alternatively, John Hannah could refer to former Dick Cheney aide John Hannah, in which case the shell corporation’s naming takes on a different and potentially more sinister cast (see chapters 4 and 6).47 At the time that Manafort, now working for Putin ally Deripaska and, indirectly, Putin, moves into Trump Tower, the tower’s owner is considering a run for the presidency in 2008, according to Fox News.48 Per the cable network, by the end of the first week of 2006 Trump has “hinted” to the New York Post that “he may go for president in 2008” and has “strongly suggested he [is] interested in entering the national political arena in 2008,” telling the Post that his decision not to run for governor of New York in 2006 “doesn’t preclude me from doing something [political] in the future.”49 While Trump is coy about what this last comment means, “a political figure close to Trump” helpfully assists the Post in decoding the remark, telling the newspaper that “Donald is definitely interested in running for president in 2008, possibly as an independent candidate.”50
As Manafort moves into Trump Tower on Deripaska’s dime, he stands a good chance of coming into contact with the presidential-run-mulling Trump, as Manafort’s consulting firm has by 2006 “represented Trump for years”—in fact, Trump was the firm’s very first client after it was founded in 1980.51 The Atlantic notes that from the moment Manafort moves to Trump Tower, he and Trump “occasionally see[] each other and ma[k]e small talk.”52 The magazine observes, too, that “while Manafort is alleged to have laundered cash [from Ukraine] for his own benefit, his long history of laundering reputations is what truly sets him apart. He helped persuade the American political elite to look past the atrocities and heists of kleptocrats and goons. He took figures who should have never been permitted influence in Washington and softened their image just enough to guide them past the moral barriers to entry.… Helping elect Donald Trump, in so many ways, represents the culmination of Paul Manafort’s work. The president bears some likeness to the oligarchs Manafort long served.”53 In 2017, when a group of Manafort’s friends secretly gather to strategize how to help Manafort escape allegations of collusion with a foreign government, one person contacted as part of the effort will note to the Atlantic that “there wasn’t a lot to work with. And nobody could be sure that Paul didn’t do it.”54
By 2015, revenues from the course of work Manafort began in Ukraine in 2005 have “appeared to dry up,” according to CNN—though around the time of his firing as Trump’s campaign manager in August 2016 Manafort will tell his accountant that he still has $2.4 million coming to him in November 2016 “for work he did in Ukraine,” suggesting that he was still in a business relationship with pro-Russia concerns while he was working atop the Trump campaign.55 Indeed, the New York Times notes in mid-August 2016, as Manafort is leaving Trump’s campaign amid recriminations over his past pro-Kremlin work, that “Ukrainian company records give no indication that Mr. Manafort has formally dissolved the local branch of his company, Davis Manafort International, directed by a longtime assistant, Konstantin V. Kilimnik.”56 Whether Manafort is in 2016 still business partners with Kilimnik—the man whom Trump deputy campaign manager Rick Gates calls a former Russian military intelligence officer, and whose co-workers in the 1990s at the Moscow office of the International Republican Institute called him simply “the guy from the GRU [Russian military intelligence]”—what is clear is that by 2015 Manafort’s relationship with Deripaska, his and Kilimnik’s old boss, has soured, with Manafort “deeply indebted” to the Putin crony.57 Why Manafort is in debt is unclear. It could be because he has not adequately advocated for Putin’s government in the United States under his contract with Deripaska, or because Deripaska at one point during his association with Manafort loaned the political consultant $10 million, or because Deripaska had unwisely “ploughed $18.9 million into a telecoms venture in Ukraine run by Manafort and his number two, Rick Gates,” or because by early 2016 Manafort had somehow come to owe Deripaska “close to $20 million” for unknown reasons, or some combination of all of these. What is clear is that Manafort, in Deripaska’s view, remains deeply in the red as the political flack lobbies for a job on the Trump campaign in early 2016.58
Soon after Manafort joins Trump’s presidential campaign on March 28, 2016, Deripaska dispatches former GRU officer Victor