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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17751
Location: Berkeley, California
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 Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2020 2:38 pm Post subject: Remember Bannon? |
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| Quote: | From Paul Manafort to Steve Bannon, a Brief History of MAGA Money-Grubbing
By John Cassidy
August 21, 2020
US President Donald Trump.
The alleged corruption surrounding We Build the Wall, Inc., is just the latest chapter in a saga of suspect fund-raising efforts surrounding Donald Trump.Photograph by Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty
Four years ago Thursday, Paul Manafort resigned as Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, just days after the New York Times reported that ledgers discovered in Kiev indicated that the veteran Republican political consultant and influence peddler had received $12.7 million in cash payments from a pro-Russian party controlled by Ukraine’s former leader, Viktor Yanukovych. Eric Trump told Fox News that his father didn’t want the “distraction” of Manafort’s troubles looming over his White House bid. To replace Manafort, Trump appointed Kellyanne Conway as manager of his campaign, and Steve Bannon, the right-wing-media provocateur, who was then head of Breitbart News, as the campaign’s chief executive.
Today, Manafort is a convicted felon. He is currently in home confinement, serving a seven-year sentence for tax fraud and conspiracy, witness tampering, and foreign-lobbying violations. In May, the Bureau of Prisons released him from a federal prison in Florida, because of health concerns related to the coronavirus. Earlier this week, he returned to the news when a Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election described him as a “grave counterintelligence threat,” partly because one of his longtime business partners was, in fact, a Russian intelligence officer.
Bannon isn’t in prison, but he is facing accusations of fraud and money laundering that could land him in the slammer for up to forty years. On Thursday, federal agents arrested him on a luxury motor yacht docked off Westbrook, Connecticut. Later in the day, he appeared handcuffed in a Manhattan court, where he pleaded not guilty to charges that he and three other men had covertly diverted millions of dollars that had been donated to an online GoFundMe campaign supposedly meant to fund construction of Trump’s wall across the southern border. A judge released Bannon on a five-million-dollar bond, ordering him to say away from yachts and private jets.
The most remarkable thing about the indictment that the Southern District of New York unsealed on Thursday is how grubby the wrongdoing it alleges is. For years, Bannon, who started out as a Naval officer and Goldman Sachs investment banker, has been promoting himself as a right-populist thought leader, a man deeply interested in history, philosophy, and economic supply chains, as well as the nefarious business of day-to-day politicking, and putting the screws to Democrats. If the charges contained in the Southern District’s complaint are true, the would-be philosopher king is just another grifter looking to exploit Trump supporters for his own financial benefit. |
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wsurfer
Joined: 17 Aug 2000
Posts: 1635
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| Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2020 7:47 pm Post subject: |
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Bannon is gone I heard, he drifted out to sea!  |
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