"Note: I haven't quite finished spinning my Ball of Thread out of which I will explain how Trump trained the GOP to hate rule of law. But for a number of reasons - this great Heather Cox Richardson piece marking the Maidan anniversary and Paul Manafort's role in it, the arrest of Alexander Smirnov in conjunction with a 2020 attempt, assisted by Bill Barr, to frame Joe Biden, and the heightened urgency of the fate of Ukraine - I thought I'd publish this now."
"The criminal information and exhibits describe Manafort's efforts to help Viktor Yanukovych neutralize his pro-Western female opponent, Yulia Tymoshenko, first by prosecuting her for corruption, then by launching an increasingly complex transnational influence operation to "plant some stink on Tymo" to justify the prosecution. The exhibits describe how Manafort tried to spin a Skadden Arps report finding that Tymoshenko's criminal intent "is almost non-existent," and then how Manafort criminally covered up that effort at spin."
Paul Manafort assisted Viktor Yanukovych by prosecuting and maligning pro-Western opponent Yulia Tymoshenko, then launched a transnational influence operation to "plant some stink on Tymo" to justify the prosecution. Manafort attempted to spin a Skadden Arps report that found Tymoshenko's criminal intent "is almost non-existent," and then covered up that spin. Manafort manufactured an antisemitism claim by arranging an Israeli statement to the New York Post and later boasted about creating a fake election scandal. The influence campaign aimed to portray Ukraine as a 'rule of law' democracy so EU and US would overlook human rights violations.
Read at Emptywheel
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