USADaily -
Donald Trump’s ousted former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, just tweeted a blockbuster new New York Times story that’s highly critical of Donald Trump’s current campaign manager, Paul Manafort.
And the Internet is abuzz.
And it’s not just a prurient interest. This is fascinating stuff, as it’s indicative of just bad things have gotten in Trump-land.
Even though Lewandowski was summarily self-deported from the Trump campaign a few months ago, he appeared to remain loyal to Trump during his various appearances as a paid contributor on CNN. (Of course, it’s been reported that Lewandowski signed a non-disparagement agreement with Trump, so no one was expecting much criticism anyway.)
But tonight that changed when Lewandowski retweeted the NYT story. Everyone on Twitter, conservatives included, are taking this as a sign of Corey knifing Manafort in the back at a particularly precarious time for the campaign. Trump has just finished one of his worst weeks of the campaign, with new polls showing him far behind Clinton.
Then the NYT story drops:
On a leafy side street off Independence Square in Kiev is an office used for years by Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, when he consulted for Ukraine’s ruling political party. His furniture and personal items were still there as recently as May.
And Mr. Manafort’s presence remains elsewhere here in the capital, where government investigators examining secret records have found his name, as well as companies he sought business with, as they try to untangle a corrupt network they say was used to loot Ukrainian assets and influence elections during the administration of Mr. Manafort’s main client, former President Viktor F. Yanukovych.
Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.
In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residence with a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.
So we have Trump’s former campaign manager, and still current adviser, promoting a story about the possible corruption of Trump’s current campaign manager. Chuck Schumer’s office is claiming that if the story is true, Manafort may have violated US law:
And not only is this a story about possible financial corruption, it’s a story that only adds to the intrigue of the Trump campaign’s increasingly creepy ties to the Russian government, much of which centers around Manafort.
Ties that only got creepier this morning when Manafort told CNN’s Jake Tapper that a NATO base in Turkey was recently attacked by terrorists. Manafort is mistaken. The story is a fake. Its source? Russian counterintelligence.
Big trouble for moose and squirrel.
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