Perking, I agree that NYT comment about the freebie/loss leader is thin gruel, but I thought the indebtedness to Deripaska could be a key factor in Mr M.'s interest in attaching himself the Oaf (and why US prison maybe preferable to the sort of retribution Putin mete out to those who cross him, or know too much):
'Paul Manafort owed $17 million to Russian interests before joining Trump campaign: Report'
'Paul Manafort was in debt by as much as $17 million to pro-Russia interests before he joined the Trump campaign in March 2016, according to a report Wednesday.
The New York Times obtained financial records filed last year in Cyprus, where Manafort kept bank accounts during his time working in Ukraine and investing with a Russian oligarch.
The Times says the debt appears to be owed by shell companies tied to Manafort's business pursuits in Ukraine when he worked as a consultant to the pro-Russia Party of Regions.'
'Did Manafort Use Trump’s Campaign to Pay Back Russia?'
'Two weeks ago, the Washington Post reported that Robert Mueller and congressional investigators had obtained emails recording correspondence between Manafort and representatives of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch. Being a billionaire in Russia is not like being a billionaire in the United States. It requires maintaining an intimate relationship with Vladimir Putin. Their foreign policy dealings do not involve freelancing. When he is dealing with Manafort, Deripaska is doing Putin’s bidding.
In one email obtained by the Post, Manafort asked, “How do we use to get whole?” Manafort’s spokesman tells the Post this means nothing, because “it’s no secret Mr. Manafort was owed money by past clients.” But the known contours of the relationship indicate just the opposite. It is not that Manafort was owed money. It appears Manafort owed the money.
The year before Manafort joined Trump’s campaign, Deripaska filed a complaint in a Cayman Islands court that Manafort had borrowed $19 million from him and failed to account for it, and even hired a private investigator to track down Manafort, who had essentially gone into hiding. Julia Ioffe and Franklin Foer have obtained the emails that the Post reported on earlier. And while the messages are written carefully and frequently encoded — they refer to “black caviar jars” to mean payments, for instance — they indicate that Manafort was trying to impress Deripaska with his work as Trump’s campaign manager.
Manafort’s role as unpaid campaign manager for Donald Trump gave him a position of potentially enormous value to Russia. His massive debts to a Kremlin-aligned oligarch made him enormously vulnerable to being used as an agent of Russian influence. This is probably why the FBI was wiretapping Manafort, as CNN has reported, and why espionage experts have described Manafort as having the profile of an “ideal spy.” The emails are crucial because they go beyond circumstantial evidence to show Manafort communicating with Russian paymasters.
More specifically, he can be seen displaying his relationship with Trump to the person he apparently owed a massive sum of money. If he was using his position to get whole, as he wrote, it would mean Manafort was delivering favors to Russia through the Trump campaign in order to pay off his debt.'
nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/10/did-manafort-use-trumps-campaign-to-pay-back-russia.html
It would be interesting to be inside Mr. M.'s head at the moment
I am having internet service problems today, so research and posting are taking ages.