FORBES: Manafort was NOT in debt to the Russians.

It's the truth. Time magazine lied, or its investigators were incompetent. Here's what really happened. And none of it was illegal.

What on earth is this nonsense?

The argument seems to be that Paul Manafort wasnt in debt to the Russians by $17m - a variety of shell companies that Paul Manafort owned were in debt to the Russians by $17m?

That’s a practical distinction when you’re the owner of Sears, but isn’t a particularly important distinction when you’re in debt to unsavoury Russians with whom there is a non-zero chance could arrange for you to be discovered unconscious on a park bench. LLCs in this regard aren’t going to mean the Oligarch is going to be less pissed off with you. What’s more, a substantial fraction of Manaforts work has come in via the Russians, the oligarchs and those aligned with them: in some respects it’s probable that being found on a park bench is preferable than being black listed - at least the park bench will probably land you insurance payments.

All this is to say that if you think the issue here is about legality, you’re missing the point. This was never about whether the debt was illegal: Manafort has done enough other illegal things to make it a drop in a bucket even if it were.

The issue here is, and always was - about leverage.

 If I purchase a share of stock in the New York Times company then I am not liable for whatever debts it might owe, my maximum loss is the amount that I've paid for that piece of stock.

Guess that mountain was really a molehill.

As we know, you’re a compulsive liar who wants to systematically ignore key and important facts to make his side look better, as you have neither any arguments or any positions that survive any logical scrutiny.

I would suggest you create a shell corporation and borrow money through the Mob. When you don’t pay, and they come to break your legs: I’m sure you’re excuse that the money is with an LLC will absolutely work, and will not make these shady individuals give up on getting their money back.

Shell companies are not publicly traded.

You are comparing apples and tricycles.

Whatever he did or didnt owe, the bottom line is that you retards trotted out the Russian collusion story like it was indisputable truth. It has since been proven to be a big fat nothing burger. No collusion. No connection to Trump. Sucks to be you. Try again, suckers.

I am really not sure of the legitimacy of the investigation, since politically, it followed when the man famous for saying "you're fired", decided to fire the head of the fbi, and replace him with someone who is apparantly qualified, and doesn't appear to have any liabilities.

That said, they moved forward with the fishing expedition and that's the world we live in.  From where I am standing, we should make it very clear who is politically vested in a witch hunt and/or willing to use government agency to weaken the elected president, (a more serious offense then cheating or russian meddling) and also allow the investigation when it runs it's course to hold the president accountable.  After all, Trump can really not honestly claim to pocess integrity over some of the worst in washington, other than that he makes no allusion counter to his notorious reputation as a liar and a cheat, if that's what it takes to win.

Anyway, I think chanting nothing burger on behalf of President Trump doesn't do justice to the opportunity we have to examine potential political liabilities which may have influenced people to act so vehemently against him.  

Everything you’ve said there is factually untrue.

What we know, is that Trump, Manafort, Trump Jr, Roger Stone and Michael Flynn all actively wanted something from Russia, and were going through a variety of different channels to get it (Trump Tower, debt relief, dirt, dirt, dirt + help for Turkey). They all wanted to their Russian interests to help them in some arena.

All of them, were involved in talking to, or fielding multiple Russian or Russian related approaches for information or to give dirt on a number of different occasions.

There were several examples of “odd” behaviours - praise for Putin, removal of arming Ukrainian reveled plank, attempts to undermine sanctions at the outset of the administration. 

Moreover, in every single case, the individuals involved have repeatedly lied about their involvement, who they met and how they were involved.

So, you’re making the claim that there was no collusion.

The facts are that you had multiple individuals who wanted to collude on Trumps side, who had multiple interactions with Russians who wanted the Trumps to collude - in some cases holding actual meetings with Russians about collusion. After Trump was nominated, various policy decisions were started that looked preferable to Russia, and the administration and those involved have repeatedly lied about it and mentioned none of this to the FBI at the time despite being warned and despite knowing the Russians were involved.

That’s damning on its own right - as just from the facts it means two groups who wanted to collude were in the same room attending a meeting about them colluding - and the only proof they didn’t was from people who initially denied the meeting even happened...

If you believe that, I know some Magic Bean salesmen who could make you a great deal!

"Removal of arming Ukrainian reveled plank?"

Help me out here

More broadly, in our reaction as a nation is it really a bad thing to soften our rhetoric while maintaining sanctions etc.., and dangling a carrot?  We want Putin to be able to step down in approximately 6 years while undermining his 'cause' if possible, presumably at the end of Trump's prospective tenure, and to take advantage of any opportunity that might present itself with the Russians.  

That was when the Ukrainian Policy was changed during the Conventiom to be softer on Payton - seen as incredibly odd.

If all of that is true and there is evidence to back it up, why haven't any of them been indicated for it?

Would it be a bad thing? Pass, potentially: given that’s essentially what happened in the last two administrations and things got substantially worse - it’s likely not a great idea.

The main issue is that why treat that one thing in isolation?

It’s like asking “why is it a bad thing to be leaving a baseball stadium with a baseball bat???” On its own it sounds reasonable enough.

Not so reasonable if it’s the response to the question “why is your baseball bat covered in blood, and why are you standing over an unconscious person with an obvious blunt force head injury”.

Well first of all, everything I said is actually True, and the overwhelming majority is actually coming from admissions from the individuals involved themselves. I mean, you can try and pretend there wasn’t a meeting between Trump Jr and the Russians, but he admitted it - which goes for most of the rest good

So, let’s assume you can be objective for a moment. Let’s assume, say, The Trump tower meeting actually led to some specific collusion. You only want to hand out an indictment to one person if you can hand it out to all of the individuals you can show are involved, and you generally will only want to do that when an indictment won’t substantially harm onward investigation. 

Let’s say they had solid evidence of that for Jr, Kushner, Trump. You’d probably indict the last two at the end of the investigation when the full extent

of everything - on all matters - is largely established and known (or leverage them in the background), and he probably will not indict Trump at all.

so in that respect there are a plethora of valid reasons why there have not been indictments on some of these issues - yet.

Lol @ "THE Russians"

Inane identity demonization at its finest.

Mueller still has not arrested the 12 Russian intelligence agents he indicted, nor is he expected to ask for extradition.

"The Russians" remain a mysterious ghost boogeyman still after 2 years of wasted tax money.

Mueller can't find a SINGLE Russian to pin anything on, much less tie that Russian to Trump. So sad.

What have the romans ever done for us???

Of course he won't indict Trump. You cannot indict a sitting President. You can only impeach him for high crimes and misdemeanors committed while in office. Good luck with that.

... and you’re conceding the other three paragraphs of my response that you ignored?     

"The Romans"

More ghosts?

Yeah, let’s pretend you didn’t contradict yourself within the space of three sentences!

Being a Trump supporter must be so much easier for you when reality is optional!

Oh more ghosts...

"The Trump supporters"

Your sense of identity otherisms knows no bounds, even for a Canadian!

I accept your apology on behalf of "the deplorables"

...or whatever "the <insert identity group>" is fashionable for current NPC's

Tim Worstall's piece ran in Forbes Jul 20, 2017, months before the first wave of charges were filed against Manafort, 30 days before Manafort's 2016 emails to Deripaska were made public, offering Russia private briefings as Trump's campaign manager in exchange for debt forgiveness. Since then, Manafort's lieutenant and co-conspirator flipped, a jury found Manafort guilty of 8 counts of conspiracy and money laundering, Manafort himself has pled guilty to more counts and has picked up  a few new charges of lying under oath as well as contacting Russian intelligence from jail requesting the intimidation of several witnesses testifying against him.  Additionally, Deripaska has now made the loan documents public, showing that the NYTimes actually low-balled the number-  the loan was $18.9 million, not $17 million.

TIME's story is from Saturday, cognizant of all the facts established over the past 18 months that Worstall lacked when he made his argument.

Not that it's a good argument- essentially, crimes aren't crimes if commited in a corporate disguise.  Worstall seems like a reasonably honest British blogger.  I wonder how he feels about your dishonest use of his old arguments made in ignorance of current events as a seeming reply to present discoveries.

TIME's story correctly treats the loan as established fact.  TIME's scoop this weekend is that one of the Russian oligarchs involved publicly stated that he gave Manafort a lot of money and was leaning hard on him during the Trump campaign.  That is, a known Russian spy who was sanctioned by Trump as recently as Dec 19th for interferring with elections in Eastern Europe and passing out millions in Russian bribes is confirming that he frequently called and threatened Trump's campaign chairman during the election.

So both sides of these phone calls agree on the contents of those calls, agree that content was corrupt.  Imagine Trump was innocent of collusion for a moment and envisage that moment when Trump learned his top guy was tens of millions of dollar in hoc with the most powerful mobsters in the world and was offering to brief those mobsters on Trump's secret plans.  An innocent Trump would howl up the twitterverse.  An innocent Trump would call for capital punishment. But in fact, Trump's present position is that Manafort has been treated very unfairly and that he is seriously considering pardoning Manafort.  Therefore, we know Trump was not disturbed when his top campaign guy proved to be a Russian asset, as did his top intelligence guy.

may i ask your nationality?