One More Point on the Manafort News

UNITED STATES - JULY 21: Presidential candidate Donald Trump, conducts a walk-through of the stage at the Quicken Loans Arena before tonight's address to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, July 21... UNITED STATES - JULY 21: Presidential candidate Donald Trump, conducts a walk-through of the stage at the Quicken Loans Arena before tonight's address to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, July 21, 2016. Trump advisor Paul Manafort, appears in the background. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call) (CQ Roll Call via AP Images) MORE LESS
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Following up on my post below, let me add one more point. Below I noted that having two members of Trump’s campaign the subjects of active counter-intelligence investigations must have set off alarm bells in the US intelligence world. But of course it wasn’t just that. Law enforcement and US intelligence had known for years that Trump was heavily reliant on money from countries of the former Soviet Union, with much of that money coming from dubious sources. I discussed just how much they knew here.

But before Trump became a serious presidential candidate, that didn’t matter that much. Lots of Russian money gets brought into the US. Some of it is laundering dirty money. Some is just very wealthy people wanting to stow their money somewhere where asset and property values are fairly stable and where there’s a robust rule of law. New York City is a good place for that. Even after the 2008 crash, real estate values underwent only a brief and shallow dip. They recovered fairly quickly.

In any case, as I said, this was all known. But it wasn’t a pressing issue because Trump was just a one time real estate developer now in the licensing business who spent most of his time starring in a reality TV show. But once he became a serious presidential candidate, those money connections, all the shadowy figures and that dependence on money from abroad started mattering a lot more. When people suspected of acting as Russian agents (that’s what you need to get a FISA warrant) started showing up in the campaign – particularly – the guy running the campaign, those alarm bells must have been going off nonstop.

That is the context of what was happening – almost entirely outside our public view – in the late Spring and early Summer of 2016.

 

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