Got paranoia? Manafort and Assange

Photo via The Mermaid's Tale.

This Guardian story, on Paul Manafort's previously unreported visits to Julian Assange's quarters in the Ecuadoran embassy in London, has colossal implications for my understanding of the whole history of Russia's engagement in the Trump campaign:

Sources have said Manafort went to see Assange in 2013, 2015 and in spring 2016 – during the period when he was made a key figure in Trump’s push for the White House.

In March 2016, to be precise, at some point in the sequence in which

• Manafort, with the backing of Tom Barrack, sends Trump a letter offering his services to the campaign, for free, February 29
• George Papadopoulos, living in London, hears from Sam Clovis that he's been appointed a Trump advisor, March 6
• Papadopoulos meets Professor Mifsud in Italy and gets idea of being important as Trump's Russia contact, March 14
• John Podesta's email account with the Hillary Clinton campaign is attacked by Fancy Bear group, March 19
• Trump reveals names of his foreign policy team, including Papadopoulos and, of course, Carter Page, Ph.D., another Clovis recruit, March 21
• Papadopoulos meets with Mifsud and, apparently, Olga Polonskaya, in London, March 24
• Trump hires Manafort, March 29
• Flynn has first secret contacts with Russia as a Trump employee, April
• Fancy Bear attacks on Democratic National Committee email systems begin, April (more effectively carrying on attacks that have been ongoing since summer 2015)

Manafort’s 2016 visit to Assange lasted about 40 minutes, one source said, adding that the American was casually dressed when he exited the embassy, wearing sandy-coloured chinos, a cardigan and a light-coloured shirt.

Visitors normally register with embassy security guards and show their passports. Sources in Ecuador, however, say Manafort was not logged.

So it is very consistent with the possibility that Manafort could have been visiting Assange to pass on some cheery news, that he had a gig for WikiLeaks, to publish some secret documents associated with Hillary Clinton, and presumably instructions, addresses, and other necessities. As well as, perhaps, catching up with Papadopoulos on some London visit.

Especially since, as we learn from this piece, Manafort first hung out with Assange in 2012-13, which just happens to be around the time WikiLeaks was publishing the stolen drafts from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations, in crated editions designed to make it look like a criminal enterprise, another project that might be pleasing to the Putin government.

In other words it's starting to look as if Manafort was running the whole show, not as a Trump agent but a Russia one (and a Roger Stone agent, too, no doubt, as he'd been all his working life). Which would not be to say that the Trump campaign or Trump himself were innocent: they agreed to accept the Russian government's assistance in the campaign, in particular in and around the June 9 Trump Tower meeting (Manafort stage-managing the thing to make his own presence appear to be by chance), and committed to their own quidproquo (the easing of Russian sanctions and support for Russia's Ukraine policy), though they never did make a very good job of it (they're incompetent at government, and it was a terrible idea anyway).

I hesitated for a long time to think of Manafort as the center of the plot, entering the Trump campaign as a Russian agent, because I couldn't reconcile it with his desperate attempts to get Oleg Deripaska's attention at the same time: if he was already working for Russia, why would he be offering to work for Russia at the same time? But this now seems fairly simple, in the light of what we've learned about his financial situation; Russian intelligence couldn't have given him anywhere near the money he needed, particularly to settle his debt to Deripaska, and I don't suppose he wanted them even to have an idea how bad the situation was, which would have made him look unreliable or, conversely, too easy to manipulate. So he was trying to cash in on his access to the Trump campaign with Deripaska on the side, without letting Deripaska know who he was actually working for, alongside all his other crazed hunting for cash with the mortgage fraud and so forth. And without letting his Russian employers know about his approach to Deripaska either.

I think the insolubility of Manafort's triple game, trying to satisfy the FSB and Deripaska and Trump all at once that each of them was the object of his primary loyalty, could explain his irrational behavior right now. He's been conning so many people in so many different directions that he can't really come up with a single truth to tell the FBI. Lying is at this point the only way he can make any sense. Every move he makes digs his own perjury trap deeper. Luckily, Mueller clearly knows how to piece the story together.