Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Republicans do not pay their debts.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

In after Baud. Damn.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

You are here: Home / Oh, Well That’s Interesting

Oh, Well That’s Interesting

by | 106 Comments

This post is in: 

Hrmm:

Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort held secret talks with Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and visited around the time he joined Trump’s campaign, the Guardian has been told.

Sources have said Manafort went to see Assange in 2013, 2015 and in spring 2016 – during the period when he was made a key figure in Trump’s push for the White House.

It is unclear why Manafort wanted to see Assange and what was discussed. But the last meeting is likely to come under scrutiny and could interest Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor who is investigating alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

A well-placed source has told the Guardian that Manafort went to see Assange around March 2016. Months later WikiLeaks released a stash of Democratic emails stolen by Russian intelligence officers.

Manafort, 69, denies involvement in the hack and says the claim is “100% false”. His lawyers declined to answer the Guardian’s questions about the visits.

Yes. It is unclear why he wanted to meet Assange.

Reader Interactions

106Comments

  1. 1.

    Yarrow

    “It is unclear why Manafort wanted to see Assange.” LOL. Okay. I’m sure someone knows why. Tick tock, motherfuckers!

  5. 5.

    Wild Cat

    I can’t wait for the Amy Goodman/Democracy Now hearings. She’s in on this. She’s aligned with every pseudo-leftish/pseudo-libertarian hustler.

  6. 6.

    boatboy_srq

    It is unclear why Manafort wanted to see Assange and what was discussed

    Another way of saying “Russian tools colluded, but we lack concrete evidence so we have to say we don’t quite get it.”

  7. 7.

    Yarrow

    @boatboy_srq: No, it’s a way of getting information out to the public that this meeting happened and those parties colluded, but the intelligence community and Mueller’s team is not yet releasing full details to the public. This is more of a warning shot to the parties involved that the IC/Mueller have those details.

  10. 10.

    syphonblue

    Manafort, 69, denies involvement in the hack and says the claim is “100% false”.

    Oh, so it’s 100% true, then.

  11. 11.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Glenn “Why yes, I’m another of Putin’s puppets” Greenwald is saying that Wikileaks vehemently deny the Guardian’s reporting.

    Glenn, dearest, Wikileaks has no credibility to speak of.

  13. 13.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Yarrow: Mueller probably has tapes of the conversation, but can’t use them in court because it would compromise sources and methods.

  15. 15.

    Amir Khalid

    @germy:

    Julian’s a journalist!

    BWAHAHAHA
    All Wikileaks ever does is publish stolen/leaked documents. When did it ever pursue, let alone break, an actual news story?

  16. 16.

    Adam L Silverman

    @boatboy_srq: @Yarrow: This leak, if it was a leak rather than Harding and Collins just doing the hard work of investigative journalism, would not have come from the Special Counsel’s Office. It would more likely have come from either the British or the Ecuadorians. Also, it is important to remember that the Special Counsel and his team will have known about this for a long time now regardless of this reporting and where Harding and Collins got the information.

  17. 17.

    SRW1

    @Ninedragonspot:

    Manafort a big fan of cats.

    Fat cats?

    Ironically, my money would be on the negotiation of a loyalty bonus in form of, say, a get-out-of-jail card.

    Ironic in he sense that Manafort woulda been probing the view from the opposite pov of his current predicament.

  18. 18.

    Yarrow

    @Adam L Silverman: Yep.

    it is important to remember that the Special Counsel and his team will have known about this for a long time now regardless of this reporting and where Harding and Collins got the information.

    Yes. It kind of baffles me that people don’t know this.

  19. 19.

    Aleta

    Also unclear why Manafort didn’t sign in. “Visitors normally register with embassy security guards and show their passports. Sources in Ecuador, however, say Manafort was not logged.”

  21. 21.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Villago Delenda Est: Greenwald goes on so many “everyone else is a guilty-by-association hypocrite, harrumph harrumph” jags that you’d think he REALLY ought to be more careful in his choice of associates.

  26. 26.

    Tony Jay

    Okay. So there must be transcripts of the conversations Manafort had with Assange, but no one with official access to them can release them because of reasons … Looks like a job for WikiLeaks! Oh, wait, hang on.

    Maybe Julian’s iWatch recorded the whole thing. I’ve heard that can happen.

  28. 28.

    Kay

    It will be embarrassing if Julian Assange beat the mighty United States in pursuit of his petty personal grudge against Hillary Clinton.

    These people. It’s the arrogance that gets me. It is ALL about THEM. Hundreds of millions held hostage to their stupid fucking GAMES and their CAREERS and their personal wealth. It’s a sickness. Me, me, me. Poorly raised. Their parents did a bad job.

  29. 29.

    Adam L Silverman

    @LAO: Most likely this. None of these people can shut up if there’s a penny they can grift!

  30. 30.

    Miss Bianca

    @Tony Jay: ok, there’s no way that al should have made me laugh as hard as it did. Bitter, evil laughter, true, but hearty for all that.

  31. 31.

    Kay

    What a fucking scam Wikileaks was, huh? Political operatives. All that bullshit about transparency and at the end of the day they’re greedy, self-interested political operatives who aren’t even honest enough to own it.

    I admire Karl Rove more. At least he doesn’t pretend to some noble cause.

  32. 32.

    Mnemosyne

    @FlipYrWhig:

    Greenwald goes on so many “everyone else is a guilty-by-association hypocrite, harrumph harrumph” jags that you’d think he REALLY ought to be more careful in his choice of associates.

    Nah, it’s just the bog-standard confession-via-denunciation tactic. The more a conservative or “libertarian” denounces a behavior, the more likely it is that they themselves are engaging in the same behavior, but worse.

  33. 33.

    wasabi gasp

    Yes. It is unclear why he wanted to meet Assange.

    Benefit of Doubt is integral to the prosperity of an ad-rev subscription-based quasi-civil society, you filthy ape.

  34. 34.

    Cacti

    @FlipYrWhig:

    Greenwald goes on so many “everyone else is a guilty-by-association hypocrite, harrumph harrumph” jags that you’d think he REALLY ought to be more careful in his choice of associates.

    Has Saint GiGi the pure had anything remotely critical to say of his new fascist overlord in Brazil?

  35. 35.

    oldgold

    @Yarrow:

    Tick Tock

    Until May of 2018, I understood “Tick Tock.” At this point, I do not. Given the passage of time, it seems lame.

  37. 37.

    Barbara

    @Adam L Silverman: If you read through the article it appears that the embassy knew Manafort had been there even though the visit was not logged. It refers to video footage, presumably something the embassy keeps for all embassy visits. In any event, it states that Ecuador did not put two and two together about the importance of this particular visitor for quite a while. Eventually, it must have made the connection, which must have triggered a review looking for prior visits. It appears that Manafort first met Assange as part of his work for the pro-Russian president he was providing services to in Ukraine. Which is all to say that it is additional evidence as if any were needed that Assange is a Russian asset and he has probably spent the last however many years trying to calculate which super power he fears more, the one that is likely to make the rest of his life extremely short versus the one that is likely to make the rest of his life extremely miserable. Oh yeah, that leak a few weeks ago of a sealed indictment — it was somebody’s way of sending the information to Assange to help him make the case that he still deserves protection. God, I hope Manafort spends the rest of his own life in miserable captivity.

  39. 39.

    Mandalay

    From the link in the OP:

    In May 2017, , Manafort flew to Ecuador to hold talks with the country’s president-elect Lenín Moreno.

    WTF?

  41. 41.

    Tony Jay

    @Miss Bianca:

    I’m sure it’s up for it. Months of being ignored, un-groomed and generally left to sit in your own shit is often enough to turn even the most loyal pet into a backstabbing terror.

    This is also true for cats.

  45. 45.

    Mnemosyne

    @Mandalay:

    “Keep protecting Julian if you know what’s good for you, comrade.”

    Ecuador may have been set up to be the fall guy here, the poor dumb bastards. If Trump’s treason is exposed, they get crushed by both the US and Russia for their collusion.

  46. 46.

    Miss Bianca

    @Tony Jay: You’re killing me. I’m dying over here. If I die laughing over Julian fucking Assange, my ghost is gonna waft over the Atlantic and haunt your ass like that last pork chop. You have been warned.

  47. 47.

    Mandalay

    Toobin just said on CNN without a trace of irony that Manafort being discredited is good news for Trump.

  48. 48.

    Tony Jay

    @daryljfontaine:

    Fifth Element style with little antennae and receivers glued to its back? Trained to avoid men with shoes.

    I guess there’s nothing for it but to task an underling with the mission. Kit: 1) Cat. 2) Gloves. 3)Suppository microphone.

    It’s a dirty job, but someone(else)s got to do it.

  53. 53.

    hueyplong

    The mere existence of a JDA would have been sufficient to impeach President Hillary Clinton and remove her from office.

  59. 59.

    Gravenstone

    @Adam L Silverman: Yeah, this should be completely unshocking to anyone. Add in someone of Manafort’s sordid reputation showing up, given the squatter in residence
    and you can be sure the authorities became quite interested.

  62. 62.

    Tony Jay

    @Miss Bianca:

    They really are ridiculous people. Awful, mendacious, corrupt and destructive, yes, but mostly ridiculous. If they weren’t involved with actively undermining democratic government and whitewashing the sins of brutal dictators they’d make for laugh-out-loud characters in a George Clooney produced farce.

    With John Malkovich voicing Ernesto the Cat.

  63. 63.

    Baud

    @Mandalay:

    Toobin just said on CNN without a trace of irony that Manafort being discredited is good news for Trump.

    “When he signed the JDA with Manafort, Donald Trump became President.”

  64. 64.

    Rommie

    The Cat was last seen wearing a collar – hrmm. I’m glad it’s not locked up with Assange anymore.

  65. 65.

    Adam L Silverman

    To the Queen!!!!

    Also, I expect Zuckerberg to be very scarce starting next week!

  66. 66.

    gvg

    I had to look up the wikileaks Assage timeline, to get it clearer in my head. I had forgotten their first leak was about the Cayman Island money laundering. That leak seemed to me to be a good thing for the US. No other leak really was. I guess you have to do one thing good to start a reputation, and then it lingers for awhile.

  67. 67.

    Kay

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Well, He’s right. From a defense standpoint Manafort lied on some information so that makes the rest of his information less reliable.

    They’re liars. They lie.Constantly. That means they’re not credible whether they’re working for the defense or the prosecution. It was always a problem. Now it’s just a problem that’s out in the open. It’s the jailhouse snitch problem. The snitch is a scumbag and that doesn’t change depending on who he is talking to- “is he lying now or was he lying then?”. “Yes” is the answer to that. All the Trump people are liars, so it applies to all of them.

  70. 70.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    To me, it always comes back to the lying as a problem. It’s profound. People treating it like a delightful personality quirk are wrong. These people weren’t reliable when they were lying for the defense and they’re also not reliable now.

    I mean, really? “Paul Manafort violated an agreement”. That’s the least surprising thing in the world. But Mueller knows all this.

    My favorite part of this is this insane “benefit of the doubt” these men are given. They’re lying because they’re covering up a crime. I mean., Jesus. Do they have to hit pundits over the head with a brick? No ordinary defendant in the WORLD would get this kind of deference. If they could tell the truth and get out of this, they would! They would do that! Would have done it months ago!

  71. 71.

    Tony Jay

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Somewhere in Los Angeles Jessie Eisenberg is sitting by a pool, sipping an iced-tea, reading through a script his agent has just FedExed him entitled “Social Network 2: Electric Treason Too”.

    As sequels go, it’s got Oscar written all over it.

  72. 72.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Because they always put it in a trial context. “Manafort is innocent until the state convicts”. I mean, that’s true but there’s this whole predicate part where he’s negotiating. There’s a lot between indictment and trial. He can’t fucking exonerate himself because he’s covering up a crime. If he could go in there and show them enough to back them off, he would! Mueller doesn’t want to LOSE. He’s not going forward with nothing. Manafort has not been able to produce. If he could, he would.

  73. 73.

    tokyokie

    au contraire@daryljfontaine: Au contraire. If a bug crawls, the cat will play with it until it stops moving, then leave its carcass somewhere where you’ll find it while walking barefoot.

  76. 76.

    Mandalay

    @Mnemosyne: I’m not sure whether Moreno was being offered a carrot or a stick, though that story is old news (from 11/21/17):

    President Lenin Moreno said Monday that Paul Manafort, U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign manager, accompanied a group of Chinese businessmen interested in buying Ecuador’s national power company in a May meeting that he hosted.

    Moreno was president-elect at the time.

    That pile of hooey is as credible as the claim that the Manafort and Don Jr. meeting with Russians in Trump Tower was about adoption, and both stories only emerged after they were leaked.

    China has already made Africa a wholly owned subsidiary, and has invested heavily in Ecuador. The notion that “Chinese businessmen” would need help from the former campaign manager of the President of the USA in their business dealings is beyond absurd.

  78. 78.

    Miss Bianca

    @Tony Jay: I’m to the point where I am actively rooting for Spiny Norman to appear over the top of the Ecuadoran embassy. Or perhaps the White House.

    That would be my version of the Rapture.

  79. 79.

    Kay

    Dumb big mouth Trump lied in his written responses to Mueller, which is why he’s freaking out. Because Mueller knows he lied and they are written responses so Trump can’t lie and say they never happened.

  80. 80.

    LAO

    @SRW1: Manafort is stuck in a catch-22. As long as his defense team argues — which they currently are — that he was truthful in his proffer sessions with prosecutors, the Mueller team is required to prove “by a preponderance of the evidence” that Manafort lied at a sentencing hearing. The only way to avoid a contested sentencing hearing, would be to admit to lying, which I don’t believe Manafort can do.

  81. 81.

    Mandalay

    @Adam L Silverman:

    It would more likely have come from either the British or the Ecuadorians.

    While not conclusive, doesn’t the fact that the Guardian reporters wrote their story from Ecuador (“Luke Harding and Dan Collyns in Quito“) strongly suggest that the Ecuadorian government was the leaker?

  82. 82.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: I saw something similar elsewhere this morning. They said that since Mueller is saying Manafort is a liar, that means that any evidence provided by Mueller cannot be used against anyone else.

  83. 83.

    Miss Bianca

    @LAO: My head is hurting. I think I need some Ibuprofen and a snorkel before I can actually begin to probe the depth of the shit Manafort is in.

  84. 84.

    Mandalay

    @LAO:

    As long as his defense team argues…that he was truthful in his proffer sessions

    That’s not exactly what they are arguing:

    “He believes he has provided truthful information and does not agree with the government’s characterization or that he has breached the agreement,” it says.

    IANAL but I suspect that there is a big difference between asserting that Manafort was telling the truth and asserting that He believes he has provided truthful information. Manafort’s lawyers chose the latter form of wording for a reason.

  86. 86.

    Kay

    @WaterGirl:

    It’s somewhat true but it’s not nearly that cut and dried. There’s no “cannot be used”. They can still make very good use of Manafort, and they will. This is an ordinary problem- cooperating criminals are often liars. They still use them. Confidential informants are by definition self-interested, so less credible, but they use them constantly. If the measure was “we need completely honest defendants” no one would ever make a deal.

    Manafort is in big trouble. He’s going to prison. If he could get out of it by telling the truth he would. Telling the truth makes it worse for him, which is why he’s lying.

  88. 88.

    LAO

    @Mandalay: I am a lawyer (a federal criminal defense attorney) and the choice of language may sound lawyer like and careful — but it’s a distinction without difference.

  89. 89.

    Kay

    @WaterGirl:

    That was always going to be the defense anyway. “All these liars I hired are liars”. That was a gimmee. They always had that and it’s not this great defense. It’s just standard.

  92. 92.

    TenguPhule

    @Miss Bianca:

    If I die laughing over Julian fucking Assange, my ghost is gonna waft over the Atlantic and haunt your ass like that last pork chop.

    Rotating Tag Nominee!

  93. 93.

    Kay

    @LAO:

    They’re all such crybabies. They’re career criminals. They got a pass for decades. They should have quit while they were ahead. Too fucking greedy to leave the table.

  94. 94.

    TenguPhule

    @Kay:

    Do they have to hit pundits over the head with a brick?

    It would certainly improve the average quality of pundits.

  96. 96.

    PJ

    @Kay: The thing is, they would have gotten away with it if only Hillary had won. Trump would be crying (all the way to the bank) that the election results were unfair, and Congressional Republicans would be leading a gazillion investigations into emails, Benghazi, and whatever else they could think of. The intel on the collusion of the Trump campaign with the Russians would still be there, but I think Hillary would underplay it, as Obama did, because the Republicans and the media would be claiming she was persecuting Trump to distract from her own bad behavior. I have a feeling that the need to investigate to Trump would be set aside, with the intel as a card to play against the Russians, and the money-laundering would be ignored, as it had been for decades.

  97. 97.

    eclare

    @PJ: Totally agree. If they had all stayed under the radar, I don’t think these crimes would have ever come to light.

  99. 99.

    Miss Bianca

    @PJ: “And we would have got away with it if it weren’t for you meddling kids! – err, that is, us ‘winning’ the election!”

  100. 100.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Armadillo: FWIW: Emptywheel is not a lawyer. Emptywheel has never been an intelligence officer or worked in national security. Emptywheel has no journalistic training. Emptywheel has a PhD in English literature. Emptywheel is famous and listened to because she live blogged an important trial from within the courtroom so that everyone didn’t have to wait for the official transcript to be released. Emptywheel is not qualified to do what she is doing.

  101. 101.

    dww44

    @PJ: There’s always an upside to an evil outcome. You paint the scenario that my daughter verbalized a couple of days after the election. Too bad we all only became truly vested in our democracy when it was placed in peril. Which it still is. I hope to heavens that Mueller is worthy of all the adulation that we’ve ascribed to him.

  102. 102.

    Adam L Silverman

  103. 103.

    Jean

    @Adam L Silverman: That is correct, and thank you for stating the reasons so clearly and succinctly. After Obama was elected, she showed her pretense and its failings quietly clearly on Firedoglake.

  105. 105.

    StringOnAStick

    @Adam L Silverman: Funny how my anarchist former friend thought the Ecuadorans were the last word in democracy, plus the Brazilians (that recently didn’t work out so well). When we were in Quito 3 years ago we had a personal guide who was very open about how if you were a prominent person like a doctor or lawyer and you criticized the government, your career would be ruined. My ex-friend probably thought that was OK as long as the person getting their career ruined were not adequately supportive of his various POV’s. He absolutely loves Greenwald.

  106. 106.

    JGabriel

    @Mnemosyne:

    Nah, it’s just the bog-standard confession-via-denunciation tactic. The more a conservative or “libertarian” denounces a behavior, the more likely it is that they themselves are engaging in the same behavior, but worse.

    “You can’t break the law like that; that’s how I break the law!”

Comments are closed.