Paul Manafort and Putin now hold the destiny of Trump in their hands.

In July of 2016, Steven Lee Myers and Andrew E. Kramer wrote an article detailing the power that Paul Manafort wielded in Ukraine before becoming Donald Trump's Campaign Manager during the 2016 US presidential elections.

"President Viktor F. Yanukovych, who owed his election to, as an American diplomat put it, an “extreme makeover” Mr. Manafort oversaw, bolted the country in the face of violent street protests. He found sanctuary in Russia and never returned, as his patron, President Vladimir V. Putin, proceeded to dismember Ukraine, annexing Crimea and fomenting a war in two other provinces that continues.

Mr. Manafort was undaunted.

Within months of his client’s political demise, he went to work seeking to bring his disgraced party back to power, much as he had Mr. Yanukovych himself nearly a decade earlier. Mr. Manafort has already had some success, with former Yanukovych loyalists — and some Communists — forming a new bloc opposing Ukraine’s struggling pro-Western government." (New York Times : July 31, 2016) (my emphasis)

As also reported by Stephanie Baker and Daryna Krasnolutska, (right: Stephanie and Daryna) 

"In the decade before he worked for Trump, Manafort’s efforts did for Moscow what its finest political minds had failed to do: help get a pro-Russian candidate installed in Kiev.

.....

In the five-year period from 2007 to 2012, Manafort was paid at least $12.7 million, according to a handwritten Party of Regions ledger found later in its head office. (Bloomberg : May 22, 2017) (my emphasis)

Fast forward to July of 2017 and we learn that,

"The FBI raided the home of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in July [2017] and seized documents and other materials as part of the probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, his spokesman told the Associated Press." (Mark Moore : New York Post : August 9, 2017) (my emphasis)

This FBI raid on the house of Paul Manafort will further reveal the nature of the finacial largesse that Manafort received from Yanukovych during the period 2007-2012.

What it may also reveal is the fact that it may, indeed, have been Putin who was Manafort's 'paymaster' rather than the Yanukovych Party of Regions.

The reaction of Donald Trump to this raid on Manafort's home is also rather interesting.

Responding to a reporter question about this raid, Trump responded that,

"I thought it was a ...very ... very strong signal ... or whatever .."

Further on in this interview, Trump made a rather interesting 'slip of the tongue' by stating that,

" ... There was no collusion between us and Russia [during the 2016 US presidential campaign] ... In fact ... the opposite .. Russia spent a lot of money on fighting me ... Russia spent a lot of money on that false report ..."

The report that Trump is here referring to is the Steele report, and it has now been revealed by Julian Borger that,

"Two US congressional staffers who travelled to London in July and tried to contact former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele were sent by a longstanding aide to Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House intelligence committee and a close ally of the White House.

The trip has brought back to the surface a continuing struggle for control of the committee’s investigation into Moscow’s role in the 2016 US election. The reliability of a dossier compiled by Steele, containing explosive allegations of extensive secret collusion between Trump and the Kremlin, is a key part of that investigation." (The Guardian : Tuesday 8 August 2017) (my emphasis)

That Trump is now asserting that,

".... Russia spent a lot of money on that false report ..."

could signify that much of the salacious details about Trump when he visited Russia could contain more than a grain of truth.

Let us remind ourselves that Putin was made Head of the FSB under Boris Yeltsin, and used FSB methods to get rid of the Federal Prosecutor, Yuri Skuratov, who was investigating corruption in the Kremlin, that implicated Boris Yeltsin himself.

Shortly after managing to rid the Kremlin of Skuratov, Putin was made Prime Minister of Russia by Boris Yeltsin. And has been in power ever since.

Now we have Trump worrying about "the details in the Steele dossier that Putin allegedly spent a lot of money on", and Paul Manafort staring into the prison cell that he may soon occupy.

Paul Manafort and Putin now hold the destiny of Trump in their hands.

(to be continued)