BOMBSHELL: Manafort Offered ‘Campaign Briefings’ To Putin Ally During Election
We just got the clearest evidence yet of collusion with Russia.
Paul Manafort offered private campaign briefings to a Russia billionaire closely allied with Vladimir Putin, the Washington Post is reporting.
According to the bombshell new report, Paul Manafort made the offer in an email to an overseas intermediary, asking that a message be sent to Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum magnate with whom Manafort had done business in the past, these people said.”
In an email on July 7, 2016, Manafort wrote, “If he needs private briefings we can accommodate.”
The email was sent just two weeks before Donald Trump officially clinched the Republican nomination.
The email is one of tens of thousands that have been handed over to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators.
The revelation by the Washington Post that Manafort was offering campaign briefings to the Russians while he was running the Trump campaign is the clearest sign yet of collusion.
Here is another remarkable segment from the Washington Post piece:
Several of the exchanges, which took place between Manafort and a Kiev-based employee of his international political consulting practice, focused on money that Manafort believed he was owed by Eastern European clients.
The notes appear to be written in deliberately vague terms, with Manafort and his employee, Konstantin Kilimnik, never explicitly mentioning Deripaska by name.
Investigators believe that key passages refer to Deripaska. The billionaire is referenced in some places by his initials, “OVD,” and one email invokes an expensive Russian delicacy in what investigators believe is a veiled reference to Manafort’s past work with Deripaska.
In one April exchange days after Trump named Manafort as a campaign strategist, Manafort referred to his positive press and growing reputation and asked, “How do we use to get whole?”
Read the full Washington Post story here.
