Exclusive: Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
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.
Manafort was jailed this year and was thought to have become a star cooperator in the Mueller inquiry. But on Monday Mueller said Manafort had repeatedly lied to the FBI , despite agreeing to cooperate two months ago in a plea deal. According to a court document, Manafort had committed “crimes and lies” on a “variety of subject matters.”
His defense team says he believes what he has told Mueller to be truthful and has not violated his deal.
Manafort’s first visit to the embassy took place a year after Assange sought asylum inside, two sources said.
A separate internal document written by Ecuador’s Senain intelligence agency and seen by the Guardian lists “Paul Manaford [sic]” as one of several well-known guests. It also mentions “Russians.”
According to two sources, Manafort returned to the embassy in 2015. He paid another visit in spring 2016, turning up alone, around the time Trump named him as his convention manager. The visit is tentatively dated to March.
Manafort’s 2016 visit to Assange lasted about 40 minutes, one source said, adding that the American was casually dressed when he exited the embassy, wearing sandy-colored chinos, a cardigan and a light-colored shirt.
Visitors normally register with embassy security guards and show their passports. Sources in Ecuador, however, say Manafort was not logged.
Embassy staff were aware only later of the potential significance of Manafort’s visit and his political role with Trump, it is understood.
The revelation could shed new light on the sequence of events in the run-up to summer 2016, when WikiLeaks published tens of thousands of emails hacked by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency. Hillary Clinton has said the hack contributed to her defeat .
The previously unreported Manafort-Assange connection is likely to be of interest to Mueller , who has been investigating possible contacts between WikiLeaks and associates of Trump, including the political lobbyist Roger Stone and Donald Trump Jr.
One key question is when the Trump campaign was aware of the Kremlin’s hacking operation — and what, if anything, it did to encourage it. Trump has repeatedly denied collusion.
Earlier this year Mueller indicted 12 GRU intelligence officers for carrying out the hack, which began in March 2016.
In June of that year WikiLeaks emailed the GRU via an intermediary seeking the DNC material. After failed attempts, Vladimir Putin’s spies sent the documents in mid-July to WikiLeaks as an encrypted attachment .
According to sources, Manafort’s acquaintance with Assange goes back at least five years, to late 2012 or 2013, when the American was working in Ukraine and advising its Moscow-friendly president, Viktor Yanukovych.
Why Manafort sought out Assange in 2013 is unclear. During this period the veteran consultant was involved in black operations against Yanukovych’s chief political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko , whom Yanukovych had jailed . Manafort ran an extensive lobbying operation featuring European former politicians.
He flew frequently from the US to Ukraine’s capital, Kiev — usually via Frankfurt but sometimes through London, flight records seen by the Guardian show.
Manafort is currently in jail in Alexandria, Virginia. In August a jury convicted him of crimes arising from his decade-long activities in Ukraine. They include large-scale money laundering and failure to pay US tax. Manafort pleaded guilty to further charges in order to avoid a second trial in Washington.
As well as accusing him of lying on Monday, the special counsel moved to set a date for Manafort to be sentenced.
One person familiar with WikiLeaks said Assange was motivated to damage the Democrats campaign because he believed a future Trump administration would be less likely to seek his extradition on possible charges of espionage. This fate had hung over Assange since 2010, when he released confidential US state department cables . It contributed to his decision to take refuge in the embassy.
According to the dossier written by former MI6 officer Christopher Steele , Manafort was at the center of a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between the Trump campaign and Russia’s leadership. The two sides had a mutual interest in defeating Clinton, Steele wrote, whom Putin "hated and feared."
In a memo written soon after the DNC emails were published, Steele said: “The (hacking) operation had been conducted with the full knowledge and support of Trump and senior members of his campaign team.”
As a candidate Trump warmly welcomed the dump of DNC emails by Assange. In October 2016 he declared: “ I love WikiLeaks .” Trump’s comments came after WikiLeaks released a second tranche of emails seized from the email account of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman.
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Wikileaks want to bet The Guardian a million dollars that the meeting never happened. That is a bet that neither side would ever pay off.
Interesting story, with the potential to implicate the Trump campaign in the heart of collusion.
The Guardian, by the way, says they have physical evidence that Manafort was there, in the form of written material concerning a visitor's log for the embassy.
Mueller says Manafort is a liar.
Can't take this Article serious !
“Operation Guest” DBA “Operation Hotel”....to "Protect" Assange !
This story belongs in Mad Magazine. It is a fantasy product that is laughable
From here on the gop are like Sgt Schultz, "I know nothing. I know nothing".
The left and their conspiracy theories about Russian collusion are the biggest hoax in American history. I don’t care what you think of the GOP. I left them in 1970
Sure, a because hoaxes always produce multiple guilty pleas, indictments and jail sentences. After years of trying to manufacture scandals against a democrat, conservatives don't know a real crime from their ass anymore. It's ok, just keep watching.
That is an example of what Goebles christened, "THE BIG LIE"...
Supposedly if you tell it enough fascists will believe that it is true.
It’s a farce. Not one indictment of a US citizen for supposed collusion with Russia on the 2016 election. And there is no crime of election collusion in US law
Manafort and Gates were charged with phony crimes unrelated to either Trump or the election
Papadopolous took a phony guilty plea which he is appealing for getting the date wrong on a CIA sting operation in which he was set up by the thugs in the Obama Administration
Flynn took a guilty plea unrelated to supposed Russian collusion in order to stop the thugs at the FBI and Mueller from harassing his son
the FBI has cleared Flynn of any wrongdoing with Russia
https://nypost.com/2017/01/24/fbi-clears-michael-flynn-in-probe-linking-him-to-russia/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons
And Papadopolous was an unpaid volunteer not officially even part of the 2016 campaign and has appealed his guilty plea for supposedly about the date of a conversation with a professor (who turned out to be a CIA plant)
13 Russians who will never face trial have been charged with the phony “election interference fraud” charge. For daring to post phony stories on social media. It’s a joke
That’s probably true as the majority of fascists in this country are on the left just like Hitler and Mussolini
Since you do not know, Fascim is a far rightwing political philosophy...
Actually by your response it’s quite evident you know nothing about fascism except what leftist revisionist teachers and historians brainwashed you with
Fascism has always been a leftist ideology. Fascists separated themselves from the Communists over Statism.
Marx wrote that socialism should be the transition from capitalism to communism. Communism is ultimately according to marx a form of anarchy (absence of government) where the workers are an entity unto themselves and no government is needed.
The Fascists agreed with much of Marx's views on socialism but being Statists, believed that they could instead control capitalism to support a dominant central government that redistributed the wealth which in turn would continue to give them the populist support to rule.
Fascism and the American Left
In 1919, Alceste De Ambris and Futurist movement leader Filippo Tommaso Marinetti created The Manifesto of the Italian Fasci of Combat (a.k.a. the Fascist Manifesto ). [68] The Manifesto was presented on June 6, 1919 in the Fascist newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia . The Manifesto supported the creation of universal suffrage for both men and women (the latter being realized only partly in late 1925, with all opposition parties banned or disbanded [69] ); proportional representation on a regional basis; government representation through a corporatist system of "National Councils" of experts, selected from professionals and tradespeople, elected to represent and hold legislative power over their respective areas, including labour, industry, transportation, public health, communications, etc.; and the abolition of the Italian Senate . [70] The Manifesto supported the creation of an eight-hour work day for all workers, a minimum wage , worker representation in industrial management, equal confidence in labour unions as in industrial executives and public servants, reorganization of the transportation sector, revision of the draft law on invalidity insurance, reduction of the retirement age from 65 to 55, a strong progressive tax on capital, confiscation of the property of religious institutions and abolishment of bishoprics, and revision of military contracts to allow the government to seize 85% of their[ who? ] profits. [71] It also called for the creation of a short-service national militia to serve defensive duties, nationalization of the armaments industry, and a foreign policy designed to be peaceful but also competitive. [72]
Socialism and Fascism: A Political-Economic Spectrum Analysis | Walter Block
Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism is Totalitarian | George Reisman
Stalinism was Fascism, not Communism
Hitler himself on the matter:
"There is more that binds us to Bolshevism than separates us from it. There is, above all, genuine, revolutionary feeling, which is alive everywhere in Russia except where there are Jewish Marxists. I have always made allowance for this circumstance, and given orders that former Communists are to be admitted to the party at once. The petit bourgeois Social-Democrat and the trade-union boss will never make a National Socialist, but the Communists always will."
"Of what importance is all that, if I range men firmly within a discipline they cannot escape? Let them own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the Party, is supreme over them regardless of whether they are owners or workers. All that is unessential; our socialism goes far deeper. It establishes a relationship of the individual to the State, the national community. Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human beings."
Ref. from Hermann Rauschning in Hitler Speaks , London, T. Butterworth, 1940
Mussolini wrote: "To Fascism the world is not this material world, as it appears on the surface, where Man is an individual separated from all others and left to himself.... Fascism affirms the State as the true reality of the individual."
Goebbels on Nazism =Socialism
We are socialists because we see in socialism , that is the union of all citizens, the only chance to maintain our racial inheritance and to regain our political freedom and renew our German state.
Socialism is the doctrine of liberation for the working class. It promotes the rise of the fourth class and its incorporation in the political organism of our Fatherland, and is inextricably bound to breaking the present slavery and regaining German freedom. Socialism, therefore, is not merely a matter of the oppressed class, but a matter for everyone, for freeing the German people from slavery is the goal of contemporary policy. Socialism gains its true form only through a total fighting brotherhood with the forward-striving energies of a newly awakened nationalism. Without nationalism it is nothing, a phantom, a mere theory, a castle in the sky, a book. With it it is everything, the future, freedom, the fatherland!
The sin of liberal thinking was to overlook socialism’s nation-building strengths, thereby allowing its energies to go in anti-national directions. The sin of Marxism was to degrade socialism into a question of wages and the stomach , putting it in conflict with the state and its national existence. An understanding of both these facts leads us to a new sense of socialism, which sees its nature as nationalistic, state-building, liberating and constructive
We noticed you had to redefine words to make that convoluted bullshit...
Socialism is a moderate left wing philosophy butt FASCISM is rightwing.
You need to go back and study history. Socialism was merely a means to the fascism, which is a far right philosophy. If you are knowingly promoting bullshit, stop. If you really don't know, you need to go far deeper into the subject.
Yep, nothing to see here at all...
Not one indictment for a US citizen picking his nose while standing on one foot either. Hell if you spin it enough, trump could be caught on tape murdering a baby and you could claim he is innocent.
Fascism ( / ˈ f æ ʃ ɪ z əm / ) is a form of radical authoritarian ultranationalism , [1] [2] [3] [4] characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy, [5] which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe. [6] The first fascist movements emerged in Italy during World War I before it spread to other European countries . [6] Opposed to liberalism , Marxism and anarchism , fascism is placed on the far-right within the traditional left–right spectrum . [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]
Fascists saw World War I as a revolution that brought massive changes to the nature of war, society, the state and technology. The advent of total war and the total mass mobilization of society had broken down the distinction between civilians and combatants. A "military citizenship" arose in which all citizens were involved with the military in some manner during the war. [12] [13] The war had resulted in the rise of a powerful state capable of mobilizing millions of people to serve on the front lines and providing economic production and logistics to support them, as well as having unprecedented authority to intervene in the lives of citizens. [12] [13]
Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete and they regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties. [14] Such a state is led by a strong leader—such as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist party—to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society. [14] Fascism rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature and views political violence, war and imperialism as means that can achieve national rejuvenation. [15] [16] [17] [18] Fascists advocate a mixed economy , with the principal goal of achieving autarky (national economic self-sufficiency) through protectionist and interventionist economic policies. [19]
Im the one educated and with a degree in history. I read the facts while you regurgitate the propaganda fed to you.
Mussolini, Hitler, and their people all believed in a Marxist economic system and I’ve posted that historical record
FDR and his people loved fascism
FDRs love of Fascism
In the North American Review in 1934, the progressive writer Roger Shaw described the New Deal as “Fascist means to gain liberal ends.” He wasn’t hallucinating. FDR’s adviser Rexford Tugwell wrote in his diary that Mussolini had done “many of the things which seem to me necessary.” Lorena Hickok, a close confidante of Eleanor Roosevelt who lived in the White House for a spell, wrote approvingly of a local official who had said, “If [President] Roosevelt were actually a dictator, we might get somewhere.” She added that if she were younger, she’d like to lead “the Fascist Movement in the United States.” At the National Recovery Administration (NRA), the cartel-creating agency at the heart of the early New Deal, one report declared forthrightly, “The Fascist Principles are very similar to those we have been evolving here in America.”
Roosevelt himself called Mussolini “admirable” and professed that he was “deeply impressed by what he has accomplished.” The admiration was mutual. In a laudatory review of Roosevelt’s 1933 book Looking Forward, Mussolini wrote, “Reminiscent of Fascism is the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices.… Without question, the mood accompanying this sea change resembles that of Fascism.” The chief Nazi newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter , repeatedly praised “Roosevelt’s adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies” and “the development toward an authoritarian state” based on the “demand that collective good be put before individual self-interest.”
. In 1935 former President Herbert Hoover was using phrases like “Fascist regimentation” in discussing the New Deal. A decade later, he wrote in his memoirs that “the New Deal introduced to Americans the spectacle of Fascist dictation to business, labor and agriculture,” and that measures such as the Agricultural Adjustment Act, “in their consequences of control of products and markets, set up an uncanny Americanized parallel with the agricultural regime of Mussolini and Hitler.” In 1944, in The Road to Serfdom , the economist F.A. Hayek warned that economic planning could lead to totalitarianism. He cautioned Americans and Britons not to think that there was something uniquely evil about the German soul. National Socialism, he said, drew on collectivist ideas that had permeated the Western world for a generation or more.
In 1973 one of the most distinguished American historians, John A. Garraty of Columbia University, created a stir with his article “The New Deal, National Socialism, and the Great Depression.” Garraty was an admirer of Roosevelt but couldn’t help noticing, for instance, the parallels between the Civilian Conservation Corps and similar programs in Germany.”
Chomsky on America's Ugly History: FDR Was Fascist-Friendly Before WWII
George Kennan, later famous as one of the architects of post-war policy, was actually the American Council in Berlin up until Pearl Harbor. He was sending back reports which are public, which were qualified. He said we shouldn't be too harsh in condemning the Nazis since a lot of what they are doing is kind of understandable and we could get along with them and so on and this is one strain and a major one. But there was also plenty of criticism and condemnation. But the general attitudes were fairly mixed.
At the Munich Conference late 1938, Roosevelt sent his most trusted adviser, Sumner Wells, to Munich and Wells came back with a pretty positive report saying we can really work with Hitler, this conference opens the possibility of a period of peace and justice for Europe and we should work out ways to interact and deal with him. That was late 1938! And so it was quite a mixed story.
Who cares. It’s not a crime to meet with Russians. After all Bill Clinton got paid big bucks to meet with them
It is if you are meeting with them to win an election!
Was he president at the time? No. Didn't think so. Not illegal to get paid to give a speech as a PRIVATE CITIZEN!
Yet you had no idea that fascism is a right wing ideology? Seriously? LOL
Not sure why you posted all that, it changes nothing about what I said about socialism and fascism. If anything it proves my point that Hitler was using socialism to get to his fascism. Which is STILL A FAR RIGHT WING PHILOSOPHY.
The walls are closing in on Trumpworld.
He is going to be so sick of walls.
It looks a little like the Alamo.
Cadet Bone Spurs wouldn't have fought there either.
LOL great picture!
We're seeding from the Guardian. I thought that was one of the bad sites, no?
London, eh? Other reporting indicates Manafort wasn't even in the UK in the years he supposedly met with Assange there.
Manafort passport stamps don't show he entered London in all years Guardian claimed
One need not get one's passport stamped or even go through a security check point to drive from France to London through the Chunnel. So, that passport bullshit fails...
The Equatoran Embassy obviously has video evidence of Manafort's visit...