Back In The USSR Timeline Part 9 — Manafort and NATO
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s final report on the 2016 election interference mentions Russian intelligence officer Konstantin Kilimnik 800 times. He ran Paul Manafort’s office and served as his right hand man in Ukraine. He was indicted for helping Paul Manafort try and tamper with witnesses and obstruct justice. The two of them helped get Viktor Yanukovych elected, the former president of Ukraine, and like Trump, a Putin puppet.
Manafort was charged with 18 felony counts for conspiracy, bank fraud, and tax evasion. He was sentenced to time in jail and served part of his sentence before getting pardoned by Trump. Manafort tried to blame everything on Rick Gates who got sentenced to 45 days in jail after pleading guilty. During Manafort’s trial Rick Gates took the stand and confessed that he and Paul committed crimes together. He knows about more than just Manafort’s crimes. He knows Trump’s, too. After Manafort left the Trump campaign, he took his place. He also worked on the Inaugural Committee, now under criminal investigation.
Trump tried to pretend like he barely knew Paul Manafort even though he’d known him for decades and lived in Trump Tower. He said, “Paul Manafort worked for me for a very short period of time…He worked for me for what, 49 days or something?” He worked for free as Trump’s campaign manager and made Russia and Ukraine part of the RNC platform. People knew very little about Ukraine before the Trump campaign. Trump least of all.
One of Paul Manafort’s former associates and a contractor for Cambridge Analytica, Sam Patten, was charged with failing to register as a foreign lobbyist on behalf of Ukraine. He “sold” tickets to Russian oligarchs to Trump’s inauguration, used a straw donor to get one of them in to the swearing in ceremony, and flooded the inauguration coffers with rubles.
Trump hacked the West up for Putin. He not only destroyed every relationship that the US had with its allies, he trashed NATO and the EU right to their faces. At NATO in London in June of 2018, he propped Putin up and bragged that he’d had a great meeting with him and wanted everybody to invite him back into NATO and the G-7. He boasted about his great relationship with North Korea and Kim Jong-un and bragged that he was a “very stable genius.” He made a fool of himself during his speech, “Good morning, everybody. Good morning to the media — the legitimate media and the fake news media. Good morning to them. A lot of good people here. Surprising.” He accused Germany of being a Russian captive, told everybody they weren’t paying their fair share, and blithered on and on about himself. Before his plane landed in London, the Senate panicked and voted 97–2 to stand by our NATO allies and against Putin just in case he did something insane while he was there.
One of Europe’s most respected defense analysts, François Heisbourg, warned the world that Europe had very little faith in Congress or the American people getting him under control before the midterm elections. They were prepared for him not getting voted out of office in 2020. He said, “There is no political penalty for him. This is the United States of America. This is the country that elected Trump as president. I know that most of us would prefer this were not the case but we have to live with it. ….Where does this take us, it takes us to the end of NATO, the end of the World Trade Organization, and we’ll have to see, but possibly the end of the European Union. The EU is facing so many challenges already, Trump may think it has reached a tipping point and he can push it over.”
Trump didn’t push it over. The American people did get him out of office in 2020 and NATO not only still exists, it’s stronger than ever.
