When a foreign country seeks influence-peddlers in Washington, DC, the smart ones buy-up  connections-for-hire merchants on both sides of the aisle. Those of us following the prosecution of Paul Manafort have realized that in 2012 he worked in tandem with Tony Podesta, the former superlobbyist and brother of John Podesta, on behalf of then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, a nonprofit apparently set up to provide a cover for lobbying. Tony Podesta in 2009 (via Wikimedia Commons) The Robert Mueller team has been seeking any and every possible legal violation by people associated with the Trump campaign in order to squeeze them to “sing” – provide evidence of some legal violation by Donald Trump. In the case of Manafort, this quest led to a violation of a rarely-enforced law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). As Tucker Carlson, a longtime denizen of DC, has frequently noted, A huge chunk of the...(Read Full Post)