JRL NEWSWATCH: “What the Press Doesn’t Know About Ukraine; Reporters will have to ask a lot more questions to understand the missing context of the Trump call” – Wall Street Journal/ Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

Maidan Square in Kiev, Ukraine

“We might not be here if the mainstream media, which loved the Steele Dossier when it seemed to incriminate … Trump, had later shown an equal interest in investigating its origins as a partisan fabrication. In his now-famous transcript … Trump mainly presses Ukraine’s new president for dirt not on the Bidens but on the known unknowns of 2016. ‘I […]

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JRL NEWSWATCH: “How the Obama White House engaged Ukraine to give Russia collusion narrative an early boost” – The Hill/ John Solomon

File Photo of Susan Rice and Barack Hussein Obama in St. Petersburg Russia, with Mural of St. Petersburg Scene in Background, adapted from image at whitehouse.gov

“As … Trump began his meteoric rise … the Obama White House summoned Ukrainian authorities to Washington …. Ukrainian participants said it didn’t take long … to realize the Americans’ objectives included two politically hot investigations: one that touched … Biden’s family and one that involved a lobbying firm linked closely to then-candidate Trump. … [O]ne of the earliest documented […]

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JRL NEWSWATCH: “Putin can’t afford to ditch the dollar” – Reuters/ Steven E. Halliwell

Diverse Paper Currency, Coins, Line Graph

“Paul Manafort, while managing Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign, is accused of passing private polling data to his Russia business partner, a man with alleged ties to Russian intelligence. … revealed in an unsealed court filing … likely to stoke the case in Congress for increased sanctions …. [T]he reverberations will be felt in Moscow, where anger and frustration over […]

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JRL NEWSWATCH: “Russia to play minor role, if any, in Paul Manafort trial” – AP

File Photo of Federal Courthouse in Alexandria, Va., adapted from image at uscourts.gov by Steven C. Welsh, www.stevencwelsh.com :: ww.stevencwelsh.info

“The trial of President Donald Trump’s onetime campaign chairman will open … with tales of lavish spending, secret shell companies and millions of dollars of Ukrainian money flowing through offshore bank accounts and into the political consultant’s pocket. What’s likely to be missing: answers about whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin during the 2016 presidential election, or really […]

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William Hill: “Comment on Keith Gessen’s ‘The Russia Hands'”

File Photo of Kremlin Tower, St. Basil's, Red Square at Night

Subject: Comment on Keith Gessen’s “The Russia Hands” Date: Tue, 8 May 2018 From: William Hill <williamhhill@gmail.com> [William Hill is Professor of National Security Strategy, National War College, Washington D.C. and a retired Foreign Service officer. Was head of the OSCE Mission to Moldova] Thanks for flagging this piece early in the week. I suppose I would have found it […]

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NEWSWATCH: “The Manafort Indictment; Mueller’s charges relate to money-laundering cash from Ukraine” – Wall Street Journal Editorial

U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia file photo, adapted from image at dc.uscourts.gov

“… Mueller indicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for tax fraud …. [accusing] Manafort (and business partner Richard Gates) of funneling money from a pro-Russia party in Ukraine into offshore shell companies and bank accounts. They … allegedly used these accounts to fund their spending habits, neglecting to declare the money to the IRS. The indictment also accuses … Manafort of […]

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Ukraine Says There’s No Evidence of Illicit Payments to Manafort

Maidan Square in Kiev, Ukraine

(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Volodymyr Verbyany – June 27, 2017) Ukrainian prosecutors said they’d found no proof of illicit payments to U.S. President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager from his work for the party of the nation’s ousted leader. Anti-corruption investigators in the ex-Soviet republic said last year that they’d found ledgers showing $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments between […]

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NEWSLINK: “Manafort had plan to benefit Putin government” – AP Exclusive/JEFF HORWITZ, CHAD DAY

File Photo of Kremlin Tower, St. Basil's, Red Square at Night

“… Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, secretly worked for a Russian billionaire to advance the interests of … Putin a decade ago and proposed an ambitious political strategy to undermine anti-Russian opposition across former Soviet republics, The Associated Press has learned. The work appears to contradict assertions by the Trump administration and Manafort himself that he never worked for […]

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