I've said all along Manafort is no choir boy. He's been around a LONG time and done a lot. I have a feeling that the original indictments are on shaky ground so Mueller is latching onto these tax charges to try and get something solid on him.
When they were first after him for money laundering it sounded like a reach, and the FARA charges are a complete joke. FARA is a talking point when they want to point fingers but they never follow up on it. Can anyone think of anyone being actually convicted of failing to register under FARA? I'm not talking charged I'm saying convicted of it. They blow smoke with FARA charges but never follow through. To many of their own political allies are violating the FARA act and do it all the time. They don't have the prison beds available to lock all the FARA violators up.
DOJ issued a report back in 2016 that tallied all the prosecutions under FARA since 1966a total of seven. Only one of the individuals charged was convicted at trial; according to the report, two pleaded guilty to FARA charges, two were convicted on non-FARA charges and two saw their cases dismissed.
https://oig.justice.gov/press/2016/2016-09-07.pdfAn important reason for this lack of enforcement is that there are virtually no enforcers. The FARA team at DOJ is small, poorly funded and relies on voluntary compliance. So, it's not unreasonable to conclude that the only reason that Manafort got busted was because a special counsel was appointed after the firing of Comey to look into the Trump campaign's possible collusion with Russia. Manafort has been under investigation since 2014, but if the DOJ's track record is any indicator, it's quite likely that had he not been Trump's campaign manager, Manafort would be kicking back and enjoying his allegedly laundered cash at this very moment. This entire thing is a farce. Manafort knows it that's why he's not folding, because he knows they'll never go after him on just FARA. These tax charges are garbage compared to big picture.
Remember the Russian Lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, (the Russian attorney who met with Donald Trump Jr. in the summer of 2016), she was supposedly in the country to represent Russian oligarch Denis Katsyv, who was a DOJ target under the Magnitsky Act. Earlier this year, a group of companies owned by Katsyv, who was represented by Veselnitskaya , agreed to pay nearly $6 million to settle allegations that the firms laundered proceeds of a $230 million tax fraud. That's not a bad margin...
And here's another trick that's even better, and it's not just used by Russia. Let's say a government wants a lobbyist or someone else to do some work for them in Washington. Maybe it's lobbying and maybe it's not exactly lobbying. The country simply has a major American law firm hire the lobbyist or PR executive, and now you're not lobbying for Russia, you're providing litigation support for a certified American law firm. And it's 100 percent legal and outside the purview of the ever more meaningless FARA statute. Sound familiar, Perkins Coie is a huge player in this business of buffering the foreign relationship directly and make huge fees for doing so.
Mueller is dragging wide nets to find anything he can make stick and justify his existence. And in turn justify his fees and all his firm buddies.
Never take a hostage you aren't willing to shoot,
Remember, America doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.
Code 7 10-42
