Really funny how all the f***-ups run in the exactly same direction.

Yesterday, I posted on a goof by Paul Manafort’s legal team (I’m assuming it’s a goof but if I were Manafort I’d try to reveal as much of Mueller’s strategy and knowledge as possible just for grins because he’s already trying to put Manafort behind bars for life) that revealed to the public some of the reasons that Mueller is abrogating a cooperation agreement with the former Trump campaign manager. The major reveal was that Manafort had shared Trump internal polling (think for a moment about what kind of polling a disorganized, impulse driven campaign like the 2016 Trump campaign would have produced and what use it would have been to anyone) with his former business partner named Konstantin Kilimnik who, it is alleged by Mueller, has undefined “ties” to Russian intelligence. This, in my view, is pretty much a nothingburger and the lie that Manafort was supposedly guilty of could plausibly be accounted for by the memory of an out-of-shape, stressed-out 67-year-old. But enter the New York Times with a major addition to the story this morning.

Both Manafort AND Rick Gates transferred data to Konstantin Kilimnik in 2016, NYT reports. Some of the data was developed by a private polling firm working for the campaign.

Manafort asked that Kilimnik pass the data to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. https://t.co/wuZMFK0r00

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 9, 2019

https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1082881080858832896

My question is, what did the President know about Mr. Manafort’s collusion with Russian intelligence, and when did he know it? https://t.co/3rLXLb5qmm

— Mark Warner (@MarkWarner) January 9, 2019

Hay was made of the fact that the data was shared with a Russian oligarch, or Oleg-arch, with ties to Putin. Not so much hay was made of the fact that Hillary Clinton’s oppo research firm, Fusion GPS was working to get sanctions removed from Deripaska or that Deripaska had undertaken at least one mission at the behest of the FBI. Still, if you are one of the conspiracy theorist who are still running with the “Russia elected Trump” nonsense, it gave you fresh hope.

By noon, the story had went the way of the dodo bird.

We have corrected this article to say that Manafort, via Gates, directed Kilimnik to make sure polling data got to Serhiy Lyovochkin and Rinat Akhmetov, not Deripaska. I am deleting my earlier tweet to limit recirculation. https://t.co/NF0iKWdOpc

— Amy Fiscus (@amyfiscus) January 9, 2019

CORRECTION: PAUL MANAFORT asked KONSTANTIN KILIMNIK to pass TRUMP polling to the Ukrainian oligarchs SERHIY LYOVOCHKIN & RINAT AKHMETOV, & not to OLEG DERIPASKA, as originally reported. We have corrected the story & I deleted a tweet repeating the error. https://t.co/xfnnr5KNQR

— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) January 9, 2019

LYOVOCHKIN & AKHMETOV had funded Russia-aligned political parties for which MANAFORT had worked. Manafort believed he was still owed $$$ for the work. Passing along polling data to the oligarchs could be a way to try to collect by proving continued value. https://t.co/xfnnr5KNQR

— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) January 9, 2019

As it turned out, from a NYT point of view, all of those Slavs look pretty much alike. The data went to Ukrainian oligarchs who have not been accused of preventing Hillary Clinton from traveling to Wisconsin and it looks like simple grifting.

Story after story has been written on this crap and story after story has been walked back. What all the stories have in common is one thing, they were all wrong in a way that was potentially damaging to Trump. Simple probability tells us that at some point one of these retracted stories should have been in Trump’s favor. But that hasn’t been the case.

This, however, may end up being quite a bit of fun to watch.

Russian Magnate Deripaska Sues AP for Defamatory Article on Ties With Manafort: https://t.co/cZne9OqQ4x via @SputnikInt

— jasmine2sable (@jasmine2sable) January 10, 2019

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