Apparently Theresa May’s strategy is to let the clock go “tick, tick, tick” until the Parliament is forced either to accept her terrible plan, which has been shot down yet again by an embarrassing margin in a vote last night, or accept a “No Deal” Brexit.

What’s really just as, if not more, likely to happen is her Government will fall and Snap Elections called or Parliment votes to ask the EU for an extension after which her Government will fall and Snap Elections are called.

It’s a win, win except that Jeremy Corbyn has not exactly covered himself in glory. He’s advocating more concessions to the EU which May will not and can not grant because of her ERG and DUP Freedom Caucus Wingnuts (Softer Brexit), instead of committing to a Second Referendum which is what he should be doing.

I don’t know why having a Second Referendum would be such an affront to Democracy and the Democratic Process anyway.

Theresa May defeated on Brexit again as ERG Tories abstain
By Rowena Mason, Jessica Elgot, and Daniel Boffey, The Guardian
Thu 14 Feb 2019

Theresa May has suffered an embarrassing defeat at the hands of hardline Eurosceptics, plunging her hopes of uniting the Conservatives around a renegotiated Brexit deal into chaos.

The prime minister failed to win support for her EU strategy after the European Research Group (ERG), led by Jacob Rees-Mogg, abstained on a government motion because it appeared to rule out a no-deal Brexit.

The defeat marks the end of a temporary truce over Brexit among Conservative MPs, who had voted last month in favour of May’s strategy if she could obtain some concessions from Brussels on the issue of the Northern Ireland backstop.

The prime minister was not present for the House of Commons defeat, by 303 votes to 258, in which she again lost control of her party in the crucial final weeks before Britain is due to leave the EU on 29 March.
…
In Brussels, diplomats said the result confirmed that the prime minister was incapable of commanding the support of her party on key votes, and that she needed to work cross-party. “No one can take any good from this,” said one diplomat.

The vote is not binding but it appeared to be a show of strength by around 60 MPs in the ERG, which included Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary; Dominic Raab, the former Brexit secretary; and Steve Baker, the former Brexit minister. A small number of pro-EU MPs also refused to back the motion.

Senior figures in the ERG used the result to increase pressure on the government to adopt the so-called Malthouse compromise – a proposal to use unspecified technology to avoid customs checks at the Irish border – which the EU appears likely to reject. Many in the ERG would be equally happy to see a no-deal Brexit.

No 10 played down the significance of the vote and insisted that May understood the concerns of the ERG. However, that appeared only to infuriate many remain-supporting Tories who are determined to block a no-deal Brexit.
…
Nick Boles, a former government minister, said the vote should be a wake-up call to May that she cannot rely on the ERG’s support.

“Maybe, just maybe, the penny will now drop with prime minister and her chief whip that the hardliners in the ERG want a no-deal Brexit and will stop at nothing to get it,” he said. “Responsible MPs of all parties must come together on 27 and 28 March and stop them.”

In an escalation of tensions, Richard Harrington, one of May’s business ministers, even suggested MPs in the ERG should join Ukip.

“The prime minister has done a pretty good job of standing up to them up till now, but they were drinking champagne to celebrate her losing her deal and I regard that as being treachery,” he told the House magazine.

“I read that Nigel Farage is setting up a new party called ‘Brexit’ and if I were them I’d be looking at that, because that seems to reflect their views more than the Conservative party does. They should read carefully what that party’s got to offer, because in my view they’re not Conservatives.

“There are people who are very solid and stringent in their views and if I were they I would be looking at a party that seems designed for them – Nigel Farage’s party.”
…
Labour sources said panicking Conservative whips had discussed the possibility with them of accepting a Labour motion and voting with the opposition in order to avoid an embarrassing defeat. Ultimately, however, they decided to accept a humiliating loss rather than appear to join forces with the opposition.

Labour also suffered a split as 41 backbench rebels voted with the SNP to delay Brexit. Those defying the party whip included Chuka Umunna, Chris Leslie, David Lammy, Luciana Berger and Margaret Hodge. They were joined by two pro-EU Conservatives – Ken Clarke and Sarah Wollaston.

Keep Calm. Carry On.

So last night we had alarms and excursions (Ok, you may not be familiar with that expression, it’s Elizabethan Theater stage direction, an alarm is just that, excursion in this sense means everyone leaves the Stage and “goes on a trip” to the Wings. I use excursion here in it’s secondary meaning of launching into bloviating discourse. Clever eh?) over Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio’s promise/threat to declare a “State of Emergency” and steal money from other Government Programs ($8 Billion is being bandied about currently).

Democrats in Disarray!

Pfui.

The situation is exactly the same as it was when the Congressional Compromise to fund the Government was reached. Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio gets Zero Dollars for his Vanity Project Penis Wall O’ Racism (the $1.4 Billion is for Fencing, Barriers, and Repairs), in fact the biggest section of the Bill is the list of things Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio can’t do with the money. It passed with a thunderous Veto Proof majority in the Senate and a nearly Veto Proof majority in the House. Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio loses, bigly.

It was always a threat that he’d declare a “State of Emergency” and if he does- so what?

There are at least 2 ways this will be thwarted. First of all Congress can simply vote to lift the “State of Emergency”. Nancy Pelosi will certainly introduce a binding resolution to do so in the House, which she will win. According to the National Emergency Act Mitch McConnell is forced to hold a vote in the Senate where, Surprise!, only a simple majority is needed to pass it.

Why would Republicans defect? Well, there’s this little thing called Eminent Domain that would be needed to seize the land and Republicans as a rule consider that Expropriation of Property which they’re against.

Also, if upheld in Court, Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio will establish the precedent that the next Democratic Administration can take everybody’s Guns away as soon as there’s another School Massacre (sadly inevitable).

And upheld in Court. That’s the second way this will be thwarted. The clear language of the National Emergency Act and the U.S. Constitution make this highly illegal despite the bootlicking opinion of his house lawyers in the OLC. Not to mention that each and every land siezure will be litigated, they already are.

He is losing and is seen as a Loser by everyone except the Media Moron Versailles Villagers who are visibly desperate for any excuse to parrot their Bothsiderist Vacuous Vapidities.

But wait! There’s More!

Trump’s company officially halts hotel expansion
By Jonathan O’Connell and David A. Fahrenthold, Washington Post
February 14, 2019

President Trump’s company officially shelved plans Friday to create two hotel chains aimed at reaching customers mostly in places where the president has become politically popular.

The president’s eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, who took over the company when Trump entered the White House, cited political attacks and negative media coverage in announcing the decision.

The brothers announced plans for the two lower-cost chains in a reception at Trump Tower shortly after Trump took office. Since then, the company has come under near-constant scrutiny from ethics officials and congressional Democrats over its business practices. After initially saying the company had dozens of deals in the works, no hotels, under the chain names of Scion and American Idea, have opened.

“We live in a climate where everything will be used against us, whether by the fake news or by Democrats who are only interested in Presidential harassment and wasting everyone’s time,” Eric Trump said in a statement Thursday.

The decision marked a first voluntary step back for the company since Trump took office.

When it launched the brands, the company announced that the first Scion and American Idea hotels would be in the Mississippi Delta, through a partnership with Mississippi businessman Dinesh Chawla and his brother, Suresh.

The Chawlas, owners of 18 hotels in the Gulf Coast region, are developing a 100-room hotel and conference center on 17 acres in Cleveland, Miss. The project is expected to cost the family more than $20 million and was to be the nation’s first Scion before the Trump Organization cut ties with the family this week.
…
With Trump in office, the Trump Organization agreed not to pursue any new foreign deals, canceling what the company says was “ ‘billions of dollars’ worth of projects.” The company also restricted who could invest in its properties and hired an outside ethics counsel to review any new projects that it was planning to pursue.

But because the president continues to hold a financial interest in the company, the Trump Organization has come under fire from critics charging that the company — and its expansion plans in particular — create conflicts of interest.

In two lawsuits wending their way through federal courts, the attorneys general of the District of Columbia and Maryland argue Trump is violating the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bars gifts or payments from foreign or state governments.

Democrats on Capitol Hill are preparing a series of investigations into the president’s business, focused particularly on his D.C. hotel, which has benefited from spending by foreign governments and federal lobbyists.

Most recently, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) wrote to the Trump Organization demanding information about why T-Mobile executives had booked dozens of rooms at the Trump D.C. hotel after asking the Trump administration to approve a major merger.

With expansion made difficult, the Trump Organization has been left to defend its position in existing properties. The company lost branding and management deals for hotels in Toronto, Panama and New York. And owners of apartment and condominium complexes in New York have taken the Trump name down, saying the brand was hurting their property values.

In recent weeks, the company has been purging undocumented workers from the staffs of at least five of its golf properties.

Trump’s sons indicated they plan to restart their plans when their father leaves office.

“When politics are over, we will resume doing what we do best which is building the best and most luxurious properties in the world — the interest in the Trump brand has never been stronger,” Donald Trump Jr. said in the statement.

It will be interesting to see how Junior accomplishes that from his prison cell in Ossining.

Love – Off The Air

Yeah, I know it isn’t Valentines Day anymore. YouTube disagrees, you should see my suggestions screen.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

The U.S. battleship Maine explodes in Havana harbor, bringing America closer to war with Spain; The Soviet Union’s last troops leave Afghanistan; Astronomer Galileo and suffragist Susan B. Anthony born.

Education remains the key to both economic and political empowerment.

Barbara Jordan

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Destination Wedding With Gritty

Fat Shaming Doctors

Stock Footage

Featuring Herr Doktor Professor

Can you handle the truth?  How about a good story?

If you are a regular reader you may know that I was State Co-ordinator of my meatspace club.  You may not know I was engaged.

Yes I know, hard to believe anyone can stand ek for 5 minutes in a row, let alone want to spend the rest of their life with me.  But it was true.  She loved me.  A lot.

When we met I told her I was a practicing politician on the make, and what I wanted more than anything was to be King.  And then I was.

The National club was having a little get together in Vegas and as Incoming King I had to get there a day early for my special super secret training.  There was training for spouses too, not that we would have traveled separately anyway.

Part of being ek is procrastinating to the very last second, and then packing everything- kitchen sink included.  By the time we reached the airport for our evening red eye I had already been up for 24 hours.  It was a great disappointment to me that all the restaurants, bars, and gift shops were closed.  And our flight was delayed so I was really looking forward to my bag of peanuts on the plane.

Three cramped hours later in Vegas it is still midnight, my love was dragging and so was I, but-

When you’re on the make, you make things happen.  My political handlers were there to greet me in the lobby.  They had super, super secret training which I found out basically consisted of adjourning early and heading for the bar to trade lies.  They wanted me to circulate and make contacts.

Well, you have to make your marks.

I checked in, took my sweetie to our room and said goodnight.  Not the best goodnight I’ve ever given, but I was still a little cranky.  When I got all respectable again, I went back down to meet and greet.

Just as I was calling the whole thing a stupid waste of time, the delegation from my largest local rolls in.  I had to be nice to them, and they had to be nice to me.  Even so I was genuinely flattered that they invited me out to $1.99 breakfast with them.  It was Vegas, it was a good breakfast.

The sun comes up early on my birthday and I had all that super secret training to get through (mostly meeting the club’s corporate sponsors) so I went back to my room and got respectable yet again, woke up my honey and we went off to get trained.

I’ve already told you the valuable information I got.  My fiance got 4 hours of “you will never see him again” and totally embarrassed me (or so people say) by not sucking it up stoically but wailing “I love him so much”.  And she did, even when we broke up.

We had an awkward lunch together that consisted mostly of salad.  Two more hours of propaganda and we were free.

Well kind of.  In one of those coincidences that happens only in real life, her brother from California was also in Vegas, finishing up a business meeting.  We had about an hour of overlap before he had to jet out.

Wait, it gets better.  When we got back to the room there was a cake from room service.  Emily, my mom, didn’t forget my birthday (even though I was born in the age of epidurals) and had sent me the most expensive cake she never got to eat.  It was good, chocolate with chocolate icing and raspberry filling and some fresh raspberries on top.

Did I say I was wicked?  No rest for.  The one thing my sweetheart wanted to see in Vegas was the Hard Rock Hotel.  Now.  My problem was the incoming chief of the whole shebang was holding a party at 6 pm.  Attendance mandatory.

Incoming chief?  It was a contested race, the other guy could have won.  Who says this isn’t about politics?

Sure honey, we have an hour.  Let’s go.

Got my Hard Rock pin to go in my collection, got my complimentary shot glass.  Put a whole buck of slots on my Hard Rock card which still sits in my wallet to remind me of my misspent youth.  Let’s go.

She was not happy, being hustled around.  I was not happy to do it, but you make your marks.   The chosen one had rented the Grand Ballroom at the top of the Hotel and we arrived breathless and cranky at 5:59.  The line was not long and at 6:05 the other couple left.

At 6:06 the doors opened on this ballroom that occupied the entire floor.  The view was spectacular, all up and down the Strip.  There were 2 Champagne Fountains and 2 Chocolate Dippers.  There were buffet tables and carving stations.  THERE WAS AN OPEN BAR!  Four of them, it’s a fun club.

So basically there were 20 people there.  And me.  And my sweetheart.  All sweaty and flushed and tired, our credentials flopping around our necks.

Remember the scene in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy and company go down the hall?  It was kind of like that, only bigger and longer.  At the end of (no kidding) about a quarter of a mile was the DJ.  We wandered up and said hi and he said- “So is there anything you want to hear?”  I let her pick the song.  It was slow and sappy and we grabbed each other and spun around, alone on acres of dance floor, on top of the world.

After a while some other people showed up so we could ditch, can’t leave a party before it’s started- that would be rude.  We went back to our room and said goodnight again.  I was much better this time, and after an hour or 2 I got respectable, this time in my tux (I own one, cheaper than real clothes) so I could go back to the party and kiss the ring.

It’s all about kissing the ring.

This was a totally different scene.  Though the opposition candidate would come as close as anyone in the previous 10 years to defeating the chosen one, he had totally moved his lame ass party to one corner of the ballroom at the invitation of the magnanimous eventual victor and everyone was doing group shots to ease the sting of their inevitable defeat.  The rest of the place was crowded with people looking for free booze and food (did I mention it’s a fun club?).

I kissed both rings.  It was easy, they were both standing together, the one who would be King and the one who would get a paid staff position as his consolation prize.  No more phoney they than my wishing them both good luck even though I had my marching orders.  And when the time came to convince my delegation to vote for the chosen one, my eloquence changed 60/40 challenger to 80/20 chosen, invoking our block vote rule and sparing us any loss of face as a state.

I was grabbed by a fellow classmate, a state King on the make for the top and dragooned into a conga line of Incoming Kings that he led from bar to bar in the ballroom, bullying his way to the front of the line and buying us all free drinks.

But enough of that is certainly enough and besides I had work to do.  One of the things they teach you in super secret training is to cultivate your base.  In this case that meant post cards to every local officer who was not able to attend.  I stopped at the gift shop in the lobby and picked up the post cards (an assortment, can’t have people comparing notes) and a bottle of Champagne (how do you avoid a hangover for 7 days?  Stay drunk for 6).  You can’t wait to do this because they have to arrive before you return.

When I went in the room my sweetheart woke up, saw the Champagne and said, “Oh, is that for us?”  Sure darling.  I opened it, poured us both a glass.  She took one sip, we kissed, and then she mumbled, “G’night” and rolled away.

So my plan worked perfectly.  About 4 am I was out of cards and out of Champagne so I headed to the lobby again, mostly hoping I could hook up with my breakfast buddies from the day before.  And I did.

Nothing like a good breakfast to energize you.  All the basic food groups, grease and salt and sugar and caffeine, and a mutual game of ring kissing with new friends was a great way to pass the time.  Soon I had to let them pick up my tab and move on.  I went back to my room, showered, changed, wrote my honey a note (because I was in training all day and she was done and had no agenda), and gently shook her awake.  We had a nice chat and then it was time for me to go.

Gotta make your marks.

Now I know what you’re saying- ek you’ve been up for 72 hours.  You should be dead.  Not true, I had a whole 2 hours of sleep on the plane.  And I had meetings, close your eyes, pretend to pay attention, and you can snooze 15 minutes out of every 20.  In great need of chemical stimulation, at the break I bummed my very last cigarette so far- a Merit Light King.

At 3 pm the torture was over and I didn’t have a mark to make until 6.  I went back to my room, hooked up with my sweetie (she had rolled out around 10 and spent a few hours shopping and having lunch with friends), and loosened my tie and napped.  She got many, many ‘candid’ snapshots.

And at 6 we loaded up on the bus for ‘Old Las Vegas’ where there was a big street party.  Thank goodness for busses, I was able to get a half hour head start on my nap on the way home.

When I woke up at 4 am I was hungry.  My fiance was immovable.  I wrote her a note and snuck off to have breakfast.

So that was Las Vegas for a micro-politician on the make.
…

It went on for a week like that, we actually spent a fair amount of time together after the initial 3 days, shows, restaurants, endless meetings at the Convention Center.

I pause here to pass along a great lesson she gave me.  The most important I took away from Las Vegas.

The food at the Convention Center was terrible.  The first day we got 2 Plastic Pizzas for lunch.  They were about the size of hockey pucks and tasted about the same too.  The second day the Outgoing King gave me a wink and a nod and we joined the Kool Kidz across the street for a lunch that was at least edible.

Afterwards at the light she held my arm and while everyone else went ahead we missed it.  When she turned to me she was as angry as I’ve ever seen her and she said- “Don’t you ever do that again!”

What?

“How do you think those people feel?”, and she pointed at the Convention Center.

She was absolutely right.

You can be King or you can lead.

Lead- be the first and have people follow you.

If you want to be a leader, you have to lead.  You have to be the first.  The first person to pick up a sack and clean up the garbage.  The first person to volunteer to make the phone calls.  The first person to have a hot dog and quip- “What, no Rat?  Only Glue?”

We never crossed the street again, making polite excuses and throwing away styrofoam boxes filled with styrofoam at the same table as everyone else.  As time progressed there were more and more ‘Puffs’ and less Paris Gellers, but we stayed to the bitter end.

Thank you darling, I will never forget.
…

Some of you may be curious about our break up at this point, but it’s really very simple.  I was a Captain, but she was not the Enterprise and that was what she desperately wanted.  She loved me with a single minded focus I did not share. She was unhappy when I spoke with another woman, or another man, or spent any time away from her.  For my part I couldn’t live up to her expectations- I am after all shallow and one dimensional, I’ve never pushed a noun against a verb except to blow something up.

Since then I’ve never been with anyone else, not that I’ve worried about it- my ego is self sustaining.  I understand she is marrying her 2nd grade crush this summer.  Good for her.  I hope he makes her happy, she deserves it.

I will always remember dancing alone with her in a ballroom in the sky over Vegas.

El Paso

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre; Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini calls on Muslims to kill author Salman Rushdie; Slobodan Milosevic begins his defense against war crimes charges; Dolly the cloned sheep dies.

erty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

Frederick Douglass

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One of the things I like to do is point out seminal pieces. This one from WaPo has been the subject of pretty constant comment and reports a meeting on August 2nd, 2016 between Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, and Konstantin Kilimnik, Manafort’s partner in his Ukrainian Political Consulting operation in a Cigar Club named the Havana Room located at 666 5th Avenue, Jared Kushner’s White Elephant.

What we actually know about it is Rick Gates is co-operating with Mueller so I suppose he knows all. Manafort for his part insists it was just a friendly get together with an old friend and all they did was gossip about Ukrainian politics, it was however around the time that the Campaign’s private polling made it’s way to the GRU and the Internet Research Agency.

The speculation is that “Ukrainian Political Gossip” is exactly the same thing as “Adoption Programs” in the more notorious June meeting that included Junior and Jared and it doesn’t seem at all far fetched to me that Manafort and Kilimnik’s chat was about the Quo of the Russian Treason Plot, namely lifting U.S. sanctions against Russia.

Oleg Deripaska denies ever meeting Kilimnik but it doesn’t take much imagination to see a straight line from Manafort to Kilimnik to Deripaska to the GRU or, of course from Manafort to Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio.

Does this development advance things? Maybe not so much as is stuff we already mostly knew, though not the specifics of them.

How Manafort’s 2016 meeting with a Russian employee at New York cigar club goes to ‘the heart’ of Mueller’s probe
By Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger, Washington Post
February 12, 2019

The Aug. 2, 2016, encounter between the senior Trump campaign officials and Kilimnik, who prosecutors allege has ties to Russian intelligence, has emerged in recent days as a potential fulcrum in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation.

It was at that meeting that prosecutors believe Manafort and Kilimnik may have exchanged key information relevant to Russia and Trump’s presidential bid. The encounter goes “very much to the heart of what the special counsel’s office is investigating,” prosecutor Andrew Weissmann told a federal judge in a sealed hearing last week.

One subject the men discussed was a proposed resolution to the conflict over Ukraine, an issue of great interest to the Russian government, according to a partially redacted transcript of the Feb. 4 hearing.

During the hearing, the judge also appeared to allude to another possible interaction at the Havana Room gathering: a handoff by Manafort of internal polling data from Trump’s presidential campaign to his Russian associate.
…
There have long been questions about why Manafort would break away from his duties running Trump’s campaign to meet with his Russian employee, an encounter The Post first reported in 2017.

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA official who now teaches at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said that episode raises many red flags.

Manafort “goes way outside the normal bounds of behavior,” Mowatt-Larssen said.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation, called the details about what occurred at the Grand Havana Room gathering “the most interesting and potentially significant development we have seen in a long time.”

Prosecutors have alleged that among the false statements Manafort made to investigators during his interviews in recent months were key lies about the Aug. 2 meeting and other interactions with Kilimnik.
…
Less than two weeks earlier, the issue of Russia’s role in the campaign had exploded into view when WikiLeaks published thousands of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s supporters immediately fingered Russia in the hack, a view later embraced by U.S. intelligence agencies.

Instead of condemning the Kremlin, Trump mockingly asked Russia to find emails Clinton had deleted while serving as secretary of state. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said at a July 27 news conference.

Trump also made a series of public statements in July that appeared to echo Kremlin talking points on foreign policy. In an interview with the New York Times, he questioned the U.S. commitment to defending NATO partners from Russian aggression. Then he promised to look into recognizing Russia’s invasion of Crimea.

“You know, the people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were,” he said in an ABC News interview July 31.

In court last week, prosecutors focused on Manafort’s choice to meet with Kilimnik in person during this period.

“There is an in-person meeting at an unusual time for somebody who is the campaign chairman to be spending time and to be doing it in person,” Weissmann said.

At the same time, Manafort was strategizing about how to use his prominent role with the Trump campaign to halt a personal financial spiral, court records show. He owed millions in property taxes and for home improvements, insurance policies, credit cards and other debts, according to documents introduced during his trial in Virginia last summer.

Manafort viewed Kilimnik — his liaison to high-level Ukrainian politicians and Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska — as key to leveraging his unpaid role as Trump’s campaign chairman, emails reviewed by The Post show. The two were in frequent contact during Manafort’s tenure at Trump’s campaign, according to court records.

A Russian army veteran who had trained at a military language academy known as a feeder school for the intelligence services, Kilimnik had worked for Manafort since 2005, when he began serving as a translator for Manafort’s Ukraine operation.

In documents filed in court last year, Mueller’s prosecutors wrote that Gates, Manafort’s deputy, said Kilimnik told him he had formerly been an officer in the GRU, the Russian military intelligence unit accused of engineering the 2016 election interference. Prosecutors said the FBI has assessed that Kilimnik’s intelligence ties continued into 2016.
…
On July 29, 2016, Kilimnik wrote Manafort a cryptic note.

Kilimnik told Manafort he had met that day with the man who had given Manafort “the biggest black caviar jar several years ago.” The Post has previously reported that congressional investigators believed Kilimnik’s reference to “black caviar” was a code for money.

Kilimnik wrote that he and the man had talked for five hours and he had important messages to relay to Manafort as a result. Kilimnik asked when Manafort would be available to meet.

“Tuesday would be best,” Manafort responded. The following Tuesday was Aug. 2.

When they saw each other days later at the Grand Havana Room, one topic the men discussed was a peace proposal for Ukraine, an agenda item Russia was seeking as a key step to lift punishing economic sanctions, according to court records.

Prosecutors have accused Manafort of lying to them about how frequently he and Kilimnik discussed the matter — initially telling investigators he would not “countenance” the idea because he viewed it as a “backdoor” of some kind. Despite Manafort’s claim of disinterest, prosecutors said he and Kilimnik continued to pursue the subject in several subsequent meetings, including one in January 2017 when the Russian was in Washington for Trump’s inauguration.
…
There are also indications in the transcript of last week’s hearing that prosecutors have explored whether it was at the Manhattan cigar bar that Manafort shared polling data related to the 2016 White House race with Kilimnik — another topic about which Manafort lied, they allege.

The sharing of that data was first disclosed, apparently inadvertently, in a court filing by Manafort’s attorneys last month. At the time, it was unclear when Manafort passed along the information to his Russian employee — as well as the substance of the material.

During last week’s hearing, the judge devoted a significant portion of time to discussing what appeared to be the polling data — something she noted Manafort initially said “just was public information.”
…
During last week’s hearing, the judge devoted a significant portion of time to discussing what appeared to be the polling data — something she noted Manafort initially said “just was public information.”

Weissmann said Manafort had a motive to lie about sharing material with Kilimnik as he was running Trump’s campaign. “It’s obviously an extremely sensitive issue,” the prosecutor said, adding: “We can see what it is that he would be worried about.”

What exactly might have been shared with Kilimnik at the Grand Havana Room appears to be a matter of dispute.

On the day of the gathering, Manafort sent Gates an email asking him to print material for a meeting, according to court records. The substance of the material has not been publicly disclosed.
…
It is unclear how long Kilimnik remained in the United States after the Grand Havana Room meeting.

Flight records show that a private plane belonging to Deripaska landed at Newark Liberty International Airport shortly after midnight on Aug. 3, just hours after Kilimnik and Manafort met. The plane spent only a few hours on the ground before taking off again and returning to Moscow.

Larissa Belyaeva, a spokeswoman for Deripaska, said the plane carried only members of his family.

“We can confirm that Mr. Deripaska has never lent his private jet to Mr. Kilimnik nor has ever had any interaction with him,” she said.

In the days after the meeting, Manafort’s work in Ukraine bubbled into public view. On Aug. 19, he resigned from Trump’s campaign.

Jenny Nicholson