Human Events Daily with Jack Posobiec - Sunday Special： The Truth About Paul Manafort

00:00:00.000 Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard to this weekend's Human Events special this

00:00:07.400 Sunday.

00:00:07.960 We're here with one of the most influential political operatives of the modern era, the

00:00:14.300 chairman of the Trump 2016 campaign and the author of the new book, Political Prisoner,

00:00:20.520 published by Simon & Schuster, Mr. Paul Manafort.

00:00:24.320 Paul, thank you so much for joining the show.

00:00:26.220 My pleasure, Jack.

00:00:26.900 I'm glad to be with you today.

00:00:27.840 Well, you know, you may not realize this, but actually, this is not the first time that

00:00:33.460 you and I have been together because all the way back in 2018, when you were going through

00:00:41.440 everything they put you through in Virginia, I was actually there at the courtroom every

00:00:47.000 single day back at the time when I was reporting for One American News, and we covered that

00:00:52.180 trial in and out every single day.

00:00:55.720 I've still got my legal pad somewhere in my notes of what they were throwing at you.

00:01:01.320 And so when I went through that, I got a complete just understanding of how this system works,

00:01:07.240 or at least how it's supposed to work.

00:01:09.820 And then we come to this case of Russiagate, because when I look at the news right now and

00:01:15.680 I see everything that's going on, we're seeing the source now of the Steele dossier is on

00:01:20.160 trial.

00:01:20.780 And they're asking him if he could corroborate any of this.

00:01:23.460 And apparently the FBI offered him a million dollars.

00:01:26.100 They said, we'll give you a million dollars if you can corroborate any of this stuff.

00:01:29.280 He couldn't do it.

00:01:30.320 They went ahead with the FISA warrants anyway.

00:01:32.220 They went ahead with the investigation, the Trump investigation.

00:01:35.060 While you were chairman of the campaign, this was all going on.

00:01:38.960 So the thing that I was waiting for the entire time, this evidence and that evidence and this

00:01:44.900 FBI just said, are we going to get to any actual connections between you, Russia, the

00:01:51.860 intel community?

00:01:52.580 And I'm not talking about some tangential, I knew a guy who, no, no, show me the stuff,

00:01:57.360 show me the phone call, show me the tape.

00:02:00.000 What were the 18 minutes from the Nixon tapes in the White House?

00:02:03.300 Let's get it.

00:02:04.520 And it never once came up.

00:02:06.780 It boils down so much to a he said, she said, arguments about some of these very arcane

00:02:13.480 laws of the way the IRS, you file it this way, file it that way.

00:02:17.860 And suffice to say, we'll get into all of that.

00:02:20.840 We've got you for the full hour.

00:02:22.020 We've got four segments here with you.

00:02:23.620 But what is it like having gone through that four years ago when it really started six years

00:02:30.260 ago during the campaign and now to have it come full circle and you're watching as Durham

00:02:35.920 has put the source of that dossier, which remember, interestingly enough, you were originally,

00:02:42.080 we were told that you were the epicenter of Russiagate, that Page and Papadopoulos and

00:02:49.100 all these guys were, you know, they were all working for you and you're working for, you

00:02:52.940 know, you know, this Russian agency and that Russian agency.

00:02:55.420 And yet, then they couldn't, none of that ever seemed to come out at the trial.

00:03:00.520 None of that ever seemed to have to come out even in the dossier.

00:03:03.840 And then people even kind of stopped mentioning you in connection with the dossier.

00:03:07.680 But in fact, as a matter of fact, the dossier actually says that.

00:03:11.400 And so I guess my question is, what's it like watching this?

00:03:14.980 Here we are a couple of years later and realizing the shoes now on the other foot.

00:03:18.540 Well, how did I feel about it?

00:03:21.420 I never took it seriously, Jack, because as far as I was, I knew there was no Russian collusion.

00:03:27.700 I knew there was no connection.

00:03:30.280 And the Durham investigation really has connected the dots, as you just said, but not just with

00:03:34.980 Devchenko and his trial.

00:03:36.840 I mean, the earlier trials Durham had this year also were very important.

00:03:40.620 I mean, from his trials, we got the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton, Robbie Mooks, to admit

00:03:46.160 that she told him in early July of 2016 to put out a fake Russian narrative.

00:03:52.100 And he did.

00:03:53.020 And he admitted under oath that it was fake and they knew it was fake.

00:03:56.000 We also got from Durham that John Brennan, a couple of days later, from his own handwritten

00:04:01.660 notes, briefed Obama that Clinton was doing this.

00:04:05.540 So yet two weeks later, the end of July, Peter Strzok and the FBI started a crossfire hurricane,

00:04:12.340 which was the investigation to connect the Trump campaign to the Kremlin.

00:04:17.780 And shortly after that, the Clinton campaign, through Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS, who

00:04:25.020 hired Christopher Steele, who hired Devchenko to go out and find and not find, create what

00:04:31.920 effectively was the fake Steele dossier.

00:04:33.760 The important thing from all of that, from Durham, is we know that the White House, the

00:04:39.420 FBI, the CIA all knew that this this Russian collusion was a Clinton hoax before the before

00:04:47.600 any of the investigation started.

00:04:49.440 And by the time the Mueller commission was was formed, they all they knew it was done.

00:04:55.160 There was no no proof.

00:04:56.740 They knew that it was all Hillary Clinton.

00:04:58.480 Yet they still created a special counsel to find us.

00:05:03.040 And the special counsel, as you recall, had a very limited mandate, Russian collusion.

00:05:08.280 Within one day, they had expanded to my whole life because they thought that I could be the

00:05:16.120 link.

00:05:16.920 Why?

00:05:17.340 I don't know, because if they studied anything I did in Ukraine for the 10 years previous,

00:05:22.220 they would have seen that I elected a government that was totally committed and involved in bringing

00:05:26.900 Ukraine into Europe.

00:05:29.080 So so they knew when the Mueller commission was formed that there was no Russian collusion.

00:05:35.220 Yet they still went out to create a link.

00:05:37.960 And in Weissman's mind, I was the link for Russian collusion because I worked in Ukraine.

00:05:43.320 But if, in fact, they'd done any research on public, all the public information that existed

00:05:48.440 of my 10 years in Ukraine, they would have seen that I was involved in helping to bring Ukraine

00:05:53.460 into Europe, which Putin was 100 percent against and that I was I was a bullseye to Putin, not a link

00:05:59.640 to Putin for the work I was doing.

00:06:03.780 So when you're looking at this, you know, I just kind of mentioned it out there.

00:06:07.520 The day one, as we're recording this of the Danchenko trial has just gotten underway.

00:06:13.600 And one of the big bombshells that we're hearing is that he was offered a million dollars

00:06:18.780 by the FBI to corroborate the Steele dossier.

00:06:23.180 They went back to him and they said, hey, we know you're the source, because to your point,

00:06:26.960 the U.S. federal government, I used to be in the intelligence community, they can find

00:06:31.780 this stuff out very, very quickly with everything that the NSA has.

00:06:35.560 They know they know very quickly.

00:06:38.000 So they couldn't corroborate it.

00:06:40.340 They go to Devinchenko.

00:06:41.600 He can't corroborate it.

00:06:42.760 My question is, did they ever go to Paul Manafort and offer you anything to corroborate

00:06:48.040 any of this dossier?

00:06:49.340 Well, they didn't offer me anything, but they said they were intimidating me and threatening

00:06:53.640 me of what was going to happen to me if you did, if I didn't tell the truth.

00:06:58.720 And the truth was giving up Donald Trump.

00:07:01.540 But I told him I would tell the truth.

00:07:03.960 And I did.

00:07:04.960 And it wasn't the truth that they wanted to hear because they weren't dealing with the

00:07:08.940 truth.

00:07:09.100 They were dealing with a narrative that they knew was false.

00:07:11.740 Mooks has admitted it.

00:07:13.060 The campaign manager admitted it.

00:07:14.800 And what they did very cleverly in the Mueller report to the uneducated eye is they blurred

00:07:21.820 Russian interference and Russian collusion.

00:07:25.200 Yes.

00:07:25.420 Russian interference was nothing that we had Ukrainian interference.

00:07:28.420 We had Romanian interference.

00:07:30.520 We had China interference.

00:07:31.700 There were countries interfering cyberally in elections every year.

00:07:36.860 And we do the same, by the way, in other countries.

00:07:38.820 But that's very different than colluding with a foreign national government to undermine

00:07:44.640 an election.

00:07:46.140 And Mueller came down on the right side of there being no collusion.

00:07:50.240 But he still tried to blur the line because of Weissman to imply that there was still something

00:07:54.900 sinister as part of the Russian interference.

00:07:58.440 Nobody ever found one iota of evidence because there was none.

00:08:01.640 And yet the media, even through the Durham trials, has never retracted the false information

00:08:08.220 that they put out against me, against the president and others over the six years of this crisis.

00:08:14.560 Well, and one of those pieces of interference, by the way, it wasn't just sort of these online troll farms.

00:08:20.580 It was actually this campaign that was directed at you regarding a black ledger that somebody found in Ukraine somewhere

00:08:29.240 and said that you'd been paid in cash and then signed your name in this illegal ledger.

00:08:34.340 Aha, now we found the thing.

00:08:35.980 And I remember hearing about that. 0.76

00:08:37.160 So that just sounds silly.

00:08:38.440 Well, and then that's what starts the narrative during the campaign.

00:08:42.540 But now in the last year, and I talk about this in the book, we've now found out why they were doing this in 2015.

00:08:49.140 In 2015, the Obama White House was getting a lot of reports of Hunter Biden's activities in Ukraine.

00:08:55.860 And they actually met with the vice president and said, you know, you're our link to Ukraine.

00:09:00.580 Your son is doing these things.

00:09:02.080 You need to pull him back.

00:09:03.460 Biden didn't do anything about it.

00:09:05.120 And so the White House was concerned.

00:09:06.780 So what they did through their embassy in Kiev, the U.S. embassy in Kiev and George Soros' network in Ukraine

00:09:13.460 and this Alexandre Chlubo, who used to be a DNC staff person who worked in Ukraine, was Ukrainian.

00:09:21.500 What they did is they went to try and find dirt on me from my 10 years in Ukraine.

00:09:26.380 But they had a problem.

00:09:28.020 There wasn't any.

00:09:28.760 Because 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.

00:09:35.460 So 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. 0.58

00:09:44.540 And so I had the chances to represent the Burismas and the oligarchs of Ukraine.

00:09:49.060 I didn't.

00:09:50.000 And 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.

00:09:58.680 So what did they do?

00:10:00.220 Because they wanted to deflect the Hunter Biden stuff.

00:10:03.260 They still had to come up with something.

00:10:04.860 So just like with the Devchenko and the Steele dossier, they created the Black Ledger. 0.95

00:10:10.040 And the Black Ledger was exactly as you described as total fiction.

00:10:13.360 No one's ever seen the ledger.

00:10:14.620 It 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.

00:10:27.220 It's not.

00:10:27.640 It's a fake document.

00:10:28.820 But you never wrote.

00:10:29.600 You never heard the fake document part.

00:10:31.320 You only heard about the Black Ledger and the millions of dollars in cash that I was paid that it reported to say.

00:10:37.260 But that was what triggered the fair issue with me.

00:10:42.300 Because I was working in Ukraine on political campaigns and working in Europe to bring Ukraine to Europe, I didn't have any fair obligations.

00:10:51.520 I wasn't working in the United States.

00:10:53.360 In fact, I had lobbyists who were doing the work in the United States that were filed, were filing.

00:10:58.920 And so I never registered with fair for that, for the Ukrainian work.

00:11:03.280 But when the fair office saw these clips about the cash Black Ledger, they contacted me and my lawyers.

00:11:09.700 And I had no problem.

00:11:10.400 I sat with them.

00:11:11.040 I explained to them what I was doing.

00:11:12.880 I showed them the evidence of what I was doing.

00:11:15.360 And 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.

00:11:27.440 So I agreed to do that.

00:11:29.380 No penalties, no crime, no civil violations.

00:11:33.860 Just please file this limited filing.

00:11:36.080 And I did.

00:11:37.340 Weissman gets appointed by Mueller in the special counsel's office.

00:11:40.740 And he goes to the head of the fair office and says, what's going on with the Manafort situation?

00:11:45.980 She said, well, there is no situation.

00:11:47.380 We've resolved it.

00:11:48.060 He's filing.

00:11:48.520 And he said, no, no, he's not.

00:11:51.040 I'm not accepting your agreement.

00:11:53.180 I'm taking control of this.

00:11:54.760 And he went on to proceed to charge me criminally.

00:11:57.800 The only first criminal charge 70 years under Farrah.

00:12:00.740 And the filing that I did, the agreement that I reached was just thrown out because it didn't fit.

00:12:07.760 That's what I was up against.

00:12:09.600 Going back to the Obama 2015 to try and blunt the deflect Hunter Biden to the Clinton fake narrative to blunt her server issue. 0.97

00:12:19.080 And, 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.

00:12:27.420 We are coming up on our first break.

00:12:28.840 So 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.

00:12:38.140 You're operating in Ukraine.

00:12:39.860 Let's see what more we can dig on this.

00:12:41.980 Stay tuned.

00:12:42.320 We'll be right back.

00:12:46.460 OK, we are back for our next segment here.

00:12:48.340 We're sitting down with Paul Manafort for this human event special.

00:12:51.220 When 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.

00:13:14.360 Were you aware at all that Hunter Biden was over there, Burisma, any of these things?

00:13:20.520 Did you ever brush up against this, get any information about this?

00:13:23.720 Tell me about that.

00:13:24.800 I was aware he was working in Ukraine.

00:13:27.000 I knew he had some links into Burisma, which I thought was a bit unusual because Burisma was a corrupt company.

00:13:32.900 And because his father was the link, I thought that this was exposing his father to, if nothing else, some serious questioning.

00:13:40.940 But I didn't pay any attention.

00:13:42.400 I mean, honestly, it wasn't relevant to me.

00:13:45.220 I wasn't trying to make a political issue of Biden in 2015.

00:13:50.400 In 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.

00:14:06.120 And I helped get the Ukrainian government to participate in that in a real way.

00:14:11.680 Again, Russia was opposed to it, but I got the Ukrainian government to do it.

00:14:16.220 So my relationships with Ukraine were not hostile.

00:14:19.220 I mean, with Obama, we're not hostile in the job I was doing in Ukraine.

00:14:23.460 It wasn't U.S. politics.

00:14:24.700 It was Ukrainian, European situation.

00:14:27.880 So I ignored the Biden thing.

00:14:29.980 And 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

00:14:48.120 of 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.

00:14:58.720 So it looks like there's something real there.

00:15:01.320 When this was happening to me, I couldn't understand it because I knew there was nothing Russian collusion.

00:15:06.400 I knew there was nothing about me being involved with the Kremlin.

00:15:09.800 I knew the Trump campaign wasn't doing anything in that.

00:15:12.640 And so I was confused as to why all of these arrows were now starting to focus on me.

00:15:17.320 I 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.

00:15:26.780 Yeah, so the DERMA investigation, what was going on there was, you know, I was able to capture in my book.

00:15:32.620 And 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.

00:15:40.680 And what really happened in all the networking that was going on between the CIA, the NSA, the FBI.

00:15:46.560 And Weissman's problem was he needed two things that didn't exist.

00:15:51.000 He needed a link to the Kremlin, and he needed a motive for what the payout would be to Putin for helping Trump.

00:16:00.120 And both of his theories were totally concocted.

00:16:03.260 One 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,

00:16:12.040 who had served two years in the military as his mandatory service, and I think he was 20 years old at the time.

00:16:18.080 And they said that he was in the language school, which was his expertise, where some KGP people went.

00:16:24.860 That's the evidence that links Konstantin to the KGB.

00:16:28.940 The fact that still under seal is the proof that Konstantin was a U.S. asset, not a Russian asset.

00:16:37.840 I 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.

00:16:48.860 So there was plenty of information, and Weissman had access to all of it, showing he wasn't the link.

00:16:54.360 And then the other problem was—

00:16:55.840 Oh, 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,

00:17:03.220 and then Kevin Kleinsmith lies, alters the email to make it look like he wasn't an asset.

00:17:08.540 Yeah, and in fact, they then said, Page was my first link to Russia.

00:17:13.300 Right, right, right.

00:17:13.840 I was feeding Page, and Page was feeding Suslov, who was feeding the Kremlin. 0.50

00:17:17.840 You know, when—but it came out over time that I never met Carter Page.

00:17:22.240 I didn't know Carter Page.

00:17:23.340 I never talked to Carter Page.

00:17:25.220 And so they needed a new link, and that became Konstantin because he was Russian.

00:17:29.700 Now, he had worked for McCain running the Democracy Institute for the International Republican Institute in Moscow.

00:17:35.300 Then he worked for me.

00:17:36.740 And in my meetings with Yanukovych, the president of Ukraine, they were just—he and I, that was it.

00:17:43.480 Nobody else was in the meeting.

00:17:44.240 And we had very—and all these meetings, discussions we would have about Ukraine and Europe.

00:17:48.700 And the only other person in the room every time was Kalemnik because he was the—he spoke perfect English, perfect Ukrainian.

00:17:56.380 He was Ukrainian.

00:17:57.620 The SBU, which is the equivalent of the KGB in Ukraine, before they would ever let me meet with Yanukovych,

00:18:06.220 vetted me to make sure I wasn't a CIA agent, and before they would let Kalemnik be the only other person in the room,

00:18:12.200 made sure he wasn't a Russian agent.

00:18:13.620 That was totally vetted.

00:18:15.380 Again, there was—and the U.S. had signed off on that when they made him an asset for the U.S. embassy there.

00:18:21.300 So they had plenty of evidence dismissing that, but they needed—they had to have something.

00:18:26.180 So they made that on the fact that he spent two years in the military, that was his mandatory duty, and he was Russian.

00:18:32.180 The other piece that Weissman needed in his theory was to pay out for Trump, that Putin was going to get from Trump.

00:18:39.900 And Weissman's theory was, well, when Trump becomes president, he'll give Putin Ukraine.

00:18:47.040 Now, 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.

00:18:56.260 The problem with that was when Trump became president, he gave the military weapons to Ukraine that Obama wouldn't give.

00:19:04.580 He put sanctions on North Stream that Obama wouldn't do, and he told Putin, no more territory, and we don't recognize Crimea.

00:19:13.480 So not only would he not give him Ukraine, he wouldn't recognize Crimea as being a part of Russia.

00:19:19.380 Biden 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.

00:19:38.820 I'm going to do the same thing again to the rest of Ukraine. 1.00

00:19:41.340 And he announces it and starts mobilizing on the borders of Ukraine.

00:19:44.880 And so when you compare Trump versus Obama and Biden, Trump is the only one who stood up for Ukraine, against Putin.

00:19:53.480 Yet Weissman's theory was that was what Trump was going to give him.

00:19:57.160 And from the very get-go of his presidency, he did the exact opposite.

00:20:01.140 So as a result, Weissman had nowhere to go, and even Mueller couldn't accept Weissman's theories.

00:20:07.420 I had laid it all out in my conversation, 50 hours that I spent with them as to what the real facts were.

00:20:12.860 They wouldn't accept him, but I at least got it on the record. 0.97

00:20:16.760 The House and Senate intel committees, those reports were garbage. 0.97

00:20:21.600 They were totally political, no facts. 0.93

00:20:23.960 They had 90 pages on me without one piece of evidence on anything that they were accusing me of as being the link to Russia.

00:20:31.520 And again, the only evidence they had on Kalemnik, which they made as the important link, was his two years of military service.

00:20:40.880 And then they all hide behind unsealed or sealed documents.

00:20:44.340 The sealed documents prove he wasn't an aide, an assistant to Putin or connected to Russia, but they won't release those.

00:20:51.660 I've asked for them to be unsealed.

00:20:53.080 They're never going to get unsealed.

00:20:54.100 Well, we're coming up on our on on our one minute here.

00:20:57.160 I'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.

00:21:08.940 And 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.

00:21:30.220 Then, obviously, the Kremlin is looking at all of that and saying, wait a minute, you're accusing us of stealing the election.

00:21:37.280 You're accusing us of interference.

00:21:39.060 You're accusing us of going after, you know, working with Paul Manafort and working with Constantine and all the rest of it.

00:21:45.520 Did they ever stop to consider how the Kremlin might look at that, knowing that the Kremlin obviously knew it was fake?

00:21:53.480 Stay tuned.

00:21:54.000 Be right back.

00:21:54.900 Paul Manafort.

00:21:55.440 Next segment.

00:21:55.840 And we're back.

00:22:00.460 Human Events Sunday special here with Paul Manafort.

00:22:03.340 The book is Political Prisoner, out by Simon Schuster.

00:22:07.280 We are here with the author, the man himself, one of the most influential and well-known political operatives in modern politics, Paul Manafort.

00:22:14.400 Paul, in your book, when you talk about Ukraine, you just mentioned Yanukovych.

00:22:18.900 You mentioned the current situation, the way these administrations have dealt with Ukraine over really the Biden administration prior to that, the Obama administration.

00:22:28.240 Do 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?

00:22:38.020 He had Maidan kick off with the network there.

00:22:40.960 Now we're seeing he's pushing into Kherson, these other areas.

00:22:45.140 Do you think that there's another road that could have been taken?

00:22:48.140 Because one of the things that you write is that the West should have worked with Yanukovych.

00:22:52.240 You've talked about this idea of bringing Ukraine into the EU.

00:22:56.300 But 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.

00:23:06.240 Right. And for the travel and Schengen and all that, but they don't go into NATO.

00:23:11.000 So it sort of maintains that military neutrality.

00:23:14.260 Yeah, the NATO thing was the red flag.

00:23:17.520 And my strategy all along was get into the house and then worry about what floor you're allowed to be on.

00:23:24.660 And the key was to get Ukraine as part of the economic community, a European community.

00:23:30.880 And 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.

00:23:49.940 So there was real value to Europe to have that market opened up, which it wasn't to Europe at that point in time.

00:23:56.380 And 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.

00:24:09.260 And 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.

00:24:15.880 So 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.

00:24:26.380 And 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.

00:24:43.460 But 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.

00:24:52.680 So there was unanimity on that.

00:24:55.640 NATO was a flashpoint.

00:24:57.560 And frankly, the Europeans didn't want Ukraine and NATO either.

00:25:00.660 They were very resistant to that.

00:25:02.640 Oh, and by the way, they still don't, even though they don't like to admit it, but they'll never actually come out.

00:25:08.300 And 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.

00:25:16.800 It's the double talk.

00:25:18.160 The 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.

00:25:26.960 And they know what that means.

00:25:28.740 The Baltics want it.

00:25:29.860 They understand it.

00:25:30.700 So 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.

00:25:44.000 But there were, you know, Putin knew the game he was playing.

00:25:47.120 He was working Merkel on a daily basis.

00:25:49.660 Nord Stream 2 was a political bribe to Germany that had economic value.

00:25:55.560 Putin was doing all kinds of business through Deutsche Bank and German companies that were being offered major contracts.

00:26:02.980 And he was quite, and, you know, it's not surprising that Merkel never was very fast in moving Europe towards Ukraine.

00:26:11.260 She's talked the talk, but never walked the walk.

00:26:14.500 And so Putin, until the very end, didn't think Yanukovych was going to do it.

00:26:20.640 And 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.

00:26:36.340 And 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.

00:26:53.140 Putin 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.

00:27:02.400 So, 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.

00:27:20.080 But he needed some subsidies to help him, because already the documents were one-sided in favor of the European companies.

00:27:28.620 And if 70% of the other trade was shut down, basically, Ukraine would have gone bankrupt.

00:27:34.300 And we were looking for about a $3 billion subsidy.

00:27:38.320 Which, by the way, to your point, that is something that happened to Poland and Hungary, both when they entered the European Union.

00:27:44.620 That's the exact thing that happened to the markets there.

00:27:47.300 And you saw tons of companies, ones that, by the way, still haven't even come back in some of those areas.

00:27:53.580 Ukraine's looking at all that, realizing, hey, we don't want to lose all this domestic industry.

00:27:57.820 We want to protect our guys, even though we're expanding the market.

00:28:01.120 So, obviously, they're just going based on what the history was with a couple of the other former Eastern Bloc countries.

00:28:06.760 Right. I mean, it was, as you said, it was well-known, and Yanukovych had very smart people helping put this thing together.

00:28:14.260 So, I mean, it was, and Barrosa, you know, Ukraine has corruption. 0.74

00:28:17.860 Absolutely true.

00:28:18.980 Barrosa said, well, we can't trust that the money will get to the right places.

00:28:22.140 Which I said to the commissioner on the lodge, a guy named Stefan Fule, who I was dealing with on a daily basis at this time.

00:28:28.460 I said, well, then just put your strings on it.

00:28:30.580 The point is, we know specifically the kind of assistance they need.

00:28:34.080 That can be protected.

00:28:35.120 They wouldn't do it.

00:28:37.020 And that's what caused everything to collapse.

00:28:39.400 And so, for that $3 billion, Ukraine became vulnerable.

00:28:43.000 And then the revolution that happened, which was more of an uprising that was, shall we say, fermented by outside sources.

00:28:52.380 You know, Yanukovych fled the country because of corruption, not because of anything else.

00:28:56.480 And I, which I totally opposed and told them not to do it.

00:28:59.920 I said, if you stay, we will weather this storm.

00:29:02.800 If you leave, you will be the villain in this story.

00:29:06.540 But he left.

00:29:07.660 And I haven't talked to him since, frankly.

00:29:08.940 But 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.

00:29:21.160 When 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.

00:29:33.560 And so, Putin then started putting pressure on Ukraine, moved into Crimea.

00:29:38.580 Obama did nothing.

00:29:40.160 Destabilized eastern Ukraine.

00:29:41.460 He signed up these war zone, autonomous areas.

00:29:43.720 Obama did nothing again.

00:29:44.840 Wouldn't give aid.

00:29:45.780 He was sending blankets and pillows to the Ukraines with no aid.

00:29:49.740 And he, and frankly, would have probably moved into Ukraine faster if Clinton had been elected.

00:29:57.900 But Trump stopped it.

00:29:59.280 And he put a stop to the bleeding.

00:30:00.820 He put a stop to Putin.

00:30:02.380 But then, when the same team came in under Biden, he understood he could do it again.

00:30:09.120 And he did.

00:30:09.540 And so, did Ukraine have to happen in this kind of invasion?

00:30:14.120 Absolutely not.

00:30:15.160 It shouldn't have happened in 2014.

00:30:19.480 Ukraine should have been in Europe by now. 0.99

00:30:22.660 And it shouldn't have happened in 2021.

00:30:27.240 But Putin knows how weak the Biden administration is and knows the West will talk the talk, but really isn't going to fight the fight.

00:30:36.680 Everyone said to me when the invasion happened, I had a lot of awesome reporters, how soon before Russia takes over all of Ukraine? 0.85

00:30:46.060 And the answer I gave these people was, they're not going to win the ground war.

00:30:50.420 And the people couldn't understand that.

00:30:52.280 What do you mean they're not going to win the ground war?

00:30:53.660 I said, Putin doesn't understand Ukraine.

00:30:56.560 I told these reporters, I've done over 100 polls in Ukraine.

00:30:59.660 And my base in Ukraine politically was eastern Ukraine.

00:31:02.880 I understand the Russian ethnic Ukrainians very well.

00:31:05.960 Every one of my polls, I probed their loyalty and allegiance to Ukraine and hard-pressed them with questions on Russia.

00:31:14.720 In 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.

00:31:23.360 And the reason for that is because they understood that freedom in Ukraine and freedom in Russia are two different things.

00:31:33.740 And they wanted nothing to do with the Russian definition of freedom.

00:31:36.780 They wanted the Russian language protected.

00:31:38.600 My polls all showed that.

00:31:39.920 They wanted their culture protected.

00:31:41.680 They wanted the Russian Orthodox religion protected, which was a big political fight between Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox religions.

00:31:47.860 But they didn't want to give up their country.

00:31:50.740 They wanted to stay in their country and resolve these issues.

00:31:54.120 And so when Putin invaded, I had every expectation that they would mobilize a citizen's army, which they did.

00:32:01.700 And my concern today is not that they're going to lose the ground war.

00:32:05.120 I think they're going to win the ground war.

00:32:06.500 You're starting to see that, actually, even with these incredible bombings that Putin is putting them through in the last 48 hours.

00:32:11.960 But I think they are in danger of losing the peace.

00:32:16.340 And by that, what I mean is the fear that the West will want to end this.

00:32:22.980 And Ukraine's not asking for boots on the ground.

00:32:26.320 They'd like air defense systems. 0.91

00:32:27.900 They'd like weapons.

00:32:29.080 They'll fight their own fight.

00:32:30.380 But the West is going to feel the pressure internally to pressure Ukraine when Putin decides it's time to have peace.

00:32:37.700 And I think that's coming.

00:32:38.600 I 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.

00:32:51.160 And this is what he wants.

00:32:52.080 And let's negotiate it out.

00:32:53.240 That was his plan, I think.

00:32:54.200 I think the bombing of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline undercuts that strategy big time for Putin.

00:33:00.860 And 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.

00:33:13.200 Well, 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.

00:33:29.100 And they're going to the so the G20 is coming up later this month.

00:33:31.800 So, 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.

00:33:40.460 I think you're exactly right about that.

00:33:42.000 But when we come back and I thank you for sharing that on Ukraine, I could I could go for hours and hours on that.

00:33:47.260 But when we come back, I want to talk some more about what it was like.

00:33:50.940 And 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.

00:34:00.220 Come back next with legendary political operative, Paul Manafort.

00:34:06.700 We're back for our final segment here with Paul Manafort.

00:34:09.660 Now, Paul, the book is Political Prisoner.

00:34:12.180 It's available to Simon & Schuster anywhere anyone can get books.

00:34:14.680 And I was reading through the story of your time when you were in prison.

00:34:21.100 And I reflected back a little bit for I did employment once at Guantanamo Bay.

00:34:26.080 So that's the only prison experience I ever have.

00:34:28.420 But it's kind of, you know, obviously on the other side of that from from where you were.

00:34:33.040 And 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.

00:34:42.420 Were you there at the same time or you're just just nearby?

00:34:46.220 When I went to New York for the to the, you know, you've been in for quite a while at that time.

00:34:52.060 I've been I've been in about 10 months.

00:34:53.480 They say eight months at that point in time in Virginia.

00:34:56.060 Right. And right after my trial ended in Virginia.

00:35:00.520 Vance dropped charges in New York, same charges.

00:35:03.840 I mean, Weissman and he had concocted it so that right after my Virginia trial, they dropped state trial, state charges.

00:35:11.460 So I had to go to New York because they were worried about a pardon from Trump coming immediately.

00:35:15.920 Exactly right.

00:35:17.080 And but the problem is that there's a double jeopardy in law in New York.

00:35:20.860 That's very clear.

00:35:21.980 And there is no way I could have should have been indicted in New York, but I had to go through the process.

00:35:28.200 So I was still in prison.

00:35:29.820 And so they the the strategy was for me to be transferred out of federal custody to state custody in New York and sent to Rikers Island,

00:35:36.700 where I could have been there for six, eight months while the trial was getting, you know, process was going on.

00:35:41.960 So Barr refused to give up custody of me to the state, but he agreed to transfer me to New York to be in to be arraigned.

00:35:54.060 And so when I was in New York for it was about three weeks, four weeks, I was put in.

00:35:59.400 It's called the MCC, which is downtown of Battery Park in Manhattan, where.

00:36:05.700 There's a solitary confinement floor that has four cells in it.

00:36:09.920 One was empty.

00:36:13.320 Epstein was in one.

00:36:14.560 I was in one.

00:36:15.960 And El Chapo was in the other.

00:36:19.880 And I was a murderer's row.

00:36:21.480 And I was put there literally safety for my safety.

00:36:24.640 For your safety.

00:36:25.340 They put you with Epstein.

00:36:26.820 That's why I had to be in solitary.

00:36:29.260 And so it was pretty funny.

00:36:31.620 These 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.

00:36:39.920 And there's timeframes when it happens.

00:36:42.560 And I was in the middle cell or cubicle.

00:36:47.100 Epstein and his lawyers were on one side.

00:36:49.240 El Chapo and his lawyers were on the other side.

00:36:51.340 I looked at my lawyer.

00:36:52.280 I said, boy, I really feel safe here.

00:36:56.920 But again, there was to intimidate me.

00:36:59.080 It was to make me feel.

00:37:00.080 Right.

00:37:00.120 Yeah, of course.

00:37:01.440 And I just ignored it, to be honest with you.

00:37:04.240 Now, you got it.

00:37:05.360 But you got transferred out of there before Epstein died, right?

00:37:08.260 Yes.

00:37:08.540 No, I was going to.

00:37:09.340 I was trying to look at the dates on that.

00:37:11.080 And they're like, no, I'm not going to put you on the spot.

00:37:14.200 But, you know, I think I'm one of the only people.

00:37:16.620 I actually buy it.

00:37:17.500 I think I do think that was a suicide.

00:37:20.520 To me, that looked like a suicide.

00:37:22.100 I mean, the guy lived a pampered life.

00:37:24.000 He was getting off a private plane in New York for a private plane.

00:37:29.080 And he goes from there to solitary confinement.

00:37:31.860 I mean, he wasn't ready for that.

00:37:34.860 Well, and again, he knew what he was being charged with.

00:37:38.960 And he knew he wasn't going to walk back out.

00:37:40.960 I think this was.

00:37:42.080 Yeah.

00:37:42.340 And that was it.

00:37:43.460 And this is something.

00:37:44.440 Because it was pretrial, if you look at the statistics.

00:37:46.880 And we had this issue, by the way, when I was at Guantanamo as well.

00:37:49.460 But for different reasons, we had a lot of prison suicides down there or suicide attempts.

00:37:54.820 We went through the list, the signing away of your of your your your goods.

00:37:58.740 You know, he put a lot of his stuff in a trust.

00:38:00.280 He signed it off to this lawyer, didn't even know that he was getting it and stuff.

00:38:03.200 I mean, it it actually does fit the pattern.

00:38:05.500 I know people like to say that, you know, maybe it was something else.

00:38:08.400 And, you know, who knows what pressure it was.

00:38:10.540 But I really do think it does fit that.

00:38:12.580 I think without trying to be conspiratorial, they were very lax.

00:38:16.800 And I saw that I would I was supposed to see my they're supposed to check on you every 15, 30 minutes.

00:38:24.000 No one ever checked on me.

00:38:26.440 And so if there was an understanding that was going to be set up, I could see that they let him kill himself.

00:38:35.120 But because he never should have had the ability.

00:38:40.340 I mean, I was on a concrete slab.

00:38:42.840 You know, my debt, the desk for me to sit and eat was a concrete slab.

00:38:47.440 You know, the stool I would sit on was a concrete slab.

00:38:49.680 All of this was connected to the floor.

00:38:51.340 There was nothing to lift up the curtain.

00:38:54.980 There was no curtain in the in the shower stall, didn't even have any hot water.

00:39:00.260 And so there was very little that he could have access to in a legitimate way to kill himself. 0.65

00:39:08.440 To to to kill himself.

00:39:10.340 But it could have been provided and he could then have done whatever he did.

00:39:13.960 And so, I mean, I don't I think it'd be hard to prove that he was murdered, although it has happened in that prison.

00:39:20.920 But, you know, and I think your theory is not probably is probably right.

00:39:28.780 Right. And you look, I think he ended up using that was a strips of the uniform.

00:39:32.360 So strips of the uniform.

00:39:34.160 He had an extra one.

00:39:34.960 It looked like and and you could see there's Daily Mail had some photos of this afterwards that he had had strips of it.

00:39:40.760 They were all over.

00:39:41.580 So he had had must have had like something like 10 attempts.

00:39:44.220 And before he did that, but but but let's let's get back to you in there.

00:39:48.160 And I appreciate you answering the question.

00:39:49.280 But how did you make it through?

00:39:52.560 How did you make it through so long, solitary?

00:39:55.920 I mean, for so many people that they don't do so well when they're put in a situation like that.

00:40:00.740 How did you do it?

00:40:01.460 Yeah, there were three reasons.

00:40:02.840 I mean, the three things.

00:40:03.800 I mean, I built a plan, but I mean, I knew I was innocent.

00:40:06.880 I knew that I didn't do anything wrong, which was important to me.

00:40:10.360 I also had my faith and I believed that that I relied on my faith to just give me the strength to deal with it.

00:40:20.140 And 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.

00:40:29.380 But but my life for your own safety, right?

00:40:32.460 Yeah, my yeah, my life was coming apart.

00:40:34.360 My bills were exorbitant.

00:40:36.340 They were coming after all my properties going back 25 years.

00:40:38.820 I mean, this is about Russian collusion in 2016.

00:40:41.760 They went back my whole life.

00:40:43.720 They were trying to destroy my family.

00:40:47.040 And I said to my wife, you know, I was stressing out at that point.

00:40:49.840 This is before I went in.

00:40:50.600 And she said, you need to get control of your stress.

00:40:53.760 I said, but I worry about you.

00:40:55.220 I worry about the kids.

00:40:57.060 And she said something to me, which literally was foundational in getting through the next two years.

00:41:02.000 She said, look, we started with nothing.

00:41:03.580 If we end up with nothing but have each other and our family, that's all that matters.

00:41:09.660 And as simple as that sounds, it was profound.

00:41:12.900 And 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.

00:41:24.640 And then I had to put my political skills to set it to place.

00:41:29.060 I knew I read Sidney Powell's book.

00:41:32.640 I knew Weissman's tactics.

00:41:34.160 So I sort of understood what to expect.

00:41:36.260 And I experienced some of it, but there was more to come.

00:41:39.620 And so I decided I need to use my campaign skills.

00:41:42.880 I deal with control the environment, you know, build a strategy based on what is in your advantage.

00:41:48.220 And so I decided to build a schedule for every day.

00:41:52.400 Part of it would be reading.

00:41:53.620 Part of it was the Bible.

00:41:54.560 Part of it was praying.

00:41:55.460 Part of it was exercise the best I could inside an 8x12 cell.

00:42:00.100 Eventually, 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.

00:42:09.900 And so I built a schedule that went all day.

00:42:11.840 And 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.

00:42:21.720 But 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.

00:42:35.000 I didn't know what time of day it was, really, other than when they were serving meals.

00:42:38.120 But 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.

00:42:48.960 And 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.

00:43:01.300 And it was true. I mean, I went to Loretto, the prison I was put in, and one, I was never at risk.

00:43:09.340 The prisons, to the prisoners, Donald Trump was a hero.

00:43:13.260 He had passed the First Step Act. He had passed the CARES Act.

00:43:16.180 He had changed the sentencing procedures.

00:43:18.780 So to them, Trump was a hero.

00:43:20.880 He fulfilled his promises that all the Democrat presidents never did.

00:43:24.520 And I was his chairman.

00:43:26.360 So to them, I was a great guy.

00:43:28.840 None of them ever came at me in any way that risked my life.

00:43:32.120 So 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.

00:43:43.300 But he never did.

00:43:44.720 I never did.

00:43:45.020 That's exactly right.

00:43:45.760 No, you hear that a lot.

00:43:48.260 And 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.

00:44:00.040 And of course, as well, you did have that family network.

00:44:03.920 You did have the wife.

00:44:04.780 You knew that there were people out there that were counting on you.

00:44:07.500 The 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.

00:44:15.520 The one thing that we kept hearing about was this.

00:44:18.220 Apparently, you have an ostrich jacket.

00:44:21.280 Is that correct?

00:44:22.440 No.

00:44:22.520 My question is, no.

00:44:24.760 This is true.

00:44:26.000 What's the story of the ostrich jacket?

00:44:28.000 They tried to make a lifestyle case out of me.

00:44:30.680 Right, right, right.

00:44:31.220 So they got bought in the last 20 years.

00:44:34.080 For my 30th wedding anniversary, I bought my wife an ostrich jacket.

00:44:43.060 So it's her jacket.

00:44:44.140 It was her jacket.

00:44:45.220 Oh.

00:44:46.540 They tried to make me into this flamboyant guy that wears ostrich coats and fancy suits.

00:44:52.660 They couldn't even get it right.

00:44:54.860 You leave that for Roger Stone.

00:44:58.420 That's correct.

00:45:00.120 We'll give it.

00:45:00.580 Well, maybe you can get one.

00:45:02.540 It looks like the book's doing well.

00:45:03.940 We'll get you an ostrich jacket, Paul.

00:45:05.500 All right.

00:45:05.820 There you go.

00:45:06.340 Thanks a lot, Jack.

00:45:07.020 Where can people go to find more about the book, to follow you?

00:45:10.440 Are you blogging?

00:45:11.540 Are you getting into social media?

00:45:13.160 What's next for Paul?

00:45:13.960 Social media?

00:45:14.720 I'm a truth social.

00:45:16.020 I'm on Twitter, but Twitter's the people there.

00:45:20.460 The bots track me all the time.

00:45:22.800 So basically, I'm on truth social.

00:45:24.200 It's at Paul Manafort.

00:45:26.040 They can get the book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble's online, Simon Schuster online.

00:45:31.460 It should be in bookstores now.

00:45:32.700 I mean, it's out and about.

00:45:34.580 It's been doing very well on a lot of the bestseller lists, so I've been very pleased about that.

00:45:39.440 Well, congratulations on the success of the book.

00:45:41.180 Congratulations on everything else that's going for you.

00:45:43.920 Paul, appreciate you spending time with us here on Human Events Sunday special.

00:45:48.460 Ladies and gentlemen, as always, you have my permission to lay ashore.

Human Events Daily with Jack Posobiec - October 16, 2022

Sunday Special： The Truth About Paul Manafort

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