Paul Manus joins Jack and Jack to discuss his experience covering the Russiagate trial of Peter Strzok, the author of Political Prisoner and former campaign chairman of the Trump 2016 campaign, Paul Manus, on this weekend's Human Events special.
00:09:28.760Because one of the decisions I made early on was my commitment to Ukraine was to elect a government that was going to bring Ukraine to Europe.
00:09:35.460So I because of the corruption that exists at all levels in Ukraine, I made the decision I was going to do no business in Ukraine other than run the campaigns and work to bring Ukraine in.
00:09:44.540And so I had the chances to represent the Burismas and the oligarchs of Ukraine.
00:09:50.000And as a result, when they thought they were going to find an easy chance of me mixing up with the oligarchs in corrupt situations, they couldn't find a thing.
00:10:14.620It was a copy of one page of a document that was a phony document that even the National Anti-Corruption Bureau that the U.S. government funded in Ukraine, even they, within a month, said this document is not real.
00:10:29.600You never heard the fake document part.
00:10:31.320You only heard about the Black Ledger and the millions of dollars in cash that I was paid that it reported to say.
00:10:37.260But that was what triggered the fair issue with me.
00:10:42.300Because I was working in Ukraine on political campaigns and working in Europe to bring Ukraine to Europe, I didn't have any fair obligations.
00:10:51.520I wasn't working in the United States.
00:10:53.360In fact, I had lobbyists who were doing the work in the United States that were filed, were filing.
00:10:58.920And so I never registered with fair for that, for the Ukrainian work.
00:11:03.280But when the fair office saw these clips about the cash Black Ledger, they contacted me and my lawyers.
00:11:12.880I showed them the evidence of what I was doing.
00:11:15.360And over a course of about three or four months, we reached an agreement that I would file for one year, very limited filing, because I wasn't, I didn't fit the bill, but it had gotten politically hot.
00:12:09.600Going back to the Obama 2015 to try and blunt the deflect Hunter Biden to the Clinton fake narrative to blunt her server issue.
00:12:19.080And, you know, to that now Weissman needing a link to Russia and them deciding that I was the hook because of the way the news had played out.
00:12:28.840So let's hold it right there, because I want to dig a little bit deeper on this and the fact that obviously Hunter Biden's over there operating in Ukraine.
00:12:46.460OK, we are back for our next segment here.
00:12:48.340We're sitting down with Paul Manafort for this human event special.
00:12:51.220When we just left, Paul, you were telling us about how the Obama administration, the George Soros Network, the Clinton Foundation Network, which includes Victor Pinchuk and so many other of these oligarchs, they were essentially working to cover up for what Hunter Biden was doing in Ukraine using your previous work in Ukraine as a way to go after this.
00:13:14.360Were you aware at all that Hunter Biden was over there, Burisma, any of these things?
00:13:20.520Did you ever brush up against this, get any information about this?
00:13:42.400I mean, honestly, it wasn't relevant to me.
00:13:45.220I wasn't trying to make a political issue of Biden in 2015.
00:13:50.400In fact, I had actually worked with the Obama administration on the nuclear decommissioning of fish that was in Ukraine, that Obama was promoting in a world effort to collect all of that.
00:14:06.120And I helped get the Ukrainian government to participate in that in a real way.
00:14:11.680Again, Russia was opposed to it, but I got the Ukrainian government to do it.
00:14:16.220So my relationships with Ukraine were not hostile.
00:14:19.220I mean, with Obama, we're not hostile in the job I was doing in Ukraine.
00:14:29.980And really, it wasn't until, you know, I was in the middle of it all in 2017 that I started to see these pieces all coming together because the old, what they used to call the mockingbird approach that the CIA did that was exposed by the church investigation, you know, many years ago
00:14:48.120of having networks of, we have bots now, but they were operatives in the media and in the public arena, taking a storyline that's put out and then having to pop up all over the world.
00:14:58.720So it looks like there's something real there.
00:15:01.320When this was happening to me, I couldn't understand it because I knew there was nothing Russian collusion.
00:15:06.400I knew there was nothing about me being involved with the Kremlin.
00:15:09.800I knew the Trump campaign wasn't doing anything in that.
00:15:12.640And so I was confused as to why all of these arrows were now starting to focus on me.
00:15:17.320I started to see the pieces in 2017, but it really wasn't until I was in prison that I was in some of these books started to come out exposing the piece of it.
00:15:26.780Yeah, so the DERMA investigation, what was going on there was, you know, I was able to capture in my book.
00:15:32.620And as a result of that, in the book, I lay out what I did know about the Weissman theory of Russia collusion, and it was a crazy one.
00:15:40.680And what really happened in all the networking that was going on between the CIA, the NSA, the FBI.
00:15:46.560And Weissman's problem was he needed two things that didn't exist.
00:15:51.000He needed a link to the Kremlin, and he needed a motive for what the payout would be to Putin for helping Trump.
00:16:00.120And both of his theories were totally concocted.
00:16:03.260One was I was the link because I had a person who worked for me by the name of Konstantin Kalemnik, who was a Ukrainian of Russian, or was Russian-Ukrainian,
00:16:12.040who had served two years in the military as his mandatory service, and I think he was 20 years old at the time.
00:16:18.080And they said that he was in the language school, which was his expertise, where some KGP people went.
00:16:24.860That's the evidence that links Konstantin to the KGB.
00:16:28.940The fact that still under seal is the proof that Konstantin was a U.S. asset, not a Russian asset.
00:16:37.840I mean, he had even had a code name by the U.S. Embassy in the travel traffic going back and forth between Washington and Kiev on the meetings they would have with them on a regular basis.
00:16:48.860So there was plenty of information, and Weissman had access to all of it, showing he wasn't the link.
00:16:55.840Oh, by the way, that's what they did with Carter Page as well, where Carter Page had worked for the agency when he's over there meeting with Rose Neft,
00:17:03.220and then Kevin Kleinsmith lies, alters the email to make it look like he wasn't an asset.
00:17:08.540Yeah, and in fact, they then said, Page was my first link to Russia.
00:18:15.380Again, there was—and the U.S. had signed off on that when they made him an asset for the U.S. embassy there.
00:18:21.300So they had plenty of evidence dismissing that, but they needed—they had to have something.
00:18:26.180So they made that on the fact that he spent two years in the military, that was his mandatory duty, and he was Russian.
00:18:32.180The other piece that Weissman needed in his theory was to pay out for Trump, that Putin was going to get from Trump.
00:18:39.900And Weissman's theory was, well, when Trump becomes president, he'll give Putin Ukraine.
00:18:47.040Now, the problem with that theory, and I was able to expose it during the time I was there, in jail, dealing with the special counsel.
00:18:56.260The problem with that was when Trump became president, he gave the military weapons to Ukraine that Obama wouldn't give.
00:19:04.580He put sanctions on North Stream that Obama wouldn't do, and he told Putin, no more territory, and we don't recognize Crimea.
00:19:13.480So not only would he not give him Ukraine, he wouldn't recognize Crimea as being a part of Russia.
00:19:19.380Biden gets elected, and he stops the military aid, he recognizes North Stream 2, and then he looks so weak that Putin decides, after Afghanistan, that this is the same foreign policy team under Obama that I was able to just walk in and take Crimea.
00:19:38.820I'm going to do the same thing again to the rest of Ukraine.
00:19:41.340And he announces it and starts mobilizing on the borders of Ukraine.
00:19:44.880And so when you compare Trump versus Obama and Biden, Trump is the only one who stood up for Ukraine, against Putin.
00:19:53.480Yet Weissman's theory was that was what Trump was going to give him.
00:19:57.160And from the very get-go of his presidency, he did the exact opposite.
00:20:01.140So as a result, Weissman had nowhere to go, and even Mueller couldn't accept Weissman's theories.
00:20:07.420I had laid it all out in my conversation, 50 hours that I spent with them as to what the real facts were.
00:20:12.860They wouldn't accept him, but I at least got it on the record.
00:20:16.760The House and Senate intel committees, those reports were garbage.
00:20:21.600They were totally political, no facts.
00:20:23.960They had 90 pages on me without one piece of evidence on anything that they were accusing me of as being the link to Russia.
00:20:31.520And again, the only evidence they had on Kalemnik, which they made as the important link, was his two years of military service.
00:20:40.880And then they all hide behind unsealed or sealed documents.
00:20:44.340The sealed documents prove he wasn't an aide, an assistant to Putin or connected to Russia, but they won't release those.
00:20:54.100Well, we're coming up on our on on our one minute here.
00:20:57.160I'd really like to get into you into that with you in the next segment, though, this idea of where we are now with Ukraine, how things have gotten so completely out of control.
00:21:08.940And I think you have to put both of those in balance, because as the U.S. government, these elements, whether it be Weissman, whether it be the DOJ writ large, whether it be Mueller, they're going after anybody inside the U.S. government that's talking for at least having an open line of communication with the Russians, trying to funnel these weapons, go after Nord Stream.
00:21:30.220Then, obviously, the Kremlin is looking at all of that and saying, wait a minute, you're accusing us of stealing the election.
00:22:00.460Human Events Sunday special here with Paul Manafort.
00:22:03.340The book is Political Prisoner, out by Simon Schuster.
00:22:07.280We are here with the author, the man himself, one of the most influential and well-known political operatives in modern politics, Paul Manafort.
00:22:14.400Paul, in your book, when you talk about Ukraine, you just mentioned Yanukovych.
00:22:18.900You mentioned the current situation, the way these administrations have dealt with Ukraine over really the Biden administration prior to that, the Obama administration.
00:22:28.240Do you think that things had to end up where they are with with Putin coming back in across the border with obviously he took Crimea under Obama?
00:22:38.020He had Maidan kick off with the network there.
00:22:40.960Now we're seeing he's pushing into Kherson, these other areas.
00:22:45.140Do you think that there's another road that could have been taken?
00:22:48.140Because one of the things that you write is that the West should have worked with Yanukovych.
00:22:52.240You've talked about this idea of bringing Ukraine into the EU.
00:22:56.300But if I'm reading your book correctly, it seems like what you were trying the way you were trying to balance it, or at least they were trying to balance it, was they get into EU for the economics.
00:23:06.240Right. And for the travel and Schengen and all that, but they don't go into NATO.
00:23:11.000So it sort of maintains that military neutrality.
00:23:14.260Yeah, the NATO thing was the red flag.
00:23:17.520And my strategy all along was get into the house and then worry about what floor you're allowed to be on.
00:23:24.660And the key was to get Ukraine as part of the economic community, a European community.
00:23:30.880And the economics was the way. That's what Europe wanted, because Ukraine is a second largest country in Europe, 44 million people, the breadbasket of Europe, an important industrial country, an aluminum, special metals and construction materials.
00:23:49.940So there was real value to Europe to have that market opened up, which it wasn't to Europe at that point in time.
00:23:56.380And the trade association group, which we were negotiating, would have opened it up and given actually the Europeans about a three or four year advantage, because as part of the admission, Ukraine had to remove all their subsidies.
00:24:09.260And the market was going to be wide open for the Europeans to come in, but the European companies weren't ready to go into the European market.
00:24:15.880So we knew it was going to be a one way advantage, but it was still important enough because getting Ukraine under that umbrella would be good in the long run.
00:24:26.380And interestingly, and I've said this in the book, even the Ukrainian oligarchs, who everybody tries to make as junior brothers of the Russians, they were very strongly in favor of Ukraine being a part of Europe, because they understood that they could never have the value of their businesses as a part of Russia.
00:24:43.460But as a part of Europe and the West, their business could grow and flourish in ways that, with real market economies, that would be beneficial for them.
00:25:02.640Oh, and by the way, they still don't, even though they don't like to admit it, but they'll never actually come out.
00:25:08.300And even just this last week, you saw Stoltenberg come out and say, well, there's, you know, we'd like to have it, but there's a process and we'll consider your application.
00:25:18.160The Poles would like them in NATO because the Poles understand if Ukraine is part of Russia, the border to Russia has just been moved to them.
00:25:30.700So NATO was, and I always felt that if Ukraine was being logical about NATO not being a part of the, on the table, that it would make everything more palatable for the West.
00:25:44.000But there were, you know, Putin knew the game he was playing.
00:25:47.120He was working Merkel on a daily basis.
00:25:49.660Nord Stream 2 was a political bribe to Germany that had economic value.
00:25:55.560Putin was doing all kinds of business through Deutsche Bank and German companies that were being offered major contracts.
00:26:02.980And he was quite, and, you know, it's not surprising that Merkel never was very fast in moving Europe towards Ukraine.
00:26:11.260She's talked the talk, but never walked the walk.
00:26:14.500And so Putin, until the very end, didn't think Yanukovych was going to do it.
00:26:20.640And when we were approaching Vilnius, which is where the European Community Annual Meeting was going to be, and Yanukovych was going to sign the Trade Association Agreement, which was the first step towards membership, Putin finally realized this is real.
00:26:36.340And he publicly threatened Yanukovych, and he said, if you sign that agreement, I will shut down all trade between Ukraine, Russia, and all of our satellite countries immediately, which happened to be 70% of all of Ukraine's trade.
00:26:53.140Putin had actually had pushed Yanukovych to be part of his customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan, and Yanukovych said, no, I'm moving into the European direction.
00:27:02.400So, but when Putin put that threat out, and he was serious, we then approached Barroso, who was the president of the Economic Commission, and said, look, we need a subsidy to bridge this transition, because Yanukovych was still prepared to sign.
00:27:20.080But he needed some subsidies to help him, because already the documents were one-sided in favor of the European companies.
00:27:28.620And if 70% of the other trade was shut down, basically, Ukraine would have gone bankrupt.
00:27:34.300And we were looking for about a $3 billion subsidy.
00:27:38.320Which, by the way, to your point, that is something that happened to Poland and Hungary, both when they entered the European Union.
00:27:44.620That's the exact thing that happened to the markets there.
00:27:47.300And you saw tons of companies, ones that, by the way, still haven't even come back in some of those areas.
00:27:53.580Ukraine's looking at all that, realizing, hey, we don't want to lose all this domestic industry.
00:27:57.820We want to protect our guys, even though we're expanding the market.
00:28:01.120So, obviously, they're just going based on what the history was with a couple of the other former Eastern Bloc countries.
00:28:06.760Right. I mean, it was, as you said, it was well-known, and Yanukovych had very smart people helping put this thing together.
00:28:14.260So, I mean, it was, and Barrosa, you know, Ukraine has corruption.
00:29:07.660And I haven't talked to him since, frankly.
00:29:08.940But as a result of that, with the, whatever you want to call it, uprising coup, the changeover of a democratically elected government that everybody recognized was fairly elected.
00:29:21.160When that happened, that told Putin what he needed to do, know, about the West and their commitment to democracy, which is their view of democracy is what's in their interest or against their enemy's interest.
00:29:33.560And so, Putin then started putting pressure on Ukraine, moved into Crimea.
00:30:56.560I told these reporters, I've done over 100 polls in Ukraine.
00:30:59.660And my base in Ukraine politically was eastern Ukraine.
00:31:02.880I understand the Russian ethnic Ukrainians very well.
00:31:05.960Every one of my polls, I probed their loyalty and allegiance to Ukraine and hard-pressed them with questions on Russia.
00:31:14.720In no poll I ever found was there ever more than 5% of Russian ethnic Ukrainians saying they preferred to be part of Russia instead of Ukraine.
00:31:23.360And the reason for that is because they understood that freedom in Ukraine and freedom in Russia are two different things.
00:31:33.740And they wanted nothing to do with the Russian definition of freedom.
00:31:36.780They wanted the Russian language protected.
00:32:38.600I mean, I think Putin's strategy was went to Windsor hit to dangle the oil and gas to the Europeans and say that he's willing to bring peace to Ukraine.
00:32:54.200I think the bombing of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline undercuts that strategy big time for Putin.
00:33:00.860And I think the Europeans now are going to have to stay firm because they're not going to get a gas will not be something that can be traded by Putin for his version of peace.
00:33:13.200Well, interestingly enough, we just got one minute in the segment, but I did actually hear that just yesterday Putin or someone from the Kremlin put foot out there that there is the possibility that Nord Stream could be resurrected, of course, because he wants that valve open, of course.
00:33:29.100And they're going to the so the G20 is coming up later this month.
00:33:31.800So, of course, what better place to have that handshake agreement, go on the sidelines, try to figure out, hey, I get these, you get the gas, everybody goes home.
00:33:40.460I think you're exactly right about that.
00:33:42.000But when we come back and I thank you for sharing that on Ukraine, I could I could go for hours and hours on that.
00:33:47.260But when we come back, I want to talk some more about what it was like.
00:33:50.940And you write about this a lot in your book, what it was like when you were locked up by this administration and also what your predictions are going forward.
00:34:00.220Come back next with legendary political operative, Paul Manafort.
00:34:06.700We're back for our final segment here with Paul Manafort.
00:34:09.660Now, Paul, the book is Political Prisoner.
00:34:12.180It's available to Simon & Schuster anywhere anyone can get books.
00:34:14.680And I was reading through the story of your time when you were in prison.
00:34:21.100And I reflected back a little bit for I did employment once at Guantanamo Bay.
00:34:26.080So that's the only prison experience I ever have.
00:34:28.420But it's kind of, you know, obviously on the other side of that from from where you were.
00:34:33.040And I think I even saw at one point that you were in and correct me wrong, but you were in the same prison that Jeffrey Epstein was in the MCC up there in New York City.
00:34:42.420Were you there at the same time or you're just just nearby?
00:34:46.220When I went to New York for the to the, you know, you've been in for quite a while at that time.
00:34:52.060I've been I've been in about 10 months.
00:34:53.480They say eight months at that point in time in Virginia.
00:34:56.060Right. And right after my trial ended in Virginia.
00:35:00.520Vance dropped charges in New York, same charges.
00:35:03.840I mean, Weissman and he had concocted it so that right after my Virginia trial, they dropped state trial, state charges.
00:35:11.460So I had to go to New York because they were worried about a pardon from Trump coming immediately.
00:36:31.620These glass glass compartments where you walk out of the cell to your to talk to your lawyers, which is the only reason you get out of the cell.
00:36:39.920And there's timeframes when it happens.
00:36:42.560And I was in the middle cell or cubicle.
00:36:47.100Epstein and his lawyers were on one side.
00:36:49.240El Chapo and his lawyers were on the other side.
00:40:03.800I mean, I built a plan, but I mean, I knew I was innocent.
00:40:06.880I knew that I didn't do anything wrong, which was important to me.
00:40:10.360I also had my faith and I believed that that I relied on my faith to just give me the strength to deal with it.
00:40:20.140And my family and friends, they were my wife said to me before I was put into a solitary, you know, which I was not supposed to be sent to.
00:40:29.380But but my life for your own safety, right?
00:40:32.460Yeah, my yeah, my life was coming apart.
00:40:57.060And she said something to me, which literally was foundational in getting through the next two years.
00:41:02.000She said, look, we started with nothing.
00:41:03.580If we end up with nothing but have each other and our family, that's all that matters.
00:41:09.660And as simple as that sounds, it was profound.
00:41:12.900And that gave me the courage to just know that I could make it through and not have to worry about them, that they would be there and would be there whichever way for me.
00:41:24.640And then I had to put my political skills to set it to place.
00:41:55.460Part of it was exercise the best I could inside an 8x12 cell.
00:42:00.100Eventually, when I got some writing materials, I was able to start writing, do some legal work, which was very hard, very elemental, because they wouldn't get me any documents.
00:42:09.900And so I built a schedule that went all day.
00:42:11.840And eventually, they gave me a transistor radio, a little Sony transistor radio that when I was a kid in the 60s I had, in the 50s.
00:42:21.720But it gave me an outlet to listen to Rush Limbaugh, to Mark Levin, and so I was able to keep connected that way to the real world, because I had no windows.
00:42:35.000I didn't know what time of day it was, really, other than when they were serving meals.
00:42:38.120But that schedule, there were some days I didn't finish my schedule, because it kept me preoccupied in the framework that I was trying to do.
00:42:48.960And eventually, my lawyers kept telling me, look, if everything goes wrong and you do get convicted, prison is going to look like a picnic compared to what you've just done for 11 months in solitary.
00:43:01.300And it was true. I mean, I went to Loretto, the prison I was put in, and one, I was never at risk.
00:43:09.340The prisons, to the prisoners, Donald Trump was a hero.
00:43:13.260He had passed the First Step Act. He had passed the CARES Act.
00:43:16.180He had changed the sentencing procedures.
00:43:28.840None of them ever came at me in any way that risked my life.
00:43:32.120So it made me realize even more that it was total fiction on Weissman and just one more needle he was trying to use to prick me to give him Donald Trump.
00:43:48.260And so many times, regardless of where someone's coming from in life, they always say, going back to the Bible, having a schedule, that these are ways to just keep the mind centered.
00:44:00.040And of course, as well, you did have that family network.
00:44:04.780You knew that there were people out there that were counting on you.
00:44:07.500The one question, the one saved round that I had on this, when we were going into that trial, I remember all the way back in 2018, everybody's there and I'm sitting there.
00:44:15.520The one thing that we kept hearing about was this.
00:44:18.220Apparently, you have an ostrich jacket.