{"id":181246,"date":"2016-08-21T18:48:00","date_gmt":"2016-08-21T23:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/08\/21\/pass-the-popcorn-29\/"},"modified":"2016-08-21T18:48:00","modified_gmt":"2016-08-21T23:48:00","slug":"pass-the-popcorn-29","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/08\/21\/pass-the-popcorn-29\/","title":{"rendered":"Pass the Popcorn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>First, we have Trump&#8217;s campaign manager turfed out in large part because of his lobbying dealings with the former President of the Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p>Now we have a The Podesta Group, founded by Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, and run by his brother Tony Podesta, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2016\/08\/podesta-group-paul-manafort-russia-ukraine-227215\">lawyering up over their involvement with the same corrupt dirtbag<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">A prominent D.C. lobbying firm has hired outside counsel over revelations that it may have been improperly involved in lobbying on behalf of pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians who also employed former Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">As first reported by BuzzFeed, the Podesta Group announced Friday that it has retained law firm Caplin &amp; Drysdale to investigate whether or not the lobbying firm unwittingly did work for the pro-Russian political party in Europe that also hired Manafort. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;Unwittingly&#8221; my ass.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Working on behalf of the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, the Podesta Group lobbied in Washington for positions favored by the pro-Russian political party, of which deposed former President Viktor Yanukovych was a member. The lobbying work ended in 2014 after Yanukovych fled Ukraine for Russia, where he remains in exile.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The problem here, as it often is in the world of lobbying, is not what is illegal, but what is legal.<\/p>\n<p>Manafort and Podesta are peas in a pod that only differ in their client list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First, we have Trump&#8217;s campaign manager turfed out in large part because of his lobbying dealings with the former President of the Ukraine. Now we have a The Podesta Group, founded by Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, and run by his brother Tony Podesta, lawyering up over their involvement with the same corrupt dirtbag: A &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,1040,978],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-former-soviet-union","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181246"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}