August 2, 2018 • 43 mins
Robert is joined again by Dave Ross (Suicide Buddies Podcast) to continue talking about Paul Manafort.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mmm, Hello, and welcome once again to Behind the Bastards,
the show where we tell you everything you don't know
about the very worst people in all history. I'm Robert Evans,
our host, and my guest this week is Dave Ross,
co host of Suicide Friends. No, damn it, that's okay, man,
(00:23):
It's Suicide Buddies, Suicide Buddy, Suicide Friends. It's funny. That
sounds like a kid's show. I keep yeah, okay, Off Mike, Oh,
this is not gonna go. I mean it could, this
is great. You should. I don't know, man, I like
my favorite thing in the world is mistakes. It's uh,
that's where all of my comedy comes from, my own mistakes.
(00:44):
And it's especially going because we're recording this immediately after
recording part one, so I haven't even had the excuse
of a couple of days way time to get this wrong.
Now we've been hanging out yeah and you got yeah,
you got my name wrong and a terrible person. And
at one point, Off Mike, you referred to the podcast
as suicide Club, and I just love that because that
(01:06):
really sounds like we're gonna die on the podcast. Suicide
Buddies does too. It does I'm still it's my podcast,
and I'm still not entirely sold on the name, uh
suicide Buddies. We're trying to we're trying to imply that
it's a fun suicide podcast, because it is Buddies. It is.
It's like we talk about a different person in history
(01:28):
every week who killed themselves. Oh that's a great idea. Yeah,
it's fun, and but we're two comics, so we get real,
real ridiculous with sure. Yeah, well let's get ridiculous with
Paul man Afford again. Yeah. Yeah. If you're if you're
just tuning into this and you didn't hear part one,
I would recommend listening to part one of our Paul
man Afford episode. We talked about how he changed lobbying
from a thing that people didn't really do into a
(01:51):
thing that there's tens of thousands of lobbyists now, and
it's influences or democracy at every level. A lot of
that's Paul Manafort's doing. He's the guy who wrought lobbying
for dictatorships to the United States back into vogue. Um,
and we had just yeah, you didn't even invent lobbying.
He just made it bad. He just made it worse
(02:11):
and bigger. Yeah, and he he fucked our whole democracy
by doing it. Um, but at the point of our
story that we're at, uh, he is fucking Ukraine's democracy.
He started working with a guy named Victor Yanukovich and
a Russian billionaire named Oleg Deripashka, both of whom his
names I pronounced correctly. I think while getting your name
Dave wrong just a minute ago, because I I am
(02:33):
the real bastard behind the show. You are truly are
my Paul Manifort. Everyone someone's Paul Manifort. That's probably true.
Paul Manafort thinks about that when he needs to feel
better about himself. I wonder that's that is probably not
that inaccurate. Look, other people are bad too, Sherry or whatever,
his wife. So what if I've helped a couple of
(02:53):
civil wars last longer? Yeah, man, it's funny to think
that you're right. No matter who you are, there's someone
out there who's like, a, yeah, Dan Ross, I'm Dan Ross.
Now he said it off Mike, it was yeah, I'm
the one bringing it back up. I'm Paul Manaford. No,
but I want people to know how terrible I am.
(03:15):
It's important. I want people to know how terrible I am. Well,
this is a great show to be on. Then we
should start a podcast called the Paul Manaforts, The Paul's Maniford.
You're right, No, that was unfair of me. I don't
want to be unfair to Paul Manford. Um. So yeah,
Paul Manaford has you know, advised Victor Yunukovich on what
(03:36):
he needs to do in order to win the presidency
because he lost back in two thousand five. He hasn't
changed his hair, has n't getting new suits. It changes
the way his his party starts, you know, agitating and
basically trying to get him to use US style political
tactics to win election Ukraine. And this strategy works Yunukovich's
party over the next couple of years, when's a bunch
of seats in parliament, and in two thousand and ten
(03:58):
Ukovich was finally elected president. His opponent was arrested a
year later, and you Nukovich sort of went full dictator,
buying himself an enormous palace with a floating restaurant on
a private lake and turning the Federal riot police the
Barkut into an instrument for enforcing his will. He did
that like like a fucking finger snap fast, like just instantly, dictator.
It's it's almost almost laudable how quickly he's like, all right,
(04:22):
gonna jail my opponent and start building a palace. Instantly.
Dictator sounds a lot like the phrase suddenly Susan. Yes,
which that was a TV show, right it was. It
was a corny I think t g I F said,
come well, someone should reboot it and Susan should be
a Eastern European dictator. Yea, yeah, putting people on the
(04:43):
rack but tawning their feet. Yeah yeah, but with a
laugh track. With a laugh track of course. Yes, people
know the torture scenes are funny as opposed to horrifying. Yeah. Uh,
you know. This went great for Paul obviously, the fact
that he had actually successfully gotten a dictator into our
uh so he just basically started writing down blank checks
(05:04):
for the sums of money he needed to continue to
help Yanukovich out. Yanukovich would send his chief of staff
out to shake down oligarchs for cash, and they always
paid because Manafort had given them control of the entire country.
So he's getting millions of dollars these oligarchs are getting
to do whatever they want without human rights concerns, and
Victor Yanukovich is getting to move his country closer to
Vladimir Putin's Russia, even though most people in the country
(05:26):
don't want that. So it's it's working out for everybody.
For no one gets hurt in the process at all,
for sure, No, it's wonderful and it seems like it's
gonna last perfectly forever. Uh Maniford also continue to work
with Oleg Deripashka during this period. Now, Oleg had amassed
and a preposterous fortune in Russia's bloody aluminum Wars, which
caused more death than a lot of actual wars. Um
(05:48):
So when the Soviet Union fell right on the Soviet Union,
all of these different industries and stuff are owned by
the states, so they're own collectively by all the people.
So when the Soviet Union stops being a thing, the
thing that they land on essentially is giving all the
people vouchers for a tiny percentage of control of these
various industries, the gas industry, these aluminum companies, whatever. Everybody
gets a chunk of that. And it seemed like the
(06:11):
right way to at the time, sort of nationalize the
economy and benefit all the people. But what happens in
practices that a small number of enterprising billionaires basically buy
up all of the these people for like beer money,
and then wind up amassing enormous fortunes and we'll run
in the conflict money oleg is considered. Yeah, they would
(06:31):
like bribe people with with yeah, like enough money to
get drunk for a night, for shares and games. They're
exactly and it was just a piece of paper. I
don't give a ship. And then some of these guys
wind up being a few of the richest people in
the world who apparently meddled in our election. But after
hearing about what Manafort has been doing anyway, um so yeah,
(06:53):
Derri Poshka was one of the bloodiest of the oligarchs
of this period. Um and in two thousands, Evan he
was worth well over twenty billion dollars. And that's the
year that he promised Paul Manafort a hundred million dollars
to help him start an investment fund called Pericles. Now,
Manafort took at least nineteen million dollars of Derri Poshka's
(07:13):
money and bought maybe nothing with it, So he was
supposed to be using this money to purchase a telecom
firm for this investment company, because he was hoping the
firm would you know, appreciate in value. That price tag
included seven point three five million and management fees for
Paul um. But right after the purchase, the global economy
collapsed and Derri Poshka was suddenly worth a whole lot
less than he had been um So dry Poshka asks
(07:36):
for his money back, and it turns out that Paul
Manafort doesn't have the money and also didn't buy the
firm that he said he bought, so they can't even
sell the firm. Like it. It seems like he just
stole nineteen million dollars from this blood drenched Russian billionaire um.
Which what is funny about this is that like, yeah,
this is all crazy and evil, but I don't care
(07:57):
that someone stole nineteen million dollars from that guy. I
don't care at all. No, But but he's bad, I
keep saying bad. I mean, yeah, I don't know what's
the word what he's amused to describe these people? I
don't know. Ye, Bastard is a good starter term. This
story makes it because if you remember from part one
we were talking about there's a rumor that he's basically
(08:18):
stole ten million dollars, right Ferdinand Marcos, the dictator of
the Philippines, and Paul denies it, but this makes it.
Of course he did that. This is what he does.
He steals money from terrible people and assumes he'll be
fine because they will probably need him in the future.
A hit out on him now or something like there's
got to be There's no way to confirm it, but
(08:38):
like yeah, right, yeah, um So things start to go
off the rails for Paul Manafort at this point because
in spite of all of the money coming in from Yanukovich,
which was at least twelve point five million by like
the mid oughts uh in the nineteen million dollars he
stole from dey Poshka, Paul was deep in debt. This
is because he loved debt and thought anyone who wasn't
(09:00):
even debt was a sucker. He took out a fifteen
million dollar loan or fifteen million dollars in loans over
a two year period, backed by his real estate, which
the experts say is a classic money laundering tactic. Robert
Mueller's indictment alleged that Manafort actually led on several loan
applications in order to get money. So he's he's committing
shiploads of crimes and just assuming no one will ever
look into it, which in this period of time no
(09:21):
one is looking into it. He's just getting loans left
and right, and millions of dollars and buying houses and
horse stables. He's fine, um, But he wound up being
in real trouble in November of two thousand and thirteen,
when crowds assembled in Kiev's Independent Square, better known as
the Maidan. These protesters were angry that President Yanukovich had
decided to back out of signing an association agreement with
the EU in favor of closer relations with Putin's Russia.
(09:44):
So Yanukovich sent his elite bar Kut riot police in
to disperse the protesters. They did this with tremendous violence.
This sparked more protests and brought a wider swath of
the population out into the street, including the parents of
the kids who had first been beaten for protesting. Things
got out of hand very quickly, like as out of
hand as they could possibly get. Within a few weeks,
the protests had turned from protests into people building an
(10:05):
ice fortress in the center of Ukraine's capital Um. This
fortress had like the resources of a small city, including
communal kitchens, restrooms, media areas of library, medical tents, and catapults.
So these protesters are like fighting against the dictator in
the center of his capital city, with like police laying
siege to them, and like ice walls that they're defending
with catapults throwing hundreds of molotov I was This is
(10:29):
one of the first stories I ever covered. And there
are videos you can find of police tanks trying to
ram the walls of this fortress and then throwing so
many Molotov cocktails that the tank's treads melt to the ground.
It's nuts. The Ukrainian Revolution of two fourteen is one
of the craziest looking protest movements you will ever see. Yeah,
(10:52):
it's fucking nuts. Um and the berkout like these police
that he's turned in essentially his gestapo, are doing things
like arresting people they suspect of supplying this protest camp
and stripping them naked and throwing them into the snow
in the middle of the Ukrainian winter, which is like
there's no that's this winter gets right and some people
(11:12):
die doing this, Like so the fortress is the protesters
or the tanks, or the fortress is the protests, the
tanks or the government, which would make sense, but still
a fortress. And it's such a nuts protest that people
hate Yanukovich so much in Ukraine that there are Nazis
fighting alongside Jewish people and communists against the government, like
(11:32):
it was. It was that kind of fucking crazy, like
like everyone can agree, we gotta get this fucker out
of office. Um. So it's it's like that's how much
people hate him within western Ukraine. He's actually pretty popular
in the east. Um. And again, Paul manifort strategy for
trying to build popularity for the Yunukovich regime was to
(11:54):
exacerbate the and emphasized sort of the differences between the
East and the West, because the East part of the
Ukraine liked Russia wanted to be closer with Russia, and
the West like the EU more and wanted to be
closer to the EU. And so his big strategy for
Yanukovich was played the East and shipped on the West
as much as possible and get the two sides of
the country angry at each other because that will ensure
(12:16):
more popularity for you. So that's big Paul Manaforce. Whole
strategy is to incite civil unrest within the country in
order to make things. Yeah. So this is how Paul
Manafford suggests playing Ukraine and exactly what Yanukovich does. Uh.
In December, when all of this is really hitting a
(12:36):
point of crazy escalation, Paul Manafort sends a text to
his daughter Andrea. He says Obama's approval ratings are lower
than Yanukovich is, and you don't see him being ousted.
So that's his him figuring it's going to be okay,
because for him it has to be okay because he
is so deep in debt that if he doesn't keep
getting the millions of dollars he's getting from dictator. Yeah,
(12:56):
exactly from this dictator. This is good whale right now.
If this money train stops, he's fucked. So he just
tells himself it's going to be fine. Crazy And you
said that he likes debt. Couldn't he just pay this
debt off? No, because he's spending his money as soon
as he makes it he's buying houses without even looking
at them. He did, like he said, he does stuff
(13:17):
like when his daughter says she wants to learn horseback writing,
he buys her a star and he has purebred horses
flown in from Ireland along with a full time staff
to take care of Like that's how he's spending money,
and so everything is flying out of his hands as
quickly as possible. Before this point, he's he urged the
Yanukovich to exacerbate tensions between East and West in order
(13:38):
to really solidify his reign. And when this protest movement
starts picking up steam, he advises him to start brutally
suppressing the protesters, which you can debate on how much
suggestion Yanukovich needed to do that, because he's a pretty
bad guy himself. Well, but even to make the suggestion
is crazy. Yeah, And we'll get into who says that
he did that a little bit later, because it's pretty damning.
(13:59):
Um So. In January and February fourteen, the Ukrainian Revolution
escalated to a point of true insanity. I conducted dozens
of interviews with protesters during this period, people who reported
being beaten with truncheons and shot with rubber bullets at
point blank range. One of the guys that was interviewing
at one point, I asked him what he planned, because
he was a guy like driving cars full of supplies
(14:19):
into this place and out and like avoiding the police
on the streets while it happened. And I asked him, like,
what he planned to do if the police came after him,
and he just pulled a revolver out that he had
in his jacket and said, like, this is what I
planned to do if the police come me. And I
never talked to that guy again. I tried to. I
don't know what happened to him. A lot of people
disappeared during this period of time, and he's one of
(14:40):
the people I've never gotten back in touch with. I
don't know what happened. Um So, from February eighth to
the twenty, President Yanukovich took the gloves off, possibly at
Paul Manifort's behest. In two days, his police shot nearly
a hundred protesters dead. The police advanced in huge numbers,
and a giant medieval battle was raged over the my
(15:00):
on Ice Fortress. A lot of it was streamed live,
and I remember watching the last few minutes before the
signal cut off protesters. Their ice walls had been torn
down and broken apart by the police, so they had
built a wall of fire and were burning all of
their structures in tents and in the middle of the
Ukrainian Winner. One of the last things I saw was
people stripping off their jackets and clothing in the frigid
(15:20):
cold and throwing it into the fire to try and
keep the fire going, to keep the fire going and
the police away. So this is how fucking insane. It
looked like the end of the damn world. Um, but
it worked. They succeeded in raising so much unrest in
the western part of Ukraine that President Yanukovich had to
flee the country for Russia. UM. So they ousted their
(15:42):
president and of course a civil war immediately sparked right
after that. Essentially a big chunk of the east declared
itself a separate country, and Russian backed separatists is the
term you'll hear for these guys. A lot of them
are Russian soldiers who would just take off their uniform
patches and walk across. This is when Russia and X
is the CRIMEA. All of this stuff happens and this
(16:03):
whole East West divide that led to a civil war
that's killed ten thousand people in counting, was again Paul
Manafort saying, you should exacerbate the divide between East and
West in order to increase your own power. So you
can credibly say Paul Manafort had a major role in
sparking the Ukrainian Civil War because it it kind of
happened as a result of Yanukovich following his advice again
(16:24):
not to take credit for being a monster from Yanukovich away,
because he's a piece of ship too. But Paul Manafort
has a lot of blood on his hands, is on site.
Um so yeah, by the end of February two, that's
in fourteen, Yanukovich is out in the country. Is no
longer safe for Paul Manafort, which was a problem because
his office right next to the IDA was filled with
papers that showed he'd been paid millions of dollars that
(16:46):
he hadn't reported yet to anyone, including the US government, who,
thanks to that Fassa Act that we heard about in
the first part, you have to register when you're working.
Manafort hadn't, and he hadn't been reporting these payments, and
he hadn't been paying taxes on these payments. We'll get
into more. I mean, I mean, everything is so awful
that I'm like, I don't even Yeah, the tax fraud thing,
(17:07):
but yeah, that's what will bring him down because we
live in a topsy tervy society where everything else he
did was fine. Um anyway, Yeah, So around two fourteen
is when Paul Manaford's life starts to come off the
fucking rails. His daughters catch him having an affair with
a woman thirty years younger than him. He'd apparently paid
for his mistresses nine thousand dollar a month apartment in Manhattan.
(17:27):
He bought her a house in the Hampton's. He had
also given her an American Express card and let her
spend however much she wanted. During this time, his mistress
went on a friend's podcast and said, quote, I only
go to luxury restaurants and then talked about how fancy
her life was. This is part of how his daughters
found out about. Yeah. So when his daughters go to him,
Manafort apologizes to them and promises to clean up his act.
(17:50):
And then six months later they catch him cheating again
with the same woman because she posted about one of
their trips on Instagram. Yes, it's so crazy to be
so so savvy with manipulating people and to be so
stupid at the same time. Yeah, there's some people who
(18:11):
are like George Bush is a very specific piece of ship.
He was a piece of ship in a couple of
specific ways, but the rest of the time, like as
a parent, as a husband and stuff, nobody has any complaints.
Paul Manifort is comprehensively a piece of shpe top to bottom,
top to bottom, going for the gold and every single kid.
How can I be the worst person I can possibly be?
(18:32):
I think even it's funny daily question. On the last
part one, we talked about how his daughter was conceived
between conference calls and thinking about that a little bit
more like, initially I thought that that's a crazy thing
to tell your daughter, and it's crazy alone to just
be like, hey, you know how we were conceived. Ever
(18:52):
do you even say that? That's disgusting? Like, you know,
your mom and I had sex at this specific place
and that's where you came from. Oh man, Yeah, yeah,
So this is as good a time as any to
talk about Paul Manaforts lovely daughters. Now we're fortunate enough
that several Ukrainian hackers managed to steal his daughter Andrea's
text message records, and in fact I haven't had a
(19:14):
chance to use them for this episode, but just today
someone posted a searchable database of the Maniford texts. You
can really yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's fantastic. WikiLeaks refused
to publish a lot of them for really, yeah, because
they're shady. Use WikiLeaks is shady, yeah, yeah yeah, but
they're out there and they're amazing. In these texts, which
Paul Manifort himself has said are legitimately text from his
(19:37):
daughter and him. In these texts, Andrea tells her sister
Jessica that their dad has quote no moral or legal compass.
Don't fool yourself, She says. The money we have is
blood money. So yeah, Andrea sounds nice when you hear
that part, right, it does. And in her text to
her friends and family, Andrea implicates her father in the
murder of a hundred Ukrainian protesters. Quote, you know, he
(20:00):
has killed people in Ukraine knowingly as a tactic to
outrage the world and get focused on Ukraine. Remember when
there were all those deaths taking place a while back.
She's talking about all the people who are killed those
two days in the my dawn about a year ago,
revolts and whatnot. Do you know that whose strategy that
was to cause that, to send those people out and
get them slaughtered. He is a sick, fucking tyrant. And
we keep showing up and dancing for him. We just
(20:21):
keep showing up and eating the lobster. Nothing changes. Wow. Yeah,
so you hear that, and you you kind of like
Andrea and you think maybe evil skipped generation. We're going
to get a little bit deeper into her personality. But
first advertisements capitalism also by Doritos. All right, adds and
(20:48):
we're back, uh, and we're talking about Andrea Maniffort, Paul
Manafford's lovely daughter who has just at this point it
seems great, Yeah, because she's calling yourself where she knows
their money's blood money. She's implicated her father in the
deaths of a hundred people, mad at her dad, trying
to be her dad. That's how it seems. That's how
it seems. Now we're going to get into the conversations
(21:10):
and text messages that she sent during the election. Okay, um, yeah,
So here is a conversation from March seventeen, sixteen, Jessica
man Afford, guess who called dad last night and asked
him to run his conventions? Donald Trump? Andrea Manaford. Mom
told me he was going to call dad. She told
(21:30):
me to get ready for Trump to be president and
picked the position in the White House I want, Jessica.
Dad gave him his list of requirements and so long
as he can fulfill the list, Dad accepted. So that's
super charming. She's just their mom immediately promised them jobs
in the White House because Paul Manafort is going to
be running Donald Trump's campaign. Yeah, they're all excited about that. Um,
(21:53):
everyone wants a job. I should note that in two
thousand fifteen, Paul Manaford had something of a breakdown after
he was caught cheating a second time. This may have
had something to do with the fact that he was
running out of money. He threatened suicide over the phone
to his daughters and wound up at a clinic in Arizona,
and that's when those texts that were very negative towards
Paul Manafort were sent. So maybe that they're just angry
that the money train had stopped and that their dad
(22:14):
was being whiny to them, which is maybe why they're
more friendly later on, so we'll see. Uh. And when
he got out, obviously gets out of this this clinic thing,
Paul goes shopping for despots because he needed money and
the only thing he knows that to do is help
authoritarian strongman. And everyone turned him down because the Ukraine
had been a really high profile funk up for him,
So I should say everyone turned him down until he
(22:36):
went to Donald Trump, who was of course his old client,
as we discussed, and also why in campaign, Yeah, well
he was also rinching a room from him. Every murderer
said no, yeah, okay, okay, no, no, it's okay, and
it's great because he reached out to Donald Trump and
asked if he could work on his campaign and stuff like.
And when he started doing that, he was talking to
(22:58):
his friends about it, and his friends all said the
same thing, which was basically, Paul, you are the shadiest
man in the world. You commit crimes constantly. The last
thing you should do is get involved in a presidential election.
There's no way that this sends well for you. But
he did it anyway. Um, when he offers to work
on the Trump campaign, he offers to do it for
free because obviously, like again, he got his start because
(23:20):
he helped Reagan win and then helped place people in
the Reagan White House and then Bobby that's what he's
planning to do again, right, So he doesn't whatever money
Donald could legally offer him is not going to help him,
so he just offers to do it for free. Um
And on May nineteen, two and sixteen, he becomes Donald
Trump's official campaign manager. But even before that point, he
(23:40):
was a big part of the Trump operation, which we
know because of what his daughter Andrea texted to a
friend in March twenty nine. Friend, I'm not paying enough
attention to really form an opinion, but yeah, I think
economy makes sense. I just hate what an asshole Trump is.
In the process, she's clearly saying, like you have you've
been paying attention anyway. Andrea says, well, hopefully my dad
will help scale that back. That's part of the reason
he was brought on. He's refusing payment because he doesn't
(24:01):
want to be viewed as Trump's employee, only having his
expenses covered. He's involved purely because he wants to help
the country and he thinks Trump is best, so long
as Trump gets trained a bit. PS. This is all
top secret, so please do not repeat your texts are
never top secret. Andrea, dude, he is second in command,
perhaps arguably running it. The campaign manager is all for show.
Korey Lowandowski doesn't do ship. Trump has been managing his
(24:24):
own campaign. And Andrea's view of things, which is probably
the view of things Paul wanted to present to his daughter.
He's a master puppeteer controlling Donald Trump on a string.
For the sake of portraying the full picture, I've decided
to include some other recollections of Donald Trump and Paul
Manaforts working relationship. Our first source is this fantastically named
Business Insider article. Trump reportedly once ordered his helicopter to
(24:45):
fly low so he could stay on the phone to
yell at Paul Manafort's incredible. That says a lot. That
editor is great. Yeah, that's that's the best title. Now,
this is all based on Korey Lewandowski's memoir, so it
should be taken with as much salt as what Andrea says.
(25:06):
Neither of them are reliable narrators in this. But this
is the other view of things, is that Trump's angry
at him a lot um. Lewandowski says that he was
angry in this specific incident because Maniford had advised Trump
not to go on TV after doing something dumb. Trump
cursed him out and said, I know guys like you
with your hair and your skin. These people they're just garbage,
(25:30):
not even good at being funny. Now, think if you're
that evil, you would at least be funny, you know
what I mean? No, the charming evil guy is a Mr. Scheming,
And none of them are like Hans Gruber, where you're like,
you're so bad, but you are so satisfying to listen.
I want them to have at least like cute catchphrases. No,
none of that ship um so yeah. Lewandowski claims Trump
(25:53):
was infuriated after a New York Times article came out
that suggested members of Trump's campaign went on TV to
talk to their boss. The articles like Paul Manafort showing
up on CNN so that Trump will listen to what
he says because he did, like that was what the
New York Times was alleging. Uh, and Trump reportedly said,
you think you've got to be on TV to talk
to me? You treat me like a baby. Am I
like a baby to you? I sit there like a
(26:15):
little baby and watch TV and you talk to me,
Am I a fucking baby? Paul? This happened during the elections.
That's what Kory Lowandowski says. Yeah, Wow, Trump, It's like
this with everybody who works for him, right. I I
have no trouble believing that both sides of this could
be true, that Paul Manafort was manipulating Trump and that
Trump also accused him of treating him like a little baby.
(26:37):
So it seems like a campaign manager's job is to
treat the candidate like a baby because they know and
you don't. I mean, not that I'm defending. Yeah, Like
I said, his work with Trump is the least terrible
thing he's done in this story. Yeah. Um so. Andrea's
text again represent I think what Manafort wanted her to believe,
(26:57):
and that said. Here's what she said to a friend
on a seventh The friend asked, is Paul getting a
bigger role? Seems like it. Andrea said, you're surprised. I
told you this was the game. You think Paul does
anything in moderation? Friend? And like, if Trump gets elected,
guess who's going to be chief of staff? Andrea, he
would never accept. Friend. Too many skeletons in his closet, Andrea,
(27:19):
too constrictive. Paul is a lone wolf, has to go
his own way, do what he wants and how he wants.
He doesn't have room for other people in their needs
once Friend, Yeah, that sounds about right, Andrea. He likes
the challenge. That's why he's doing this. It's a game
for him. He isn't being paid. Friend, man, I bet
he's loving it. Andrea. This is pure sport. He's a
power hungry egomaniac. Yes, he is loving it conclusively. Him
(27:41):
and Trump are perfect allies for this agenda. It's so weird.
He is my dad. It's just weird, Like my dad
doesn't seem that smart, Like he is smart, but I
know I'm smarter than him. Friend, I don't doubt that
he's a master manipulator, which seems pretty key, Andrea. He
is very manipulative. I did inherit that ability, but I
don't exploit it like he does. I know his tactics.
They aren't that brilliant, but they do work. Friend. Yes,
(28:03):
you're right, you have a moral conscious, but she meant conscience, Andrea,
Like he just tells you the sky is green, over
and over, and eventually you are like, is it. I
don't possess the ability to just lie like he does. Friend, Yeah,
he works his charm, Andrea. It's confidence. When you save
something unwaveringly, people start to believe it. Friend. I mean, yeah,
that's what got Trump where he is today. Andrea, Yep, perfect, allies.
(28:26):
Trump probably has more morals than my dad, which is
really just saying something about my dad. My dad is
a psycho. Exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point. At least
Trump let his wives leave him. Plus, Trump has been
a good father, Andrea, which that's kind of heartbreaking if
you consider Donald Trump a good father compared to your dad.
At least Trump let his wives leave him. There's like
(28:49):
nothing for me to get into specifically about that, but
like something horrifying is happening that we don't even know
about yet. At least he lets his wives leave him. Yeah,
I mean yeah, then what is Paul manafor doing to
his wife? I don't know. Um, I assumed wrapping her
at the very least. Yeah. I assume Andrea is gonna
because of something she texts later. I assume we'll get
(29:10):
a book from her eventually, that's her side of what
was going on when she decides anyway, Uh, Andrea, Trump
waited a little too long, in my opinion, but I
can attest to the fact that he has now hired
one of the world's greatest manipulators. I hope my dad
pulls it off. Then I can sell my memoir with
all his dirty little secrets for a pretty penny. So
why do you think she's going to write a book? Yeah,
she's not great. It's so funny the difference in tone
(29:33):
between those two conversations. Yeah, she literally said the exact
same things, one of them being mad, one of them
thinking it's cool. Yeah, exactly, and she clearly thinks it's
cool now that he's helping to put a guy in
charge of her. Here. Uh, here's another thing. She texts
on April twelve, Andrea to a friend, By the way,
if you want to exploit my dad to better your career,
please let me know a friend. Are you serious, Andrea,
(29:55):
completely friends, I wouldn't be opposed to exploiting him. Andrea,
I am on a business l basis with my dad,
which is another heartbreaking. In another exchange, a friend whose
dad worked at lockeed. Martin asks Andrea to talk to
her dad so the campaign could reach out to them,
since Locked didn't want to be seen as reaching out
to Trump but wanted to talk. Andrea said she was
happy to be a quote conduit and this quote pretty
(30:17):
much gives you her home moral compass. Andrea totally get it.
Not every day you know the man behind the man
got to exploit it, which is why I'm happy to help,
because fuck it. Hopefully someone can benefit to my relationship
to the Count of Monty Cristo, which is what Paul
Manafford's nickname was in DC for a while, the Count
of Money Christmas people called him in like the eighties
and nineties. Shad's a bad nickname. These people are bad
(30:39):
at everything, manipulating governments. Yeah. After he resigned as Trump's
campaign manager on August nine, sixteen, because it was revealed
that he had been taking millions of dollars in payments
from a Ukrainian dictator without Yeah, that that all got
That's why he had to leave. Andrea claimed that it
was basically a fake Risik nation and he was still
(31:00):
active behind the scenes. Quote, yes, for sure. He said that.
In the next few weeks, we should hopefully be seeing
a new Trump, so to speak. Last night's speech was
a speech my dad had been pushing him to make
for several weeks, and since it was so well received,
he thinks Trump will be more responsive to doing things
a bit differently. Later, friend, thoughts go out to your pops.
I can only imagine that he's relieved, angry, hurting, a
combination of a lot of emotions. Wishing you and your
(31:22):
family the best. Andrea, ha ha ha, You're so silly.
It's all just pr I don't like Andrea. No, I
don't like her at all. People are all garbage. I mean,
she turned out better than her dad, but that's a
low bar. I mean, yeah, that's a low bar. I
don't even know what to say. It's just so ter
(31:44):
every time something happens, I just don't there's nothing to say.
It's like, yep, that's shitty, just a big old garbage pile.
How old is Andrea at this point? And I think
she was born eighty four, so she's like thirty four. Um,
she's a grown up. Yeah, she's a grown up, and
(32:04):
she got the horses. Her sister, Jessica, has been in
some movies Jessica Manafort. You can find her at IMDb.
Some of like the high school days or days moved
da Z like like that ship and Paul Manafort subsidized
that with millions of dollars. Yeah, she got to be
a producer and a bunch of stuff. Yeah. He helps
his little girls make their dreams come true with dictator money.
(32:26):
So uh, Andrea did not text about the June nine,
two sixteen Trump Tower and meeting Manafort held with Donald
Trump junior, Jared Kushner, and a lawyer connected to the
Russian government. The instensible purpose of that meeting was so
the campaign could received leaked info about Hillary Clinton. According
to Manafort, they quickly realized the meeting was actually about
the appeal of the Magnitsky Act, which basically sanctioned a
bunch of super rich Russians because they murdered a guy
(32:47):
who was investigating their corruption. Um, the Russians want that removed.
And then Manafort just his claim is that no, we
just want to dirt on Hillary Clinton. And they started
talking about this, and so we the meeting was a
nothing burger. Anyway, This gets us caught up to the
stuff that most people actually know. Uh, Paul Manafort, you know,
helped Donald Trump on his way to power again. You know,
(33:08):
that's not the worst thing he did. Uh. It is, however,
the thing that finally tore his world apart. Since two
thousand and fourteen, he went from yeah, funding his daughters
in their dreams to being able to provide nothing more
than hot dogs and no ice for Andrea's wedding reception
and ceasing all funding of Jessica's artistic career. So the
money train is stopped for the Maniford daughters. Unfortunately, that
hot dogs and no ice thing, is that a line
(33:30):
that you wrote or he had? He eliminated a line
item on her wedding budget for ice and suggested that
they use hot dogs in the reception. Because he doesn't
have he he didn't have the money. He doesn't have
the money anymore. It's got a lot of lawyers right
now fu him. I know, this is one of those
rare stories where he's up and it looks like he's
(33:52):
going to get his come up, and because he just
fucked up too hard, and if he just stayed away
from Donald Trump a little bit less like a rich
guy for a up of years, none of this would
have been found out. But because he gets that public
people find out about the Ukraine stuff, and it just
starts this avalanche of shit um. Last July, federal agents
rated his home, frisked his wife, and took a shipload
(34:13):
of his records. In February, a federal grand jury handed
down a combined thirty two indictments for Paul and Manafort
and Rick Gates, his assistant. Paul faced quote, seven counts
of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial records,
five counts of bank fraud conspiracy, and four counts of
bank fraud. So he is committing some fucking I mean,
he'd been committing these crimes for years now, people give
(34:36):
a ship. One of the many things that got him
in trouble is obviously he hadn't registered as a foreign
agent under FASSA. He tried to in two thousands seventeen
uh and officially filed that he had made more than
seventeen million or so from Yanukovich, but we know it's
a lot more. Uh. Manaport turned himself in and was
released on ten million dollars bail and given house arrest.
His two trials were scheduled in Virginia in d c
(34:58):
in late July and September. Robert Mueller believes that Manafort
funneled more than seventy five million dollars through afshore accounts.
So Mueller says even when he registered and said he
got ninety million, he was lying by a factor of
like four, and he says. Mueller says that Manafort succeeded
in landering about thirty million dollars of that by the
time he got caught through a variety of real estate
(35:18):
transactions and other rich guys shadiness. Mueller says they failed
to pay taxes on any of this for a decade,
and also used fraud to get more than twenty million
dollars in bank loans during this period in time. So uh,
Paul was not about to take being accused of committing
multiple federal crimes lying down. He got out his trusty
cell phone while he was on house arrest and started
texting two people who were working as witnesses against them.
(35:40):
These people had earlier helped him lobby and we're now
state's witness against him. Paul Manafort asked them to pretend
the lobbying work had only been in Europe and not
in the United States. So that he hadn't violated, you know, fassa.
He also asked them to put in a good word
for him to several European leaders they'd previously lobbied. These
guys basically didn't say anything and ignored his calls because
they we're already talking to the federal government and stuff.
(36:02):
But Paul kept texting them, and that's how Mueller found
the text in idiot, fucking idiot, Yeah, like this is Paul.
We should talk. I have made clear that they worked
in Europe, and eventually Mueller caught on, and so Paul
Manafort went from being an house arrested a mansion to
going to an actual fucking jail. And for a while
(36:22):
he was in a rich v I P cell with
a private shower and access to a laptop. But he
has since been moved to an actual jail where he
wears a prison jumpsuit, like and he's in jail with
a bunch of other people who are in fucking jail.
Really yeah good, Yeah, here is his fucking mug shot.
I've seen that. That's a good one. A real fuck ship.
(36:45):
Fuck you, Paul Manafort. That feels good, It feels great,
It feels good in a way that we don't get
off in these days. Also just saying fuck you Paul Manafort. Yeah,
there's a thing like every now and then I'll just
say fun Trump on stage when I'm performing, and it's
not a joke. It does nothing for the show, but god,
it feels good. It's a little bit of a catharsis
(37:07):
a day to day at that. Yeah, yeah, fuck fuck
Trump and fuck Paul Manafort, the fucker behind the fuckers. Yeah, so,
I guess for a little bit of a rant. As
I said, I visited Ukraine for the first time in
two thousand fifteen. You know, I reported on the revolution
remotely into in fourteen, and I visited in two thousand fifteen,
and I interviewed survivors of the might on protests, and
(37:28):
I also reported on the civil war that has since
broken out in that country. At one point, I found
myself in a little town called Abdivka, near the front
lines of the civil war. The Russian back separatists were
shelling the little town when I arrived, and I spent
a memorable morning in a city administrative building with a
bunch of middle aged office workers. The building had been
hit several times before the bathroom had been collapsed in
by shell fire and most of the windows were gone,
(37:50):
but it otherwise looked just like any other like small
government municipal building, like little old ladies with garfield like
stuffed animals and stuff on their desks. But right now
and then you'd hear a big hundred and fifty five
millimeter howit's er fire, and everybody would just tense up
for a second until you realize the round wasn't going
to land nearby. So Avdeva had been undersiege for about
(38:10):
a year at that point in the civil war that
Paul Manaford helped start, and the local government had been
reduced to basically just handing out plastic sheets to people
who had their windows shattered by mortar fire, because the
winters are too cold to not have your house sealed,
so that's all the government can do at this point
is people are handing in like their ideas and getting
marked down how much plastic they're getting, and then these
ladies are cutting them pieces of plastic sheeting to take
(38:32):
back to their house. And at one point, while I'm
just sitting around interviewing these people, an elderly couple comes
in and their house had been hit that morning. Um.
The husband was shaking and couldn't focus his eyes, and
he had just blood pouring down his forehead, and his
wife was sort of guiding him into the room, and
she seemed to be the more together of the two.
It almost looks a little bit like someone has kind
of like a palsy when they've been very close to
(38:52):
an artillery barrage, Like it does shake things up in
their head. And that's how this guy looked at the time.
I didn't encounter Paul Maniforts name while I was in
Ukraine reporting on all this, but I realized much later
than a number of people had talked about him to me,
Like in the Philippines years before, Manafort had become a
hated and cursed figure in Kiev. Over and over again,
people had told me about the carnage that he had
(39:14):
helped in Cite, but they hadn't used his name. They
blamed it on an American political technologist. This is the
term that they used. Um. Now, I've come to really
like the term political technologist because I think it accurately
gets it what's inside the head of a man like
Paul Manafort. To everyone else, politics is about human lives,
people striving for some case basic necessities, in some case,
(39:37):
trying to make the world a better place, trying to
improve the human condition. That's what politics is to normal people,
to people with souls, to palm man afford politics, a
political campaign, a regime is like a broken watch or
a broken appliance, a refrigerator that's busted, and all he
cares about is going in there and doing what he
needs to fix it and get it working. And it
doesn't matter what the machine is or what it does him,
(40:00):
it doesn't matter how it's going to be used. His
job is to get it working. That's the fucking man
that he is. Wow. I think it's a term we
could stand to use more in our own country. Political technologist. Wow. Anyway,
that's my podcast. It's a wonderful way to define that.
I'm just sort of soaking in that phrase. Man. Yeah,
(40:22):
Ukraine's a lovely country. Do you think that's what they meant?
That's the term they used. Um. I didn't really know
what they meant at the time. It was always explained
to me as their Americans who know how to run
fancy American style elections, and our guy brought them into
sort of technologists political technologist. I really like that term
to um. Yeah, so poem man Aft, I'm straight up
(40:46):
rocked man. Honestly, I do not appreciate you having me
on your podcast. I feel horrible now, thank you. This
is a lot of fun that happens to a lot. Yeah,
I mean it's a happy ending, and that there's a
good chance he'll die in prison, right, And that's what
should happen to Paul Manafort. Absolutely, And if he does
get out of prison, he piste off that Russian billionaire
(41:06):
who will definitely have him murdering. Yeah, there are hits
out on him, definitely, and not just from Russia, yea
or Ukraine because so many people have to want this
funker dead, absolutely, at least in the Philippines. I don't
want him dead yet. I want him to spend the
rest of his life in prison. And what I want
to have happen is for his his wife and his
(41:26):
kids to visit him a couple of times and then
gradually stop, and then no one visits Paul Manafort and
the world moves on and he's just in prison for
another thirty or forty years. Well, yeah, and for the
people in prison to slowly find out about what he did,
because I don't know, I don't know who's in this prison,
but I would venture a guest that most people in
(41:46):
that prison don't think it's that cool to incite violent
revolutions that kill thousands or millions of we're just selling
some smack or whatever. They're monsters. He is. But even then,
I'm I'm excited for when they forget what he did
and he's just another name, and he's he'll never wear
a fancy suit again, he'll never eat gourmet food again,
(42:08):
he'll never know the glorious taste of Derrito's ranch cheese.
He'll he'll just be just a ship heead in bridge,
just a ship head in prison, and he'll die alone
and unmourned, and he'll know that. Yeah. Yeah, damn, fuck you.
Paul Manafford, Fuck you. Paul Manafort so eloquently said, I
couldn't have come up with a better punishment for him. Yeah, yeah,
(42:31):
it's it's nice. This is really the only time we've
had other than Caddafi on our podcast so far where
like a bad guy got what was coming to them.
Yeah that feels good. Yeah, it feels good. It almost
never happens, but it feels good when it does, so
you should plug your stuff. Oh sure, yeah, you can't see.
But I'm laying down in a bed right now. That's
(42:52):
the sad bed. It's critical to our operation. Laying on
a bed reaching above me making coffee. Um I my
name is Dave Ross. I'm a com Dan I tour.
My website is Dave to the Ross dot com and
my podcast is Suicide Buddies. It's dark but a lot
of fun. Yeah, check out Dave Ross and Suicide Buddies
Suicide Friends. Thanks so much for having me, man, yeah, man,
(43:15):
thank you for being on. And I'm of course Robert Evans.
You can find me on Twitter at I Write. Okay,
just two letters. I've get a book on Amazon, a
brief history advice, so check that out too. You can
find this podcast on the internet at behind the Bastards
dot com. You can find us on social media at
Bastards pod. Before We'll have all of this mini sources
for this article and pictures like Paul Maniffort's glorious mug shot.
(43:38):
So yeah, check us out next week. And you know
I love statistically about you
Mmm, Hello, and welcome once again to Behind the Bastards,
the show where we tell you everything you don't know
about the very worst people in all history. I'm Robert Evans,
our host, and my guest this week is Dave Ross,
co host of Suicide Friends. No, damn it, that's okay, man,
(00:23):
It's Suicide Buddies, Suicide Buddy, Suicide Friends. It's funny. That
sounds like a kid's show. I keep yeah, okay, Off Mike, Oh,
this is not gonna go. I mean it could, this
is great. You should. I don't know, man, I like
my favorite thing in the world is mistakes. It's uh,
that's where all of my comedy comes from, my own mistakes.
(00:44):
And it's especially going because we're recording this immediately after
recording part one, so I haven't even had the excuse
of a couple of days way time to get this wrong.
Now we've been hanging out yeah and you got yeah,
you got my name wrong and a terrible person. And
at one point, Off Mike, you referred to the podcast
as suicide Club, and I just love that because that
(01:06):
really sounds like we're gonna die on the podcast. Suicide
Buddies does too. It does I'm still it's my podcast,
and I'm still not entirely sold on the name, uh
suicide Buddies. We're trying to we're trying to imply that
it's a fun suicide podcast, because it is Buddies. It is.
It's like we talk about a different person in history
(01:28):
every week who killed themselves. Oh that's a great idea. Yeah,
it's fun, and but we're two comics, so we get real,
real ridiculous with sure. Yeah, well let's get ridiculous with
Paul man Afford again. Yeah. Yeah. If you're if you're
just tuning into this and you didn't hear part one,
I would recommend listening to part one of our Paul
man Afford episode. We talked about how he changed lobbying
from a thing that people didn't really do into a
(01:51):
thing that there's tens of thousands of lobbyists now, and
it's influences or democracy at every level. A lot of
that's Paul Manafort's doing. He's the guy who wrought lobbying
for dictatorships to the United States back into vogue. Um,
and we had just yeah, you didn't even invent lobbying.
He just made it bad. He just made it worse
(02:11):
and bigger. Yeah, and he he fucked our whole democracy
by doing it. Um, but at the point of our
story that we're at, uh, he is fucking Ukraine's democracy.
He started working with a guy named Victor Yanukovich and
a Russian billionaire named Oleg Deripashka, both of whom his
names I pronounced correctly. I think while getting your name
Dave wrong just a minute ago, because I I am
(02:33):
the real bastard behind the show. You are truly are
my Paul Manifort. Everyone someone's Paul Manifort. That's probably true.
Paul Manafort thinks about that when he needs to feel
better about himself. I wonder that's that is probably not
that inaccurate. Look, other people are bad too, Sherry or whatever,
his wife. So what if I've helped a couple of
(02:53):
civil wars last longer? Yeah, man, it's funny to think
that you're right. No matter who you are, there's someone
out there who's like, a, yeah, Dan Ross, I'm Dan Ross.
Now he said it off Mike, it was yeah, I'm
the one bringing it back up. I'm Paul Manaford. No,
but I want people to know how terrible I am.
(03:15):
It's important. I want people to know how terrible I am. Well,
this is a great show to be on. Then we
should start a podcast called the Paul Manaforts, The Paul's Maniford.
You're right, No, that was unfair of me. I don't
want to be unfair to Paul Manford. Um. So yeah,
Paul Manaford has you know, advised Victor Yunukovich on what
(03:36):
he needs to do in order to win the presidency
because he lost back in two thousand five. He hasn't
changed his hair, has n't getting new suits. It changes
the way his his party starts, you know, agitating and
basically trying to get him to use US style political
tactics to win election Ukraine. And this strategy works Yunukovich's
party over the next couple of years, when's a bunch
of seats in parliament, and in two thousand and ten
(03:58):
Ukovich was finally elected president. His opponent was arrested a
year later, and you Nukovich sort of went full dictator,
buying himself an enormous palace with a floating restaurant on
a private lake and turning the Federal riot police the
Barkut into an instrument for enforcing his will. He did
that like like a fucking finger snap fast, like just instantly, dictator.
It's it's almost almost laudable how quickly he's like, all right,
(04:22):
gonna jail my opponent and start building a palace. Instantly.
Dictator sounds a lot like the phrase suddenly Susan. Yes,
which that was a TV show, right it was. It
was a corny I think t g I F said,
come well, someone should reboot it and Susan should be
a Eastern European dictator. Yea, yeah, putting people on the
(04:43):
rack but tawning their feet. Yeah yeah, but with a
laugh track. With a laugh track of course. Yes, people
know the torture scenes are funny as opposed to horrifying. Yeah. Uh,
you know. This went great for Paul obviously, the fact
that he had actually successfully gotten a dictator into our
uh so he just basically started writing down blank checks
(05:04):
for the sums of money he needed to continue to
help Yanukovich out. Yanukovich would send his chief of staff
out to shake down oligarchs for cash, and they always
paid because Manafort had given them control of the entire country.
So he's getting millions of dollars these oligarchs are getting
to do whatever they want without human rights concerns, and
Victor Yanukovich is getting to move his country closer to
Vladimir Putin's Russia, even though most people in the country
(05:26):
don't want that. So it's it's working out for everybody.
For no one gets hurt in the process at all,
for sure, No, it's wonderful and it seems like it's
gonna last perfectly forever. Uh Maniford also continue to work
with Oleg Deripashka during this period. Now, Oleg had amassed
and a preposterous fortune in Russia's bloody aluminum Wars, which
caused more death than a lot of actual wars. Um
(05:48):
So when the Soviet Union fell right on the Soviet Union,
all of these different industries and stuff are owned by
the states, so they're own collectively by all the people.
So when the Soviet Union stops being a thing, the
thing that they land on essentially is giving all the
people vouchers for a tiny percentage of control of these
various industries, the gas industry, these aluminum companies, whatever. Everybody
gets a chunk of that. And it seemed like the
(06:11):
right way to at the time, sort of nationalize the
economy and benefit all the people. But what happens in
practices that a small number of enterprising billionaires basically buy
up all of the these people for like beer money,
and then wind up amassing enormous fortunes and we'll run
in the conflict money oleg is considered. Yeah, they would
(06:31):
like bribe people with with yeah, like enough money to
get drunk for a night, for shares and games. They're
exactly and it was just a piece of paper. I
don't give a ship. And then some of these guys
wind up being a few of the richest people in
the world who apparently meddled in our election. But after
hearing about what Manafort has been doing anyway, um so yeah,
(06:53):
Derri Poshka was one of the bloodiest of the oligarchs
of this period. Um and in two thousands, Evan he
was worth well over twenty billion dollars. And that's the
year that he promised Paul Manafort a hundred million dollars
to help him start an investment fund called Pericles. Now,
Manafort took at least nineteen million dollars of Derri Poshka's
(07:13):
money and bought maybe nothing with it, So he was
supposed to be using this money to purchase a telecom
firm for this investment company, because he was hoping the
firm would you know, appreciate in value. That price tag
included seven point three five million and management fees for
Paul um. But right after the purchase, the global economy
collapsed and Derri Poshka was suddenly worth a whole lot
less than he had been um So dry Poshka asks
(07:36):
for his money back, and it turns out that Paul
Manafort doesn't have the money and also didn't buy the
firm that he said he bought, so they can't even
sell the firm. Like it. It seems like he just
stole nineteen million dollars from this blood drenched Russian billionaire um.
Which what is funny about this is that like, yeah,
this is all crazy and evil, but I don't care
(07:57):
that someone stole nineteen million dollars from that guy. I
don't care at all. No, But but he's bad, I
keep saying bad. I mean, yeah, I don't know what's
the word what he's amused to describe these people? I
don't know. Ye, Bastard is a good starter term. This
story makes it because if you remember from part one
we were talking about there's a rumor that he's basically
(08:18):
stole ten million dollars, right Ferdinand Marcos, the dictator of
the Philippines, and Paul denies it, but this makes it.
Of course he did that. This is what he does.
He steals money from terrible people and assumes he'll be
fine because they will probably need him in the future.
A hit out on him now or something like there's
got to be There's no way to confirm it, but
(08:38):
like yeah, right, yeah, um So things start to go
off the rails for Paul Manafort at this point because
in spite of all of the money coming in from Yanukovich,
which was at least twelve point five million by like
the mid oughts uh in the nineteen million dollars he
stole from dey Poshka, Paul was deep in debt. This
is because he loved debt and thought anyone who wasn't
(09:00):
even debt was a sucker. He took out a fifteen
million dollar loan or fifteen million dollars in loans over
a two year period, backed by his real estate, which
the experts say is a classic money laundering tactic. Robert
Mueller's indictment alleged that Manafort actually led on several loan
applications in order to get money. So he's he's committing
shiploads of crimes and just assuming no one will ever
look into it, which in this period of time no
(09:21):
one is looking into it. He's just getting loans left
and right, and millions of dollars and buying houses and
horse stables. He's fine, um, But he wound up being
in real trouble in November of two thousand and thirteen,
when crowds assembled in Kiev's Independent Square, better known as
the Maidan. These protesters were angry that President Yanukovich had
decided to back out of signing an association agreement with
the EU in favor of closer relations with Putin's Russia.
(09:44):
So Yanukovich sent his elite bar Kut riot police in
to disperse the protesters. They did this with tremendous violence.
This sparked more protests and brought a wider swath of
the population out into the street, including the parents of
the kids who had first been beaten for protesting. Things
got out of hand very quickly, like as out of
hand as they could possibly get. Within a few weeks,
the protests had turned from protests into people building an
(10:05):
ice fortress in the center of Ukraine's capital Um. This
fortress had like the resources of a small city, including
communal kitchens, restrooms, media areas of library, medical tents, and catapults.
So these protesters are like fighting against the dictator in
the center of his capital city, with like police laying
siege to them, and like ice walls that they're defending
with catapults throwing hundreds of molotov I was This is
(10:29):
one of the first stories I ever covered. And there
are videos you can find of police tanks trying to
ram the walls of this fortress and then throwing so
many Molotov cocktails that the tank's treads melt to the ground.
It's nuts. The Ukrainian Revolution of two fourteen is one
of the craziest looking protest movements you will ever see. Yeah,
(10:52):
it's fucking nuts. Um and the berkout like these police
that he's turned in essentially his gestapo, are doing things
like arresting people they suspect of supplying this protest camp
and stripping them naked and throwing them into the snow
in the middle of the Ukrainian winter, which is like
there's no that's this winter gets right and some people
(11:12):
die doing this, Like so the fortress is the protesters
or the tanks, or the fortress is the protests, the
tanks or the government, which would make sense, but still
a fortress. And it's such a nuts protest that people
hate Yanukovich so much in Ukraine that there are Nazis
fighting alongside Jewish people and communists against the government, like
(11:32):
it was. It was that kind of fucking crazy, like
like everyone can agree, we gotta get this fucker out
of office. Um. So it's it's like that's how much
people hate him within western Ukraine. He's actually pretty popular
in the east. Um. And again, Paul manifort strategy for
trying to build popularity for the Yunukovich regime was to
(11:54):
exacerbate the and emphasized sort of the differences between the
East and the West, because the East part of the
Ukraine liked Russia wanted to be closer with Russia, and
the West like the EU more and wanted to be
closer to the EU. And so his big strategy for
Yanukovich was played the East and shipped on the West
as much as possible and get the two sides of
the country angry at each other because that will ensure
(12:16):
more popularity for you. So that's big Paul Manaforce. Whole
strategy is to incite civil unrest within the country in
order to make things. Yeah. So this is how Paul
Manafford suggests playing Ukraine and exactly what Yanukovich does. Uh.
In December, when all of this is really hitting a
(12:36):
point of crazy escalation, Paul Manafort sends a text to
his daughter Andrea. He says Obama's approval ratings are lower
than Yanukovich is, and you don't see him being ousted.
So that's his him figuring it's going to be okay,
because for him it has to be okay because he
is so deep in debt that if he doesn't keep
getting the millions of dollars he's getting from dictator. Yeah,
(12:56):
exactly from this dictator. This is good whale right now.
If this money train stops, he's fucked. So he just
tells himself it's going to be fine. Crazy And you
said that he likes debt. Couldn't he just pay this
debt off? No, because he's spending his money as soon
as he makes it he's buying houses without even looking
at them. He did, like he said, he does stuff
(13:17):
like when his daughter says she wants to learn horseback writing,
he buys her a star and he has purebred horses
flown in from Ireland along with a full time staff
to take care of Like that's how he's spending money,
and so everything is flying out of his hands as
quickly as possible. Before this point, he's he urged the
Yanukovich to exacerbate tensions between East and West in order
(13:38):
to really solidify his reign. And when this protest movement
starts picking up steam, he advises him to start brutally
suppressing the protesters, which you can debate on how much
suggestion Yanukovich needed to do that, because he's a pretty
bad guy himself. Well, but even to make the suggestion
is crazy. Yeah, And we'll get into who says that
he did that a little bit later, because it's pretty damning.
(13:59):
Um So. In January and February fourteen, the Ukrainian Revolution
escalated to a point of true insanity. I conducted dozens
of interviews with protesters during this period, people who reported
being beaten with truncheons and shot with rubber bullets at
point blank range. One of the guys that was interviewing
at one point, I asked him what he planned, because
he was a guy like driving cars full of supplies
(14:19):
into this place and out and like avoiding the police
on the streets while it happened. And I asked him, like,
what he planned to do if the police came after him,
and he just pulled a revolver out that he had
in his jacket and said, like, this is what I
planned to do if the police come me. And I
never talked to that guy again. I tried to. I
don't know what happened to him. A lot of people
disappeared during this period of time, and he's one of
(14:40):
the people I've never gotten back in touch with. I
don't know what happened. Um So, from February eighth to
the twenty, President Yanukovich took the gloves off, possibly at
Paul Manifort's behest. In two days, his police shot nearly
a hundred protesters dead. The police advanced in huge numbers,
and a giant medieval battle was raged over the my
(15:00):
on Ice Fortress. A lot of it was streamed live,
and I remember watching the last few minutes before the
signal cut off protesters. Their ice walls had been torn
down and broken apart by the police, so they had
built a wall of fire and were burning all of
their structures in tents and in the middle of the
Ukrainian Winner. One of the last things I saw was
people stripping off their jackets and clothing in the frigid
(15:20):
cold and throwing it into the fire to try and
keep the fire going, to keep the fire going and
the police away. So this is how fucking insane. It
looked like the end of the damn world. Um, but
it worked. They succeeded in raising so much unrest in
the western part of Ukraine that President Yanukovich had to
flee the country for Russia. UM. So they ousted their
(15:42):
president and of course a civil war immediately sparked right
after that. Essentially a big chunk of the east declared
itself a separate country, and Russian backed separatists is the
term you'll hear for these guys. A lot of them
are Russian soldiers who would just take off their uniform
patches and walk across. This is when Russia and X
is the CRIMEA. All of this stuff happens and this
(16:03):
whole East West divide that led to a civil war
that's killed ten thousand people in counting, was again Paul
Manafort saying, you should exacerbate the divide between East and
West in order to increase your own power. So you
can credibly say Paul Manafort had a major role in
sparking the Ukrainian Civil War because it it kind of
happened as a result of Yanukovich following his advice again
(16:24):
not to take credit for being a monster from Yanukovich away,
because he's a piece of ship too. But Paul Manafort
has a lot of blood on his hands, is on site.
Um so yeah, by the end of February two, that's
in fourteen, Yanukovich is out in the country. Is no
longer safe for Paul Manafort, which was a problem because
his office right next to the IDA was filled with
papers that showed he'd been paid millions of dollars that
(16:46):
he hadn't reported yet to anyone, including the US government, who,
thanks to that Fassa Act that we heard about in
the first part, you have to register when you're working.
Manafort hadn't, and he hadn't been reporting these payments, and
he hadn't been paying taxes on these payments. We'll get
into more. I mean, I mean, everything is so awful
that I'm like, I don't even Yeah, the tax fraud thing,
(17:07):
but yeah, that's what will bring him down because we
live in a topsy tervy society where everything else he
did was fine. Um anyway, Yeah, So around two fourteen
is when Paul Manaford's life starts to come off the
fucking rails. His daughters catch him having an affair with
a woman thirty years younger than him. He'd apparently paid
for his mistresses nine thousand dollar a month apartment in Manhattan.
(17:27):
He bought her a house in the Hampton's. He had
also given her an American Express card and let her
spend however much she wanted. During this time, his mistress
went on a friend's podcast and said, quote, I only
go to luxury restaurants and then talked about how fancy
her life was. This is part of how his daughters
found out about. Yeah. So when his daughters go to him,
Manafort apologizes to them and promises to clean up his act.
(17:50):
And then six months later they catch him cheating again
with the same woman because she posted about one of
their trips on Instagram. Yes, it's so crazy to be
so so savvy with manipulating people and to be so
stupid at the same time. Yeah, there's some people who
(18:11):
are like George Bush is a very specific piece of ship.
He was a piece of ship in a couple of
specific ways, but the rest of the time, like as
a parent, as a husband and stuff, nobody has any complaints.
Paul Manifort is comprehensively a piece of shpe top to bottom,
top to bottom, going for the gold and every single kid.
How can I be the worst person I can possibly be?
(18:32):
I think even it's funny daily question. On the last
part one, we talked about how his daughter was conceived
between conference calls and thinking about that a little bit
more like, initially I thought that that's a crazy thing
to tell your daughter, and it's crazy alone to just
be like, hey, you know how we were conceived. Ever
(18:52):
do you even say that? That's disgusting? Like, you know,
your mom and I had sex at this specific place
and that's where you came from. Oh man, Yeah, yeah,
So this is as good a time as any to
talk about Paul Manaforts lovely daughters. Now we're fortunate enough
that several Ukrainian hackers managed to steal his daughter Andrea's
text message records, and in fact I haven't had a
(19:14):
chance to use them for this episode, but just today
someone posted a searchable database of the Maniford texts. You
can really yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's fantastic. WikiLeaks refused
to publish a lot of them for really, yeah, because
they're shady. Use WikiLeaks is shady, yeah, yeah yeah, but
they're out there and they're amazing. In these texts, which
Paul Manifort himself has said are legitimately text from his
(19:37):
daughter and him. In these texts, Andrea tells her sister
Jessica that their dad has quote no moral or legal compass.
Don't fool yourself, She says. The money we have is
blood money. So yeah, Andrea sounds nice when you hear
that part, right, it does. And in her text to
her friends and family, Andrea implicates her father in the
murder of a hundred Ukrainian protesters. Quote, you know, he
(20:00):
has killed people in Ukraine knowingly as a tactic to
outrage the world and get focused on Ukraine. Remember when
there were all those deaths taking place a while back.
She's talking about all the people who are killed those
two days in the my dawn about a year ago,
revolts and whatnot. Do you know that whose strategy that
was to cause that, to send those people out and
get them slaughtered. He is a sick, fucking tyrant. And
we keep showing up and dancing for him. We just
(20:21):
keep showing up and eating the lobster. Nothing changes. Wow. Yeah,
so you hear that, and you you kind of like
Andrea and you think maybe evil skipped generation. We're going
to get a little bit deeper into her personality. But
first advertisements capitalism also by Doritos. All right, adds and
(20:48):
we're back, uh, and we're talking about Andrea Maniffort, Paul
Manafford's lovely daughter who has just at this point it
seems great, Yeah, because she's calling yourself where she knows
their money's blood money. She's implicated her father in the
deaths of a hundred people, mad at her dad, trying
to be her dad. That's how it seems. That's how
it seems. Now we're going to get into the conversations
(21:10):
and text messages that she sent during the election. Okay, um, yeah,
So here is a conversation from March seventeen, sixteen, Jessica
man Afford, guess who called dad last night and asked
him to run his conventions? Donald Trump? Andrea Manaford. Mom
told me he was going to call dad. She told
(21:30):
me to get ready for Trump to be president and
picked the position in the White House I want, Jessica.
Dad gave him his list of requirements and so long
as he can fulfill the list, Dad accepted. So that's
super charming. She's just their mom immediately promised them jobs
in the White House because Paul Manafort is going to
be running Donald Trump's campaign. Yeah, they're all excited about that. Um,
(21:53):
everyone wants a job. I should note that in two
thousand fifteen, Paul Manaford had something of a breakdown after
he was caught cheating a second time. This may have
had something to do with the fact that he was
running out of money. He threatened suicide over the phone
to his daughters and wound up at a clinic in Arizona,
and that's when those texts that were very negative towards
Paul Manafort were sent. So maybe that they're just angry
that the money train had stopped and that their dad
(22:14):
was being whiny to them, which is maybe why they're
more friendly later on, so we'll see. Uh. And when
he got out, obviously gets out of this this clinic thing,
Paul goes shopping for despots because he needed money and
the only thing he knows that to do is help
authoritarian strongman. And everyone turned him down because the Ukraine
had been a really high profile funk up for him,
So I should say everyone turned him down until he
(22:36):
went to Donald Trump, who was of course his old client,
as we discussed, and also why in campaign, Yeah, well
he was also rinching a room from him. Every murderer
said no, yeah, okay, okay, no, no, it's okay, and
it's great because he reached out to Donald Trump and
asked if he could work on his campaign and stuff like.
And when he started doing that, he was talking to
(22:58):
his friends about it, and his friends all said the
same thing, which was basically, Paul, you are the shadiest
man in the world. You commit crimes constantly. The last
thing you should do is get involved in a presidential election.
There's no way that this sends well for you. But
he did it anyway. Um, when he offers to work
on the Trump campaign, he offers to do it for
free because obviously, like again, he got his start because
(23:20):
he helped Reagan win and then helped place people in
the Reagan White House and then Bobby that's what he's
planning to do again, right, So he doesn't whatever money
Donald could legally offer him is not going to help him,
so he just offers to do it for free. Um
And on May nineteen, two and sixteen, he becomes Donald
Trump's official campaign manager. But even before that point, he
(23:40):
was a big part of the Trump operation, which we
know because of what his daughter Andrea texted to a
friend in March twenty nine. Friend, I'm not paying enough
attention to really form an opinion, but yeah, I think
economy makes sense. I just hate what an asshole Trump is.
In the process, she's clearly saying, like you have you've
been paying attention anyway. Andrea says, well, hopefully my dad
will help scale that back. That's part of the reason
he was brought on. He's refusing payment because he doesn't
(24:01):
want to be viewed as Trump's employee, only having his
expenses covered. He's involved purely because he wants to help
the country and he thinks Trump is best, so long
as Trump gets trained a bit. PS. This is all
top secret, so please do not repeat your texts are
never top secret. Andrea, dude, he is second in command,
perhaps arguably running it. The campaign manager is all for show.
Korey Lowandowski doesn't do ship. Trump has been managing his
(24:24):
own campaign. And Andrea's view of things, which is probably
the view of things Paul wanted to present to his daughter.
He's a master puppeteer controlling Donald Trump on a string.
For the sake of portraying the full picture, I've decided
to include some other recollections of Donald Trump and Paul
Manaforts working relationship. Our first source is this fantastically named
Business Insider article. Trump reportedly once ordered his helicopter to
(24:45):
fly low so he could stay on the phone to
yell at Paul Manafort's incredible. That says a lot. That
editor is great. Yeah, that's that's the best title. Now,
this is all based on Korey Lewandowski's memoir, so it
should be taken with as much salt as what Andrea says.
(25:06):
Neither of them are reliable narrators in this. But this
is the other view of things, is that Trump's angry
at him a lot um. Lewandowski says that he was
angry in this specific incident because Maniford had advised Trump
not to go on TV after doing something dumb. Trump
cursed him out and said, I know guys like you
with your hair and your skin. These people they're just garbage,
(25:30):
not even good at being funny. Now, think if you're
that evil, you would at least be funny, you know
what I mean? No, the charming evil guy is a Mr. Scheming,
And none of them are like Hans Gruber, where you're like,
you're so bad, but you are so satisfying to listen.
I want them to have at least like cute catchphrases. No,
none of that ship um so yeah. Lewandowski claims Trump
(25:53):
was infuriated after a New York Times article came out
that suggested members of Trump's campaign went on TV to
talk to their boss. The articles like Paul Manafort showing
up on CNN so that Trump will listen to what
he says because he did, like that was what the
New York Times was alleging. Uh, and Trump reportedly said,
you think you've got to be on TV to talk
to me? You treat me like a baby. Am I
like a baby to you? I sit there like a
(26:15):
little baby and watch TV and you talk to me,
Am I a fucking baby? Paul? This happened during the elections.
That's what Kory Lowandowski says. Yeah, Wow, Trump, It's like
this with everybody who works for him, right. I I
have no trouble believing that both sides of this could
be true, that Paul Manafort was manipulating Trump and that
Trump also accused him of treating him like a little baby.
(26:37):
So it seems like a campaign manager's job is to
treat the candidate like a baby because they know and
you don't. I mean, not that I'm defending. Yeah, Like
I said, his work with Trump is the least terrible
thing he's done in this story. Yeah. Um so. Andrea's
text again represent I think what Manafort wanted her to believe,
(26:57):
and that said. Here's what she said to a friend
on a seventh The friend asked, is Paul getting a
bigger role? Seems like it. Andrea said, you're surprised. I
told you this was the game. You think Paul does
anything in moderation? Friend? And like, if Trump gets elected,
guess who's going to be chief of staff? Andrea, he
would never accept. Friend. Too many skeletons in his closet, Andrea,
(27:19):
too constrictive. Paul is a lone wolf, has to go
his own way, do what he wants and how he wants.
He doesn't have room for other people in their needs
once Friend, Yeah, that sounds about right, Andrea. He likes
the challenge. That's why he's doing this. It's a game
for him. He isn't being paid. Friend, man, I bet
he's loving it. Andrea. This is pure sport. He's a
power hungry egomaniac. Yes, he is loving it conclusively. Him
(27:41):
and Trump are perfect allies for this agenda. It's so weird.
He is my dad. It's just weird, Like my dad
doesn't seem that smart, Like he is smart, but I
know I'm smarter than him. Friend, I don't doubt that
he's a master manipulator, which seems pretty key, Andrea. He
is very manipulative. I did inherit that ability, but I
don't exploit it like he does. I know his tactics.
They aren't that brilliant, but they do work. Friend. Yes,
(28:03):
you're right, you have a moral conscious, but she meant conscience, Andrea,
Like he just tells you the sky is green, over
and over, and eventually you are like, is it. I
don't possess the ability to just lie like he does. Friend, Yeah,
he works his charm, Andrea. It's confidence. When you save
something unwaveringly, people start to believe it. Friend. I mean, yeah,
that's what got Trump where he is today. Andrea, Yep, perfect, allies.
(28:26):
Trump probably has more morals than my dad, which is
really just saying something about my dad. My dad is
a psycho. Exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point. At least
Trump let his wives leave him. Plus, Trump has been
a good father, Andrea, which that's kind of heartbreaking if
you consider Donald Trump a good father compared to your dad.
At least Trump let his wives leave him. There's like
(28:49):
nothing for me to get into specifically about that, but
like something horrifying is happening that we don't even know
about yet. At least he lets his wives leave him. Yeah,
I mean yeah, then what is Paul manafor doing to
his wife? I don't know. Um, I assumed wrapping her
at the very least. Yeah. I assume Andrea is gonna
because of something she texts later. I assume we'll get
(29:10):
a book from her eventually, that's her side of what
was going on when she decides anyway, Uh, Andrea, Trump
waited a little too long, in my opinion, but I
can attest to the fact that he has now hired
one of the world's greatest manipulators. I hope my dad
pulls it off. Then I can sell my memoir with
all his dirty little secrets for a pretty penny. So
why do you think she's going to write a book? Yeah,
she's not great. It's so funny the difference in tone
(29:33):
between those two conversations. Yeah, she literally said the exact
same things, one of them being mad, one of them
thinking it's cool. Yeah, exactly, and she clearly thinks it's
cool now that he's helping to put a guy in
charge of her. Here. Uh, here's another thing. She texts
on April twelve, Andrea to a friend, By the way,
if you want to exploit my dad to better your career,
please let me know a friend. Are you serious, Andrea,
(29:55):
completely friends, I wouldn't be opposed to exploiting him. Andrea,
I am on a business l basis with my dad,
which is another heartbreaking. In another exchange, a friend whose
dad worked at lockeed. Martin asks Andrea to talk to
her dad so the campaign could reach out to them,
since Locked didn't want to be seen as reaching out
to Trump but wanted to talk. Andrea said she was
happy to be a quote conduit and this quote pretty
(30:17):
much gives you her home moral compass. Andrea totally get it.
Not every day you know the man behind the man
got to exploit it, which is why I'm happy to help,
because fuck it. Hopefully someone can benefit to my relationship
to the Count of Monty Cristo, which is what Paul
Manafford's nickname was in DC for a while, the Count
of Money Christmas people called him in like the eighties
and nineties. Shad's a bad nickname. These people are bad
(30:39):
at everything, manipulating governments. Yeah. After he resigned as Trump's
campaign manager on August nine, sixteen, because it was revealed
that he had been taking millions of dollars in payments
from a Ukrainian dictator without Yeah, that that all got
That's why he had to leave. Andrea claimed that it
was basically a fake Risik nation and he was still
(31:00):
active behind the scenes. Quote, yes, for sure. He said that.
In the next few weeks, we should hopefully be seeing
a new Trump, so to speak. Last night's speech was
a speech my dad had been pushing him to make
for several weeks, and since it was so well received,
he thinks Trump will be more responsive to doing things
a bit differently. Later, friend, thoughts go out to your pops.
I can only imagine that he's relieved, angry, hurting, a
combination of a lot of emotions. Wishing you and your
(31:22):
family the best. Andrea, ha ha ha, You're so silly.
It's all just pr I don't like Andrea. No, I
don't like her at all. People are all garbage. I mean,
she turned out better than her dad, but that's a
low bar. I mean, yeah, that's a low bar. I
don't even know what to say. It's just so ter
(31:44):
every time something happens, I just don't there's nothing to say.
It's like, yep, that's shitty, just a big old garbage pile.
How old is Andrea at this point? And I think
she was born eighty four, so she's like thirty four. Um,
she's a grown up. Yeah, she's a grown up, and
(32:04):
she got the horses. Her sister, Jessica, has been in
some movies Jessica Manafort. You can find her at IMDb.
Some of like the high school days or days moved
da Z like like that ship and Paul Manafort subsidized
that with millions of dollars. Yeah, she got to be
a producer and a bunch of stuff. Yeah. He helps
his little girls make their dreams come true with dictator money.
(32:26):
So uh, Andrea did not text about the June nine,
two sixteen Trump Tower and meeting Manafort held with Donald
Trump junior, Jared Kushner, and a lawyer connected to the
Russian government. The instensible purpose of that meeting was so
the campaign could received leaked info about Hillary Clinton. According
to Manafort, they quickly realized the meeting was actually about
the appeal of the Magnitsky Act, which basically sanctioned a
bunch of super rich Russians because they murdered a guy
(32:47):
who was investigating their corruption. Um, the Russians want that removed.
And then Manafort just his claim is that no, we
just want to dirt on Hillary Clinton. And they started
talking about this, and so we the meeting was a
nothing burger. Anyway, This gets us caught up to the
stuff that most people actually know. Uh, Paul Manafort, you know,
helped Donald Trump on his way to power again. You know,
(33:08):
that's not the worst thing he did. Uh. It is, however,
the thing that finally tore his world apart. Since two
thousand and fourteen, he went from yeah, funding his daughters
in their dreams to being able to provide nothing more
than hot dogs and no ice for Andrea's wedding reception
and ceasing all funding of Jessica's artistic career. So the
money train is stopped for the Maniford daughters. Unfortunately, that
hot dogs and no ice thing, is that a line
(33:30):
that you wrote or he had? He eliminated a line
item on her wedding budget for ice and suggested that
they use hot dogs in the reception. Because he doesn't
have he he didn't have the money. He doesn't have
the money anymore. It's got a lot of lawyers right
now fu him. I know, this is one of those
rare stories where he's up and it looks like he's
(33:52):
going to get his come up, and because he just
fucked up too hard, and if he just stayed away
from Donald Trump a little bit less like a rich
guy for a up of years, none of this would
have been found out. But because he gets that public
people find out about the Ukraine stuff, and it just
starts this avalanche of shit um. Last July, federal agents
rated his home, frisked his wife, and took a shipload
(34:13):
of his records. In February, a federal grand jury handed
down a combined thirty two indictments for Paul and Manafort
and Rick Gates, his assistant. Paul faced quote, seven counts
of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial records,
five counts of bank fraud conspiracy, and four counts of
bank fraud. So he is committing some fucking I mean,
he'd been committing these crimes for years now, people give
(34:36):
a ship. One of the many things that got him
in trouble is obviously he hadn't registered as a foreign
agent under FASSA. He tried to in two thousands seventeen
uh and officially filed that he had made more than
seventeen million or so from Yanukovich, but we know it's
a lot more. Uh. Manaport turned himself in and was
released on ten million dollars bail and given house arrest.
His two trials were scheduled in Virginia in d c
(34:58):
in late July and September. Robert Mueller believes that Manafort
funneled more than seventy five million dollars through afshore accounts.
So Mueller says even when he registered and said he
got ninety million, he was lying by a factor of
like four, and he says. Mueller says that Manafort succeeded
in landering about thirty million dollars of that by the
time he got caught through a variety of real estate
(35:18):
transactions and other rich guys shadiness. Mueller says they failed
to pay taxes on any of this for a decade,
and also used fraud to get more than twenty million
dollars in bank loans during this period in time. So uh,
Paul was not about to take being accused of committing
multiple federal crimes lying down. He got out his trusty
cell phone while he was on house arrest and started
texting two people who were working as witnesses against them.
(35:40):
These people had earlier helped him lobby and we're now
state's witness against him. Paul Manafort asked them to pretend
the lobbying work had only been in Europe and not
in the United States. So that he hadn't violated, you know, fassa.
He also asked them to put in a good word
for him to several European leaders they'd previously lobbied. These
guys basically didn't say anything and ignored his calls because
they we're already talking to the federal government and stuff.
(36:02):
But Paul kept texting them, and that's how Mueller found
the text in idiot, fucking idiot, Yeah, like this is Paul.
We should talk. I have made clear that they worked
in Europe, and eventually Mueller caught on, and so Paul
Manafort went from being an house arrested a mansion to
going to an actual fucking jail. And for a while
(36:22):
he was in a rich v I P cell with
a private shower and access to a laptop. But he
has since been moved to an actual jail where he
wears a prison jumpsuit, like and he's in jail with
a bunch of other people who are in fucking jail.
Really yeah good, Yeah, here is his fucking mug shot.
I've seen that. That's a good one. A real fuck ship.
(36:45):
Fuck you, Paul Manafort. That feels good, It feels great,
It feels good in a way that we don't get
off in these days. Also just saying fuck you Paul Manafort. Yeah,
there's a thing like every now and then I'll just
say fun Trump on stage when I'm performing, and it's
not a joke. It does nothing for the show, but god,
it feels good. It's a little bit of a catharsis
(37:07):
a day to day at that. Yeah, yeah, fuck fuck
Trump and fuck Paul Manafort, the fucker behind the fuckers. Yeah, so,
I guess for a little bit of a rant. As
I said, I visited Ukraine for the first time in
two thousand fifteen. You know, I reported on the revolution
remotely into in fourteen, and I visited in two thousand fifteen,
and I interviewed survivors of the might on protests, and
(37:28):
I also reported on the civil war that has since
broken out in that country. At one point, I found
myself in a little town called Abdivka, near the front
lines of the civil war. The Russian back separatists were
shelling the little town when I arrived, and I spent
a memorable morning in a city administrative building with a
bunch of middle aged office workers. The building had been
hit several times before the bathroom had been collapsed in
by shell fire and most of the windows were gone,
(37:50):
but it otherwise looked just like any other like small
government municipal building, like little old ladies with garfield like
stuffed animals and stuff on their desks. But right now
and then you'd hear a big hundred and fifty five
millimeter howit's er fire, and everybody would just tense up
for a second until you realize the round wasn't going
to land nearby. So Avdeva had been undersiege for about
(38:10):
a year at that point in the civil war that
Paul Manaford helped start, and the local government had been
reduced to basically just handing out plastic sheets to people
who had their windows shattered by mortar fire, because the
winters are too cold to not have your house sealed,
so that's all the government can do at this point
is people are handing in like their ideas and getting
marked down how much plastic they're getting, and then these
ladies are cutting them pieces of plastic sheeting to take
(38:32):
back to their house. And at one point, while I'm
just sitting around interviewing these people, an elderly couple comes
in and their house had been hit that morning. Um.
The husband was shaking and couldn't focus his eyes, and
he had just blood pouring down his forehead, and his
wife was sort of guiding him into the room, and
she seemed to be the more together of the two.
It almost looks a little bit like someone has kind
of like a palsy when they've been very close to
(38:52):
an artillery barrage, Like it does shake things up in
their head. And that's how this guy looked at the time.
I didn't encounter Paul Maniforts name while I was in
Ukraine reporting on all this, but I realized much later
than a number of people had talked about him to me,
Like in the Philippines years before, Manafort had become a
hated and cursed figure in Kiev. Over and over again,
people had told me about the carnage that he had
(39:14):
helped in Cite, but they hadn't used his name. They
blamed it on an American political technologist. This is the
term that they used. Um. Now, I've come to really
like the term political technologist because I think it accurately
gets it what's inside the head of a man like
Paul Manafort. To everyone else, politics is about human lives,
people striving for some case basic necessities, in some case,
(39:37):
trying to make the world a better place, trying to
improve the human condition. That's what politics is to normal people,
to people with souls, to palm man afford politics, a
political campaign, a regime is like a broken watch or
a broken appliance, a refrigerator that's busted, and all he
cares about is going in there and doing what he
needs to fix it and get it working. And it
doesn't matter what the machine is or what it does him,
(40:00):
it doesn't matter how it's going to be used. His
job is to get it working. That's the fucking man
that he is. Wow. I think it's a term we
could stand to use more in our own country. Political technologist. Wow. Anyway,
that's my podcast. It's a wonderful way to define that.
I'm just sort of soaking in that phrase. Man. Yeah,
(40:22):
Ukraine's a lovely country. Do you think that's what they meant?
That's the term they used. Um. I didn't really know
what they meant at the time. It was always explained
to me as their Americans who know how to run
fancy American style elections, and our guy brought them into
sort of technologists political technologist. I really like that term
to um. Yeah, so poem man Aft, I'm straight up
(40:46):
rocked man. Honestly, I do not appreciate you having me
on your podcast. I feel horrible now, thank you. This
is a lot of fun that happens to a lot. Yeah,
I mean it's a happy ending, and that there's a
good chance he'll die in prison, right, And that's what
should happen to Paul Manafort. Absolutely, And if he does
get out of prison, he piste off that Russian billionaire
(41:06):
who will definitely have him murdering. Yeah, there are hits
out on him, definitely, and not just from Russia, yea
or Ukraine because so many people have to want this
funker dead, absolutely, at least in the Philippines. I don't
want him dead yet. I want him to spend the
rest of his life in prison. And what I want
to have happen is for his his wife and his
(41:26):
kids to visit him a couple of times and then
gradually stop, and then no one visits Paul Manafort and
the world moves on and he's just in prison for
another thirty or forty years. Well, yeah, and for the
people in prison to slowly find out about what he did,
because I don't know, I don't know who's in this prison,
but I would venture a guest that most people in
(41:46):
that prison don't think it's that cool to incite violent
revolutions that kill thousands or millions of we're just selling
some smack or whatever. They're monsters. He is. But even then,
I'm I'm excited for when they forget what he did
and he's just another name, and he's he'll never wear
a fancy suit again, he'll never eat gourmet food again,
(42:08):
he'll never know the glorious taste of Derrito's ranch cheese.
He'll he'll just be just a ship heead in bridge,
just a ship head in prison, and he'll die alone
and unmourned, and he'll know that. Yeah. Yeah, damn, fuck you.
Paul Manafford, Fuck you. Paul Manafort so eloquently said, I
couldn't have come up with a better punishment for him. Yeah, yeah,
(42:31):
it's it's nice. This is really the only time we've
had other than Caddafi on our podcast so far where
like a bad guy got what was coming to them.
Yeah that feels good. Yeah, it feels good. It almost
never happens, but it feels good when it does, so
you should plug your stuff. Oh sure, yeah, you can't see.
But I'm laying down in a bed right now. That's
(42:52):
the sad bed. It's critical to our operation. Laying on
a bed reaching above me making coffee. Um I my
name is Dave Ross. I'm a com Dan I tour.
My website is Dave to the Ross dot com and
my podcast is Suicide Buddies. It's dark but a lot
of fun. Yeah, check out Dave Ross and Suicide Buddies
Suicide Friends. Thanks so much for having me, man, yeah, man,
(43:15):
thank you for being on. And I'm of course Robert Evans.
You can find me on Twitter at I Write. Okay,
just two letters. I've get a book on Amazon, a
brief history advice, so check that out too. You can
find this podcast on the internet at behind the Bastards
dot com. You can find us on social media at
Bastards pod. Before We'll have all of this mini sources
for this article and pictures like Paul Maniffort's glorious mug shot.
(43:38):
So yeah, check us out next week. And you know
I love statistically about you
Behind the Bastards News
Host
Robert Evans
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