blow to Russia, as the people had been agitating to get closer to the Europe and NATO.
Manafort’s dilemma following the disclosure of the ledgers, numbering around four hundred pages, was that he claimed to have never worked for either the Russian or Ukrainian governments. The handwritten ledgers reflect large projects including sales of a Ukrainian cable company under the Pericles banner.35 They show cash payments for Manafort over a period ranging from 2007 to 2012. The article also claims that Manafort never registered his work as a “foreign agent” as required with the U.S. Department of Justice.
According to investigators, Manafort’s name appears twenty-two times. He was allegedly paid $12.7 million in cash or untraceable instruments over a span of five years. The investigator did note that there is nothing in the ledger that indicates Manafort ever received payments, just that they were issued.36
All of these were drops in the bucket that could easily have been overlooked, but on August 17, 2016 the London Times released a bombshell report from Ukrainian prosecutors that Manafort had been paid by pro-Russian parties in the Ukraine to organize anti-NATO protests in Crimea, leading to the withdrawal of forces for a planned NATO exercise. The prosecutors wrote,
It was his political effort to raise the prestige of Yanukovych and his party—the confrontation and division of society on ethnic and linguistic grounds is his trick from the time of the elections in Angola and the Philippines. While I was in the Crimea I constantly saw evidence suggesting that Paul Manafort considered autonomy [from Ukraine] as a tool to enhance the reputation of Yanukovych and win over the local electorate.37
Two years later Crimea would be invaded and seized by Russia.
Howard Lorber is the Trump campaign’s economic advisor. Vector Group President Howard Lorber is a Trump campaign donor and investor in Russia.38 He’s given $100,000 to the “Trump Victory fund.” When Trump went to Moscow in 1996 to consider branding projects, Lorber worked to help Trump open a building in Moscow, but the venture failed. Visits with Lorber include one in November 1996. The trip focused on a project under development in Moscow like Ducat Place.
Carter Page joined Trump’s campaign in March 2016. In July 2016, Page went to Moscow and delivered a series of speeches on establishing a better relationship with Russia. His recommendations included easing of economic sanctions imposed after the invasion of Crimea in 2014. As the Trump campaign talks about ending TPP and other trade deals, the unelected candidate’s spokespeople are out inviting business with Russian partners especially in industries that are known to have crime bosses and Russian mafia ties.
Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham were staunch advocates of arming the government of Ukraine in their fight with Russian separatists and Putin. During the Republican National Convention, the party platform committee proposed language to the effect that Ukraine needed U.S. weapons and NATO support to defend itself, in support of a long-held Republican position. Carter Page, now on the Trump campaign team, used to work in the Merrill Lynch’s Moscow office, has personal investments in Gazprom, a Russian state oil conglomerate. He told Bloomberg that his investments have been hurt by the sanctions policy against Russia over Ukraine.39 He has characterized the U.S. policy toward Russia as chattel slavery.40
Page was the Trump campaign’s representative to the party platform committee. Trump wanted a more Russian-friendly platform, and his team, led by Page, insisted on removing any language that would demand the arming of the Ukraine. Shortly after Page’s visit to the committee, the platform was modified to do just that—all language to support arming Ukraine was removed. RNC officials told the Huffington Post that it was the “only major revision the campaign demanded”41
Richard Burt was the former U.S. ambassador to Germany under President Ronald Reagan from 1985 to 1989. Mr. Burt is the Chair of the advisory council for The National Interest. He joined the Trump campaign at the request of Paul Manafort. Burt sits on the board of the largest commercial bank in Russia, Alfa-Bank. He also has a role in an investment fund that controls Gazprom, the same company where Carter Page has deep investments. He has been a vocal critic of the need for NATO and has written position papers on the future of Russia-Ukraine relations.42 The Nation speculated that Richard Burt wrote Trump’s April 27, 2016 Russia-friendly speech on foreign policy.43
Dmitri Konstantinovich Simes was born in Moscow in October 1947. He moved to the U.S. in 1973. He’s the former director of Soviet studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former chair of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace’s Center for Russian and Eurasian Programs. He is the publisher of The National Interest, a renowned foreign policy publication.44
The Center for the National Interest is close allies with the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation, a Russian-funded organization led by Adranik Migranyan. It was revealed in State Department documents leaked via WikiLeaks that Migranyan was given the position by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.45 Migranyan has called Russian president Putin “Russia’s Reagan” and has advocated for an ease of sanctions on Russia.
Michael Caputo lived in Russia in the post Soviet 1990s. Caputo worked for Gazprom Media, and has done work under contract to improve Vladimir Putin’s image. He took on the role of Trump’s adviser for the New York primary in 2016.