Devines email to someone who has been convicted of conspiring against the US

[NCTraveler]

Link to tweet

/photo/1

[NCTraveler]

4. I never said he was convicted of anything.

That said, I’ve read the indictment and it’s pretty straight forward.

Still, I never said Manafort was convicted of anything. He will be soon.

[NCTraveler]

7. Yes. That is my thread title.

Who is the email addressed to?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. GAAH! My bad. That's what I get for reading too fast.

Sorry.

[csziggy]

9. Tad Devine's email was to Rick Gates, not to Paul Manafort

Rick Gates has pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States and making false statements. (https://www.justice.gov/file/1038801/download) He has not yet been sentenced.

[Wellstone ruled]

2. Okay,the responses are going to be

real interesting.

[SidDithers]

3. $10,000 per day. How could Bernie afford that rate?...nt

Sid

[NCTraveler]

5. Let's see....

10,000(365)/27....

Ohhh never mind.

[Me.]

24. One Wonders

"Even if he had a crisis of conscience, Devine’s employment history had relatively little effect on his professional standing, allowing him to eventually earn more than $10 million working for Sanders, to the chagrin of the Democratic Socialist’s supporters”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/bernie-sanders-strategist-tad-devine-paul-manafort-files-mueller

[Hortensis]

57. Lots of info in this article, but I question the author's motive.

The theme she's pushing is something she cannot possibly know, but she's pushing it anyway:

Whether Devine's embedding in the Sanders campaign involved collusion by him or anyone else with Russia or whether it was just plain old venal corruption. Her take is that Devine, a mid-level political operative who needed a job, just lucked into an astonishingly well paying one and swampy one with the Sanders campaign.

As to where the $10M actually came from, by now Mueller must know. This could be a total non-issue or something that will blow up big.

We do know the Sanders campaign was used by the Republicans and Russia as a tool to deliver America into the control of a Putin-influenced Republican white nationalist government. It's right to investigate and, of course, also right to wait for the results.

[Me.]

59. Many, Many Questions

as to him lucking into this, not sure on my part. He's no neophyte and been around a lot of blocks including running the Gore campaign. And, I believe he's worked with Manafort before, and while I'm not abso sure about that, it would say he knew what he was getting into. We'll find out what's what hopefully sooner than later. One of my questions is whether or not his testimony is part of a plea deal. So many possibilities/questions/so few answers.

[Hortensis]

62. Yes. I don't find the theme of lucked into particularly

lucrative corruption-- via the Sanders' campaign no less--credible without more information. But we'll see. I wouldn't have liked her pushing a collusion theme either at this point. And goodness knows there's so incredibly much money in any presidential campaign that overspending a few million here and there probably wouldn't even stand out.

But we're right to really not like all those Russian connections around Sanders' campaign. Investigation to make sure the Russians were merely using an aware-but-noncolluding candidate is necessary.

[Me.]

63. Totally Agree

"But we're right to really not like all those Russian connections around Sanders' campaign"

[Cha]

25. Excellent question.

[NCTraveler]

28. Adds up fast.

Tad Devine served as a senior strategist for the Sanders campaign and as president of Devine Mulvey Longabaugh. He was the campaign’s more establishment-friendly face, the Paul McCartney to campaign manager Jeff Weaver’s John Lennon. Unlike Weaver, whose entire political career had revolved around Sanders, Devine had more skin in Democratic politics than anyone else, perhaps even more than Bernie himself, having worked on a number of presidential campaigns—Al Gore’s and John Kerry’s among them. This cycle, Devine’s firm was paid just under $4.8 million for video and media production services and $438,403 for legal services. Devine also split a commission with Old Towne Media: Friends of the Earth Action is listed as a client of Devine Mulvey Longabaugh on the firm’s website.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/07/how_bernie_spent_his_millions_was_anything_but_revolutionary.html

[oberliner]

10. How was that email made public?

[NCTraveler]

12. Uretsky.

[oberliner]

20. What does that mean?

[George II]

30. Uretsky was the Sanders staffer who was fired for the DNC data breach in 2015.

https://www.cnn.com/2015/12/18/politics/sanders-dnc-data-breach-josh-uretsky/index.html

[oberliner]

32. Thanks for the info

Much appreciated - I didn't remember that name (and don't actually recall that incident).

[juxtaposed]

11. So, Devine could be a Russian operative Do we think Sanders knew? Could their have bee a mole in HRC

campaign?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

14. Devine is voluntarily cooperating with the prosecution as a witness in Manafort's trial

and is not in any legal jeopardy. So, probably not.

[NCTraveler]

15. I don't think Sanders knew a thing.

He was hired during a period of growth in his campaign that they couldn’t keep up with. Some things they let slide during that period. All recourses were geared toward crowd size. I really dislike Sanders yet I say to this day it was pretty brilliant how many things they cast to the side in order to promote crowd size. That even included limited review of FEC filings. I don’t begrudge him for it. Just the opposite. He had to do it and he did it well.

[juxtaposed]

18. I find this all interesting and intriguing at the same time.

What I said above, What moles were in HRC's campain at the time? This seems to be very extensive, and would be odd to not target HRC.

[NCTraveler]

21. Doing a bit more reading and I'm going to back off of my position above.

“He is not only a longtime client but a friend.”

Devine taking about Sanders.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2014/11/11/tad-devine-signs-on-to-work-with-bernie-sanders-on-potential-2016-run/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2f7bb7643bcb

Both Sanders and Uretsky signed on with Sanders near the end of 2015. Uretsky has a history of being involved with Democratic Party data.

[George II]

34. Devine signed on in November 2014, but he worked on Sanders' campaigns since the 1990s.

Last edited Fri Jul 27, 2018, 08:19 PM - Edit history (1)

Uretsky was the leader of the four-person team who hacked into the DNC database in December 2015 a few days before the first debate.

I'm sure Mueller is going to wind up connecting the dots that he finds.

[juxtaposed]

19. I feel HRC, and Sanders had no clue at the time.

[blm]

26. I highly doubt Sanders knew. Why would he think that someone who had worked for

both Gore and Kerry campaigns would be a mercenary for Russia. I would say Sanders was targeted by Russia and Devine, and there were likely other plants in HRC's campaign that we will eventually learn about soon enough.

[Squinch]

53. That doesn't put him in a very good light.

[Maven]

13. Apparently Devine was also responsible for coming up with "lock her up"

back in 2010:

Link to tweet

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

16. Was he also responsible for using it against Hillary?

Somehow, it doesn't seem like the kind of thing a campaign advisor for Al Gore and John Kerry would be doing.

[kcr]

22. His defense of his supporters at the Nevada Convention spoke volumes

never mind the whole DNC fiasco.

Who knew Al Gore and John Kerry had time machines....

[NCTraveler]

23. Manafort was also involved with that one.

There are photos of Manafort working on that election.

[yardwork]

43. Why was he working for Putin to install a puppet in Ukraine?

This can't be ignored.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

44. And obviously it hasn't been ignored, since he's being called as a witness in Manafort's trial.

But, as this Vanity Fair article explains, it's not likely to have been collusion as much as simply another lucrative deal, since political consultants are basically mercenaries who can often make more money working for foreign politicians, and there's little down-side even when they lose:

Despite the pearl-clutching across the Internet, both on Twitter and from the likes of the New York Post, it’s highly unlikely that Devine had a hand in any Russian collusion. A top Democratic strategist for Al Gore and John Kerry’s presidential campaigns, Devine worked closely with Manafort in 2010 to elect the pro-Russian Ukraninan president Viktor Yanukovych. He left the team two years later, however, when Yanukovych began to indulge his autocratic impulses, jailing political rival Yulia Tymoshenko. (Manafort, it seems, had no such qualms, continuing to defend his work in Ukraine even after he was placed under house arrest.) It’s far more likely that his appearance in Mueller’s filing is mere context—a footnote in Mueller’s efforts to lay bare the nature of Manafort’s work in Ukraine.

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. 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. types. 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. “In the Ukraine and in other post-communist countries, they have this misconception about Washington politics: They think that somehow if you sign up [Democratic messaging firm] AKPD or other former Obama people, you sign up the support of [Barack] 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 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 superlobbyist Tony Podesta, Clinton strategist Mark Penn, and John McCain’s presidential campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, on the pro-Yanukovych side, and Paul Begala and David Axelrod’s firm, AKPD Message and Media, on Tymoshenko’s. Nor did the trend stop after Yanukovych assumed power and began jailing his rivals: a Reuters article from 2013 reported that pro-Yanukovych groups had paid two of their Washington representatives $1.46 million, with $900,000 going to the Podesta Group. “A lot of people are making a lot of money off Ukraine’s political competition,” Bruce Jackson, president of the Project on Transitional Democracies, told Reuters at the time.

One could argue that Devine knew what he was getting into. In 2010, when the future Sanders adviser began working for Yanukovych, the Ukrainian leader and his Party of Regions had already been suspected of poisoning their political rivals and murdering journalists. (Yanukovych has denied having anything to do with the dioxin attack that left half of Yushchenko’s face paralyzed.) But Washington has always turned a blind eye to the sketchy side-hustles of its consulting class. Even if he had a crisis of conscience, Devine’s employment history had relatively little effect on his professional standing, allowing him to eventually earn more than $10 million working for Sanders, to the chagrin of the Democratic Socialist’s supporters. That is, after all, why political operatives consult abroad. “If you help elect a president and then you get involved in a governor’s race and you lose, it’s going to be a little bit damaging to your reputation,” James Carville, who himself has consulted on races in more than 20 countries, told Politico in 2009. “But if you go to Peru and you run a presidential race and you lose, no one knows or cares. So why go to New Jersey and lose for 100 grand when you [can] go to Peru and lose for a million?”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/bernie-sanders-strategist-tad-devine-paul-manafort-files-mueller

[yardwork]

47. Lots of assurances there. Blah blah blah.

[George II]

50. "In 2010, when the future Sanders adviser....."

This is actually incorrect, Devine began working on Sanders campaigns almost 20 years earlier in the 1990s.

[uponit7771]

17. Didn't know about Sanders 2012 vote, something's f***** up really f***** up here

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

36. The other Senators who voted against the Magnitsky Act:

Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).

[yardwork]

39. Michigan and Rhode Island.

Michigan, home base of the DeVoses, who own a huge health care data corporation that is implicated in Russian interference with the 2016 election. And Eric Prince, Betsy's brother, who met with Russian operatives prior to the election.

Rhode Island mafia.

Just a few thoughts jump out....

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

41. Are you suggesting these liberal Democratic senators are somehow involved in Russian dirty deals

with the DeVos family? Really?

Yes, the Russians are implicated in a lot of bad stuff, but just because there might be Russian deals occurring somewhere with someone in some state, that doesn't mean all the politicians in that state are somehow involved and are "dirty." The reason Levin voted against the Magnitsky act was that its sanctions didn't go far enough:

Levin said Wednesday that he would have preferred that the Senate vote on its version of the bill, which included the sanctions worldwide, rather than just affecting Russia.

“I don’t understand why we’re not taking up the Senate version and applying these standards universally,” Levin said on the Senate floor Wednesday night. “The only answer I can get is that the House might not pass the Senate version. Well, we should do what we think is right.”

http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/271455-senate-passes-russia-trade-bill

[yardwork]

42. We ignore plain facts at our peril. At this point, I trust nobody.

Are you suggesting that some Democratic politicians should be above scrutiny?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

45. Not at all. But I'd like to see some actual evidence rather than assume guilt by association.

[yardwork]

46. Mueller is gathering evidence and now people are being charged and convicted.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

49. Yes, they are.

And we'll see who gets caught in the net, but these prosecutions generally start with little fish and work their way up to big ones. Manafort is a big fish; the little ones have already been charged.

By the way, I'm wondering why suggestions of Russian collusion are not being made about Tony Podesta, Mark Penn and Steve Schmidt, all of whom also did consulting work for Yanukovych. Why just Tad Devine?

[George II]

48. None of those three voted against the Russia sanctions last year.

Only one Senator voted against both.

[yardwork]

51. The misleading statements almost seem... coordinated.

[George II]

55. Thankfully Mueller and his staff have all the dots, now it's just a matter...

....of connecting them. I'm sure he's well on the way to doing that, too.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

52. And here's why:

In response to the criticism, Sanders tweeted: “I am strongly supportive of sanctions on Russia and North Korea. However, I worry very much about President Trump’s approach to Iran. Following Trump’s comments that he won’t re-certify Iran’s compliance with the nuclear agreement I worry new sanctions could endanger it.”

H.R. 3364 lumps Russia and Iran sanctions together, giving both parties incentive to ensure its passage. With Democrats eager to punish Russia for its election interference in order to put Trump in a bind, and Republicans unhappy with Obama’s Iran deal wanting to crack down on Iran, politicians on both sides had incentive to overlook potential problems with the bill.

And, of course, Trump did pull out of the Iran deal, which is what Sanders was worried about at the time of the vote and why he voted against the bill. It's always nice to know the actual reasons for a vote before making assumptions. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernies-vote-on-sanctions-was-about-protecting-the-iran-deal-from-trump_us_597df7f8e4b0da64e879b55e

[George II]

54. Yes, we know. It's always something. I suppose 98 other Senators - Democrats, republican....

....and Independent were wrong.

And as you point out, the Iran Deal is no more.

The bottom line is that there have been two very important votes against Russia in the last few years, only one voted against both.

[Power 2 the People]

58. President Obama,Secretary Clinton and John Kerry also opposed it.

Browder wanted the U.S. to go after the Russian officials responsible for Magnitsky’s death, but his timing was terrible. The bill began gaining steam in 2011, just as the administration was focused on normalizing trade relations with Russia ahead of its scheduled entrance into the World Trade Organization the following year. Officials from the State Department, Treasury Department, and President Barack Obama’s National Security Council fanned out across Capitol Hill to lobby against the bill and argue that the administration already had enough power to impose sanctions on Russia.

"The administration, starting with Hillary Clinton and then John Kerry, did everything they could do to stop the Magnitsky act," Browder said in an interview.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

60. Then I guess they must be Russian assets, too.

[Power 2 the People]

27. Scary stuff. All of these people on our side who have connections to Manafort and Russia

Trump will spin it wildly if they find emails from Mark Penn and Stan Greenberg, both Clinton strategists who both worked for Manafort and the Russians. And David Axelrod's company did the same thing. Steve Schmidt is a Republican but he is virulently anti-Trump and he did too. Why does everything have to be so dirty? Is the money really worth it to sully their names and our party?

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2014/02/21/ukraines-long-history-with-us-political-consultants-and-lobbyists]

The only thing that makes me feel slightly better is that Devine is voluntarily working for Mueller and hasn't been charged with a crime or asked for immunity. Mueller has assured him he is not being investigated for a crime. I guess it's wrong of us to jump to conclusions until we know all the facts. Looking forward to his testimony.

[NCTraveler]

29. I think the payday is bigger and easier for them in many places.

In Manaforts case, much of it is also tax free.

[Power 2 the People]

31. I could never sell my soul like that

Sickening.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

35. Guilt by association?

If there is actual evidence that Devine's connections with Manafort and Gates are somehow suspect, I should think Mueller would have already subpoenaed him to testify before a grand jury as a subject or possibly even a target. Since he is instead voluntarily testifying for the prosecution and has been assured he is not under legal jeopardy, it would appear that he has not been working for the Russians. Bernie isn't a Russian spy either, although that seems to be what some would like to believe.

[Power 2 the People]

37. Yep

They are dancing around it but that's the intent of these multiple posts about Devine.

[PubliusEnigma]

33. Bernie Sanders, Useful Idiot

[yardwork]

38. The "lock her up" chant was used against a female candidate in the Ukraine.

We heard from the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower that Trump's entire campaign was prescripted before he became the nominee. All the slogans like "make America great again" and "lock her up" had already been created and were handed to Trump when he became the nominee.

It looks like the same campaign slogans were used years ago when Putin interfered with the Ukrainian election, defeating the female nominee and installing a puppet.

And Bernie Sanders' campaign manager was in the middle of that Ukrainian campaign.

Wow.

[markses66]

40. The day when people admit what actually happened in 2016 is still far off

Too much ego at stake. It's hard having been taken so utterly.

Many people will one day deny supporting who they supported, I'll tell you that much. But not for a while, and only if we survive. And that's far from assured.

[we can do it]

56. I've given up on trying to like Sanders.

[Blue_true]

61. I always thought that it was bizzarre how Manafort just showed up out of the blue and got

a key position in the Trump campaign. I follow politics enough that I know the names, generally, of power players. Manafort came out of nowhere.