Manafort: Take My Trump Tower Apartment

News & Politics
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[SIZE=7]Take my Trump Tower apartment instead of my money, Manafort tells Mueller[/SIZE]
[ul]
[li]Former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort told prosecutors he preferred that they seize his apartment in Trump Tower than give up one of the four bank accounts special counsel Robert Mueller’s team was eyeing, court papers showed Friday.[/li][li]Manafort is surrendering an estimated $46 million worth of cash and real estate as part of his plea deal.[/li][li]The longtime Republican operative also agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s investigations into possible collusion by President Donald Trump’s campaign with Russians who interfered in the 2016 election.[/li][/ul]
2018CNBC.com
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Robert Alexander | Archive Photos | Getty Images

The public entrance to Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York.

Take his Trump Tower apartment. Please.
Former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort told prosecutors he preferred that they seize his apartment in Trump Tower rather than surrender one of the four bank accounts special counsel Robert Mueller’s team was eyeing, Manafort’s plea agreement revealed Friday.

President Donald Trump’s own New York residence is in that landmark Fifth Avenue building.

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Manafort also agreed to forfeit his condominium property at 123 Baxter St. in lower Manhattan to the federal government instead of his home in Arlington, Virginia.

The 69-year old Republican operative in all will forfeit an estimated $46 million worth of real estate and cash as part of his deal to plead guilty Friday in federal court in Washington to two counts of conspiracy. Forfeitures are common in criminal cases where defendants, like Manafort in this instance, are accused of reaping financial windfalls from their misdeeds.

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Paul Manafort of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s staff listens during a round table discussion on security at Trump Tower in the Manhattan borough of New York, August 17, 2016.

He also agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s ongoing probes of possible collusion by the Trump campaign with Russians interfering in the 2016 presidential election that sent Trump to the White House.

The cash is contained in three Manafort bank accounts — two at Federal Savings Bank and one at Capital One — as well as in a Northwestern Mutual insurance plan. He will retain another bank account.

In addition to the Trump Tower apartment and the Baxter Street property, Manafort will also forfeit two other Big Apple properties: a condo at 29 Howard St. in lower Manhattan, and a townhouse at 377 Union Street in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

And he will give up his house at 174 Jobs Lane in Bridgehampton, in the Hamptons section of Long Island, New York.

Prosecutors said Manafort dropped more than $5 million on improving that house and another $820,000 on landscaping there over a six-year period.

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Kassin, you beat me to that one. I was just about to post the photo of a guilty Rethuglican. :smiley:

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The cash is contained in three Manafort bank accounts — two at Federal Savings Bank and one at Capital One — as well as in a Northwestern Mutual insurance plan. He will retain another bank account.

In addition to the Trump Tower apartment and the Baxter Street property, Manafort will also forfeit two other Big Apple properties: a condo at 29 Howard St. in lower Manhattan, and a townhouse at 377 Union Street in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

And he will give up his house at 174 Jobs Lane in Bridgehampton, in the Hamptons section of Long Island, New York.

Prosecutors said Manafort dropped more than $5 million on improving that house and another $820,000 on landscaping there over a six-year period.

[SIZE=6]OUCH!! [/SIZE]

[SIZE=4]That was last September. Now that Mueller has said that Manafort lied after the bargain, he loses the loot and faces jail.[/SIZE]

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Mueller is right on the bullseye by going after the cash. Manafort can always sell the apartment if he needs to.

[INDENT]Owning a unit in the building was a big part of Manafort’s pitch to Trump for the campaign’s top job, according to the New York Times. Manafort began his job interview with Trump by telling the candidate he lived in the building. The article said: “This was no trivial point: It signaled his wealth and a willingness to work 15-hour days in a building that housed both his lavish apartment and Mr. Trump’s bare-bones campaign. It also meant Mr. Manafort had already put his money—in the form of an apartment purchase—into Mr. Trump’s brand, which meant a lot to the candidate, a transactional developer and politician, aides said.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenhowley/2018/09/15/manafort-forfeits-trump-tower-condo [/INDENT]

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Why are the puppets around Drumpf falling like dominoes? It’s because they accepted his view of ethics and law. Those who disobeyed him were quickly fired. They are counting themselves lucky.

ISince being fired by President Donald Trump as secretary of state, Rex Tillerson has kept a very low profile. But on Thursday night in Houston, Tillerson broke that silence in a big way.
Here’s how he described the “why” behind the breakdown of his relationship with the President,according to the Houston Chronicle:
“So often, the President would say here’s what I want to do and here’s how I want to do it and I would have to say to him, Mr. President I understand what you want to do but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law.”
Um, what???

The President of the United States would tell the secretary of state how he wanted things done and the secretary of state would have to tell him it couldn’t be done the way he wanted because that was illegal?
This is all fine!
What’s scary about Tillerson’s admission? A few things.
1) Trump either doesn’t know the law or doesn’t care about the law
2) This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of this sort of I-am-the-law, Judge Dredd-like behaviorfrom the President.
On that second point, remember that former FBI director James Comey has testified – under oath – that Trump, in a one-on-one meeting, asked him to put aside the Justice Department investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. The President publicly pressured then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to take up an investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server. (Clinton was not charged in a previous FBI investigation.)
Time and time again – particularly in his interactions with the Justice Department – Trump has shown that he has zero understanding of the limits of his job.
Tillerson described Trump as “a man who’s undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of a lot of things but rather says ‘this is what I believe.’”
That approach is broadly in keeping with Trump’s experience in the private sector. In business, he largely did what he wanted – rules (and consequences) be damned. If things went bad, the penalty, usually, was bankruptcy – and Trump believed he could just deal and talk his way out of that sort of thing.[/I]

Trump has never understood the distinctions between being the head (figurehead, some would say) of a company and being the President of the United States. In his dealings with Sessions – and Tillerson – Trump’s assumption is that they will do whatever he tells them to do because, well, he’s the boss.
The idea that Tillerson, Sessions and the rest of the administration ultimately serve a) the people of the country and b) the rule of law is seemingly lost on Trump.
Need more evidence? Trump never forgave Sessions for recusing himself from the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Why? “Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, which frankly I think is very unfair to the President,” Trump told The New York Times in July 2017. “It’s extremely unfair – and that’s a mild word – to the President.”
That Sessions recused himself to prevent any perception of bias in the investigation – you know, for the good of the country and all that – was totally lost on Trump. His only reaction to the situation was: This is bad for me, and so Sessions shouldn’t have done it.
Which, really, says it all.
Trump’s total ignorance of the law – whether willful or just from sheer obtuseness – is, at this point, a defining characteristic of his presidency. He simply doesn’t get that there are limits on his power, limits put in place to preserve the office of the presidency – and the broader institutions of our democracy.
We have a President who, according to his one-time FBI director and his first secretary of state, repeatedly proposed ideas that were in violation of established laws. Sit with that for a minute.
Later Friday, Trump responded to Tillerson’s comments on Twitter, saying that his current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “is doing a great job,” adding, “His predecessor, Rex Tillerson, didn’t have the mental capacity needed. He was dumb as a rock and I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough.”

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/08/europe/russia-putin-trump-bromance-intl/index.html

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When a lawyer takes this type of deal and its after giving up information, you know that things are elephant.

[INDENT]The big picture: The Southern District of New York recommended Cohen serve a range of 51 to 63 months for four crimes — “willful tax evasion, making false statements to a financial institution, illegal campaign contributions, and making false statements to Congress.” Mueller, meanwhile, did not take a position on the length of Cohen’s statement, but said he has made substantial efforts to assist the investigation. https://www.axios.com/michael-cohen-mueller-investigation-sentencing-memo-d664b3a5-81ff-413a-ba3a-024d8cda1815.html [/INDENT]
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