In the late 2000s and early 2010s, high-powered political operatives who found themselves drawn to Tymoshenko and Yanukovych remunerative cage match included not only Manafort and Devine, but Democratic super-lobbyist Tony Podesta and Clinton strategist Mark Penn on the pro-Yanukovych side, and Paul Begala and David Axelrod’s firm, AKPD Message and Media, on Tymoshenko’s. “In the Ukraine and in other post-communist countries, they have this misconception about Washington politics: They think that somehow if you sign up AKPD or other former Obama people, you sign up the support of Obama,” Taras Kuzio, an academic in Ukraine studies and political consultant, told Politico at the time, adding that generally, post-communists political operatives did not “understand the separation of business and politics.” In 2009, Politico reported that operatives found Ukraine, a “somewhat surreal Eastern European replay of the 2008 campaign,” to be particularly “lucrative,” with Ukrainians willing to pay top dollar to consult with anyone connected to high-level American politicians. Though working on international campaigns is de rigueur for political operatives coming off an election, Ukrainian politics held an especially strong interest among D.C. There is, however, a rich backstory behind Devine’s appearance in the filing-one that smells less like collusion than it reeks of the swamp. Buried in the list of exhibits, however, is a broader indictment of Washington’s foreign-lobbying culture-one that includes another key figure in the 2016 election: Tad Devine, former chief strategist for Bernie Sanders. (He has pleaded not guilty.) On Thursday, the Mueller team submitted more than 500 pieces of evidence to a federal judge intended to show that Trump’s former campaign chairman committed bank and tax fraud, with the purchases (antique rugs, Yankees tickets, in-house putting greens) to prove it. Now, caught in Robert Mueller’s dragnet, and facing numerous counts of money laundering, tax fraud, and witness tampering, Manafort will soon stand trial in a case that will likely render judgment on his long career in the dark trenches of K-Street. It was his ties to the former Soviet Union, after all, that initially fueled accusations that Donald Trump colluded with the Kremlin. ![]() For bad or for worse, Paul Manafort may go down as one of the most consequential lobbyists in American history.
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