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Paul Manafort is going to prison for his work on behalf of the Ukrainian government, but his time as a member of “the torturer’s lobby” also helped pave his path to federal penitentiary. That’s according to a new sentencing memo from Special Counsel Robert Mueller. In addition to laying out Manafort’s cover lobbying and obstruction of justice crimes, prosecutors reached back into his ignoble Reagan-era lobbying work to show just how shady Trump’s former campaign chairman really is.
Haunted by history: In addition to a white collar crime spree that spanned the past decade, Manafort has a history of less than ethical but still legal dealings dating back to his lobbying business in the 1980s. At his old firm Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly, Manafort represented a rogue’s gallery of vicious, brutal dictators and strongmen like Angola’s Jonas Savimbi, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, and the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos. Now, that work has come back to haunt him in a different way.