How Paul Manafort Tried to Make Money With a Project Supposedly Tied to the Chinese Regime

[Nevilledog]

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/05/paul-manafort-china-trump-doorways/


In March, the politerati were atwitter over what appeared major news: Longtime political operator, lobbyist, wheeler-dealer, and (pardoned) felon Paul Manafort was in talks to join Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. This seemed an odd move, given all of Manafort’s schemings over the years. A more recent Manafort business venture—unknown to the public—raises further questions about him and his attempt to return to the Trump fold. According to documents obtained by Mother Jones—including a memo written by Manafort—two years ago, Manafort was trying to orchestrate a $250 million deal to create a streaming service in China in a project that he asserted was blessed by the Chinese government and that was partnering with a Chinese telecommunications firm sanctioned by the US government.

On Friday morning, the Washington Post, which obtained the same documents, broke the news of Manafort’s involvement in this endeavor.

Manafort was Trump’s campaign manager for part of 2016—until Trump dumped him after allegations emerged that Manafort had pocketed $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments a few years earlier from a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine. (His lawyer denied he had received this money.) Two years later, as a result of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Trump-Russia scandal, Manafort was found guilty of and pleaded guilty to assorted financial crimes related to his consulting work in Ukraine, including bank fraud and conspiring to defraud the United States. He was sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison and sent off to the hoosegow. (He was released to home confinement during the Covid pandemic.) In 2020, a bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee declared Manafort a “grave counterintelligence threat,” revealing that during the 2016 race he had repeatedly passed Trump campaign inside information to a former business associate who was a “Russian intelligence officer” and a “Kremlin agent.” In his final weeks in the White House, Trump pardoned Manafort.

In the years since Trump cleaned his slate, Manafort has mostly maintained a low public profile. During part of that stretch, he privately endeavored to facilitate a huge deal in China. Emails and memos show that in May 2022 Manafort was working with a privately-held Hong Kong-based company called Standard Huaxia Limited to set up a new streaming company in China dubbed Doorways. Manafort and his colleagues were looking to raise an initial $25 million for the project that Manafort noted was seeking $250 million.

*snip*