Why the Manafort/Gates prosecutions might drag Tad Devine in, [View all]

[pnwmom]

at least as a witness, if nothing else.

All three worked for pro-Putin Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych, on whose behalf the recently charged Dutch lawyer drafted the "Scadden report." The purpose of the Scadden report was to whitewash the political prosecution of another political leader whom Yanukovych had imprisoned.

Devine has not been publicly connected to that particular situation, but both Manafort and Devine were being paid at about the same time for the same general mission: to promote the interests of Yanukovych.

http://www.shakesville.com/2017/03/the-more-information-about-manafort-we.html

To recap: Both Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign chair, and Tad Devine, Sanders' chief strategist, worked for the pro-Putin Viktor Yanukovych. Joel Benenson, Clinton's chief strategist, worked for Yanukovych's anti-Putin rival Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Yanukovych was ousted in 2014, at which time Yatsenyuk became Prime Minister, the same year that Devine goes to work for Sanders. (Manafort onboarded with the Trump campaign later.)

So, two U.S. strategists worked for a pro-Putin Ukrainian, then each went to work for U.S. presidential campaigns whose chief opponent, in both cases, was Hillary Clinton, who is virulently hated by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Then both of those campaigns are given a huge assist by Russian hacking and a massive disinformation campaign orchestrated by Russian intelligence.

Now, just to be extremely clear that I'm not suggesting a straight-up equivalence between the two campaigns, let me point out a couple of major differences.

1. Tad Devine has not been accused of any illegal activities in association with his work for Yanukovych, unlike Paul Manafort.

2. Bernie Sanders, who has visited Russia, has not been, to my knowledge, suspected of being vulnerable by Russian kompromat cultivated on his visits, unlike Donald Trump.