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Besides the newest Mueller “Guilty Plea”, Lawyer Alex Van der Zwann has some Ukrainian “fix-it” history and connections in high-places …
Russia-linked attorney pleads guilty to making false statements in Mueller's investigation
by Sonam Sheth, Business Insider — Feb 20, 2018
- Van der Zwaan was accused of misleading investigators about his work for a law firm that Ukraine's Ministry of Justice hired to put together a report about the trial of the former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
- The firm was hired by Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian former Ukrainian president who opposed Tymoshenko and has ties to President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.
It looks like another Trump adviser has significantly changed his story about the GOP's dramatic shift on Ukraine
[...]
According to CNN's Jim Acosta, however, [Trump campaign's national-security policy representative for the Republican National Convention, J.D.] Gordon said that at the RNC he and others "advocated for the GOP platform to include language against arming Ukrainians against pro-Russian rebels" because "this was in line with Trump's views, expressed at a March national security meeting at the unfinished Trump hotel" in Washington, DC.
[...]
An unverified dossier presented to Trump in January by top US intelligence officials alleges that Trump "agreed to sideline" the issue of Russian intervention in Ukraine during his campaign after Russia promised to feed the emails it stole from prominent Democrats' inboxes to WikiLeaks. The dossier also claims Manafort was receiving "kickback payments" from Yanukovych's associates in Ukraine, where Manafort "had been commercially active ... right up to the time (in March 2016) when he joined campaign team."
Manafort and Trump later denied having anything to do with softening the language of the GOP's platform on Ukraine.
There is more detail on JD Gordon’s disruptive changes to the RNC Platform on Ukraine, on behalf of Trump and Manafort here.
Explosive memos suggest that a Trump-Russia quid pro quo was at the heart of the GOP's dramatic shift on Ukraine
[...]
Manafort served as a top adviser to a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine from 2004 to 2012, and he helped the Russia-friendly strongman Viktor Yanukovych win the Ukrainian presidency in 2010.
Yanukovych was ousted on corruption charges in 2014 and fled to Russia under the protection of the Kremlin.
Secret ledgers uncovered by an anticorruption center in Kiev and obtained by The New York Times revealed that Yanukovych's political party, the pro-Russia Party of Regions, earmarked $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments to Manafort for his work from 2007 to 2012.
[...]
The dossier also alleges that Manafort, who resigned as Trump's campaign manager on August 19, served as a liaison between Trump's campaign team and Russian government officials:
"Speaking in confidence to a compatriot in late July 2016, Source E, an ethnic Russian and close associate of Republican US presidential candidate Donald TRUMP, admitted that there was a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between them and the Russian leadership. This was managed on the TRUMP side by the Republican candidate's campaign manager, Paul MANAFORT, who was using foreign policy advisor, Carter PAGE, and others as intermediaries. The two sides had a mutual interest in defeating Democratic presidential candidate Hillary CLINTON, whom President PUTIN apparently both hated and feared."
[Emphasis Added]
Here is more of what that yet-to-be-disproven Dossier ALSO said on pages 7 and 8:
2. Inter alia, Source E, acknowledged that the Russian regime had been behind the recent leak of embarrassing e-mail messages, emanating from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), to the WikiLeaks platform. The reason for using WikiLeaks was "plausible deniability” and the operation had been conducted with the full knowledge and support of TRUMP and senior members of his campaign team. In return the TRUMP team had agreed to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue and to raise US/NATO defence commitments in the Baltics and Eastern Europe to deflect attention away from Ukraine, priority for PUTIN who needed to cauterise the subject.
[Emphasis Added]
So to summarize:
1) Manafort managed the Russian conspiracy for the Trump Campaign, with the “full knowledge and support of TRUMP and senior members.”
2) The conspiracy involved the leaks of DNC emails in exchange to weakening US support for Ukraine.
3) Trump campaign's “national-security policy representative for the Republican National Convention,” J.D. Gordon made sure this RNC Ukraine Platform item was significantly weakened, at the direction of Trump and Manafort.
4) Manafort was mobbed-up with pro-Russia’s strong-man Viktor Yanukovych, to the tune of ten’s of millions in compensation.
5) Viktor Yanukovych had a previous “shady” business relationship with the Alec Van der Zwaan and the Law Firm he was with.
6) Alec Van der Zwaan has plead guilty to misleading Mueller’s Investigators, including the deletion of communication records with Rick Gates, a Manafort associate.
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PS. Another very interesting claim in the Steele Dossier (from Source E), that was recently VERIFIED — to the acclaim of no one — is …
[page 8]
In the wider context campaign/Kremlin co-operation, Source E claimed that the intelligence network being used against CLINTON comprised three elements. there were agents/facilitators within the Democratic Party structure itself; secondly Russian emigre and associated offensive cyber operators based in the US; and thirdly, state-sponsored cyber operatives working in Russia.
All three elements had played an important role to date.
“Just the (yet-to-be-disproven) Facts, ma’am” ...
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PS 2: About the GOP-Enablers, and their own culpability …
The RNC should take the lead in preventing future foreign interference in our elections.
[...]
One of the Trump staffers who helped make this [RNC Platform] change was Carter Page. Yes, this is the same Carter Page whom we've now learned the U.S. intelligence community began monitoring with a top secret FISA warrant in the summer of 2016. [...]
The Republican Party and its use of Russian disinformation. In recent weeks the public has learned a great deal more about how extensive the Russian disinformation campaign was last year. And just yesterday, the new CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, once again confirmed that Wikileaks acted on behalf of Russia last year and warned that people promoting its materials could be doing the bidding of a hostile foreign power.
[...]
There was little doubt that this material was coming from the Russian government. As Paul Ryan recently said, "We all knew this before the election. We all knew Russia was trying to meddle with our election." The CIA briefed Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell about the Russian campaign in September.
[...]
So to be clear — the Republican Party of the United States knowingly used materials provided by a hostile foreign power in an American election. It continued to use these materials for months after it was known they were coming from Russia, and for months after they were asked to stop using them by the Democratic Party and even other Republican leaders.
[...] [Emphasis Added]
...
Someone needs to ask Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell — Exactly what they knew about Russian Election Interference, and WHEN?
And WHY did they use [or failed to stop] those illicit Materials from being used, in the Trump Campaign rhetoric, to attack their opponent?