The Washington Post is reporting that, a year prior to FBI agents raiding the home of Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign manager sent a July 7, 2016 email to Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, offering to brief him on Trump’s campaign. Now that email, along with tens of thousands of other documents, has been handed over the Senate Investigative Committee as they continue to pressure Manafort.
There’s no evidence to suggest that Deripaska took Manafort up on his offer, though Manafort and the pro-Kremlin oligarch go back a long ways. They’ve been linked for a decade, but the relationship ultimately soured in 2014. Manafort’s effort to reach out might have been an attempt to get back into Deripaska’s good graces, or it could have been something more sinister. Two days after he sent the email, Manafort took on his campaign manager role for the Trump team.
Even if the email wasn’t part of an attempt to collude with Russia, it’s hardly out of character for Manafort to try and leverage his special relationship with Trump to further his own business dealings. Manafort might have emailed Deripaska in hopes that his rising political star and inside information might help him get his Russian clients to pay up. Even Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni admitted, “It’s no secret Mr. Manafort was owed money by past clients” while addressing the Deripaska email.
For his part, Deripaska wants no part of these revelations. His company’s spokeswoman told the Washington Post that their “manufactured questions” were “so grossly false and insinuating” that “even responding to these fake connotations provides them the patina of reality.” But there’s no denying that Deripaska’s name comes up over and over again in emails between Manafort and his long-time associate, Konstantin Kilimnik, often in coded language referring to “black caviar” or using Deripaska’s initials. Optics suggest there is more to this story than either Manafort or Deripaska would prefer to admit.
(Via Washington Post)