Jonathan Winer, Chris Steele, Worked For Oleg Deripaska

I think we pretty much knew that Chris Steele had close ties to Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska. That was part of Steele's attraction for the FBI. Today Eric Felten has a pretty comprehensive round up of the ties of key figures associated with Steele's hoax "dossier" to "Putin's favorite industrialist": Top Kerry Aide, Key Conduit for Dossier, Once Worked for Russian Oligarch, as Did Steele.

The main focus of the very detailed article, however, is on Jonathan Winer. Felten works off the SSCI report, but I think we can be absolutely certain that John Durham has also been examining Winer's role in the Russia Hoax. It's a good example of the "sprawl" that Durham has had to contend with--in his position he can't afford to leave stones unturned.

Who is Winer?

Winer was for a decade an aide to Sen. John Kerry. From 1994 to 1999 he was a deputy assistant secretary at the Department of State. From government he went to the international lobby and law firm Alston & Bird. Winer moved to APCO Worldwide in 2008, about the time he met Steele, who had just left British intelligence and was setting up his own shop. Winer told the Senate that in his private sector jobs he “was still engaged in various types of Russian representation all over the map.” Pro-Putin, anti-Putin: Winer didn’t care, he told senators: “It was any work that was consistent with their needs and my values.”

"My values." Gotta luv that! What would those values have been? The almighty dollar is my guess.

Winer returned to the State Department during Obama's second term, rejoining Kerry. Here are some of the highlights of Felten's article, to whet your appetite for the whole thing. Note that both Winer and Glenn Simpson of Fusion - GPS may have perjury problems connected with their Senate testimony:

MAJOR UPDATE: Was Manafort A Plant, Willing Or Otherwise?

I've long been suspicious of the insertion of Paul Manafort into the Trump campaign. I haven't seen any solid evidence that he was a plant, but the circumstances have always seemed fishy to me. After all, his mere presence on the campaign gave at least superficial credibility to the fledgling Russia Hoax narrative.

Long ago a trusted source told me that the Clinton campaign had very early on come to the conclusion that Trump would be the most dangerous GOP candidate, from a Clinton perspective. That would have meant that the Clinton organization would have mobilized to take Trump down, and the Russia narrative seems to have been decided on at an early date. Thus we see the persistent attempt by Felix Sater to somehow link Trump to the moribund Trump Moscow project, the Trump Tower meeting with Veselnitskaya, etc.

The usual story is that Manafort was introduced into the Trump campaign through the efforts of Tom Barrack, a Syrian born real estate magnate who was friends with both Trump and Manafort. Barrack had been a major help to Ivanka and Jared Kushner in a difficult real estate situation and used that connection to urge the Kushners to get Barrack onto the campaign. Sound familiar? Sound possible? Of course. The question is: Was there an ulterior motive to all this?

I just came across an article by Diana West at Epoch Times which first appeared in February, 2019: Paul Manafort: A Time Bomb? While the article doesn't pretend to offer proof that Manafort was maneuvered onto the Trump campaign by anti-Trump forces, what it does is paint a portrait of Manafort as a troubled and even desperate figure who would be susceptible to pressure. For what it's worth, here is that picture of Manafort, gleaned for articles in The Atlantic and the WaPo:

Deripaska Could Spell Big Trouble For The FBI--And Team Mueller

John Solomon apparently decided to come out with his latest bombshell before the 4th of July holiday. It's in the Hill tonight, based on Solomon's interview of Oleg Deripaska: Russian oligarch's story could spell trouble for Team Mueller.

Deripaska, of course, is the Russian former aluminum magnate and close associate of Vladimir Putin. Deripaska's past connections to the FBI, Christopher Steele, and Bruce Ohr are fairly well known. Basically, during the years 2008-2009 the FBI under then Director Robert Mueller approached Deripaska for assistance in trying to obtain the release of retired FBI agent Robert Levinson, who was being detained in Iran. Deripaska spent upwards of $20 million of his own money in the attempt, which was ultimately unsuccessful. Deripaska also had business dealings with Paul Manafort, but had fallen out with him.

Deripaska's business and legal affairs are too complicated to go into in detail at this time. Briefly, however, in the period leading up to the 2016 election Deripaska was seeking to regularize his visa situation to allow him to travel more freely to the US. He was employing Chris Steele and a lawyer named Adam Waldman in that effort, and Waldman was also representing Julian Assange as well as serving as a go between among these players for Dem senator Mark Warner. Bruce Ohr was handling the Deripaska matter at DoJ. Complicated yet? You can get the details in this article by Jeff Carlson: Manafort’s Deripaska Connections and Waldman’s Role in the Assange Negotiations.

For our purposes, what's important is that the FBI attempted to use Deripaska's visa situation to obtain information from him, and to that end the FBI contacted Deripaska twice during the period 2015-2016. The 2016 contact took place in September, which means that it took place a month or so after Crossfire Hurrican was opened (July 31, 2016) and a month or so before the FBI obtained its FISA on Carter Page--late October, 2016. Here's Solomon's account of what Deripaska told him about that interview:

In a wide-ranging interview with me, Deripaska confirmed a story told to me more than a year ago by law enforcement sources: He was indeed interviewed by FBI agents in September 2016 during the early Russia probe, and he told them he strongly doubted the bureau’s theory that the Trump campaign, through Manafort, was colluding with Moscow to hijack the 2016 election.