Look Who Else Was Making Ten Grand a Day Working for a Ukrainian Politician! National Review, Aug 2, 2018, Jim Geraghty
When I knock somebody for being not that different from Paul Manafort, in their eagerness to do the bidding of shady or unsavory overseas regimes for cold hard cash, that’s not a defense of Manafort. (It’s pretty revealing that some insist it must be that.) It’s an attempt to further illustrate that most people’s concept of “corruption†aligns perfectly with “political figures and institutions I don’t like.†Looking too closely at the big-name consultants on their side of the aisle disrupts their reassuring worldview that their party is the good guys and the other party is the bad guys.
The Manafort trial has already produced one bombshell that’s hitting an unexpected political source. The New York Times reports this morning:
It also revealed bipartisan largess. One 2014 email presented in court on Tuesday showed the Democratic consultant Thomas A. Devine proposing a “day rate†of $10,000 to do work in Ukraine on behalf of Mr. Yanukovych, the Russia-aligned former president who was a longtime client of Mr. Manafort.
“You would need to make the travel arrangements, and transfer the $50G before the trip,†he wrote to Rick Gates, Mr. Manafort’s partner for the Ukraine work. “If you want me to come on Monday and leave Thursday it would be $40G.â€
Mr. Devine, who is known as Tad, went on to become the chief strategist for the presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist.
Yanukovych is the Ukrainian leader who fled to Russia with the help of Russian troops in 2014. The entire Democratic party has become born-again Russia hawks, but no one is bothered by the fact that Bernie Sanders’s longtime top aide was working for this guy for $10,000 per day?
More:
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/paul-manafort-trial-bernie-sanders-aide-ukraine/
