January 27, 2006 – The same foreign lobbyists and Russians tied to Trump probe, are associated with McCain during his presidential run in 2008

(…) “In fact, McCain’s drama involved the same foreign lobbyist Paul Manafort; one of the same Russian oligarchs, Oleg Deripaska; the same Russian diplomat, Sergey Kislyak, and the same wily Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, that now dominate the current Trump controversy.

The FBI has said that there is no evidence to date that Trump ever met with a Russian figure banned from the United States.

McCain actually met twice with Deripaska, a Russian businessman and Putin ally whose visa was blocked by the United States amidst intelligence community concerns about his ties to Moscow. The meetings were arranged by Manafort and his lobbying firm partner Rick Davis, who later would become McCain’s campaign manager, according to interviews and documents. Deripaska, a metals magnet, is president of United Company RUSAL, and is considered to be one of the richest men in the world worth an estimated at $5.1 billion, according to Forbes.“My sense is that Davis and Manafort, who were already doing pro-Putin work against American national interests, were using potential meetings with McCain — who didn’t know this and neither did we until after the fact — as bait to secure more rubles from the oligarchs,” John Weaver, one of McCain’s top advisers at the time, told Circa in an interview this month.

(…) “In 2006, Davis and Manafort arranged two meetings with McCain and Deripaska in group settings while the senator was overseas on official congressional trips.

The first occurred in January 2006 in Davos, Switzerland, where McCain had traveled with fellow Republicans for a global economics conference.

When McCain and his other Senate colleagues, John Sununu and Saxby Chambliss, arrived at an apartment for drinks, Davis was present as a host with Deripaska by his side. A group of about three dozen then went to dinner, McCain and Deripaska included.”

(…) “Davis was McCain’s campaign manager in both 2000 and 2008. Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign manager for a brief time, resigned in August 2016, over questions of prior work with Ukrainian political parties.

During the 2008 campaign, the Davis Manafort firm disclosed through its U.S. partner Daniel J. Edelman Inc., that it was working for the political party in Ukraine supporting Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who was backed by Putin.

“Davis Manafort International LLC is directed by a foreign political party, the Ukraine Parties of Regions, to consult on the political campaign in Ukraine,” the January2008 ForeignAgent Registration Act filing showed.

The work included developing “a communications campaign to increase Prime Minister Yanukovych’s visibility in the U.S. and Europe,” the report added, indicating that Davis and Manafort were being paid a $35,000 a month retainer for the work that began in spring 2007.” (Read more: Circa, 6/21/2017)

March 29, 2006 – Yale/Clinton Foundations join Ethiopian Minister of Health Tedros Adhanom to treat HIV/AIDS, even though he is known for the worst forms of human rights abuses

“The William J. Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative and Yale University have joined forces with the Ethiopian Ministry of Health to launch an initiative designed to boost treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS and other diseases.

Through the Ethiopian Hospital Management Initiative (EHMI), the Yale-Clinton Foundation Fellowship in International Healthcare Management will send a team of up to twenty-five experienced mentors from the United States and other countries for one year to work with directors of ten to twelve Ethiopian hospitals and health bureaus. Working with their Ethiopian partners, the group will identify systemic changes that can improve access to, and the delivery of, healthcare services to the country’s population of 76 million. The Yale team recently completed a full needs assessment in Ethiopia and is recruiting fellows to serve as leaders and mentors.

Ethiopia’s Minister of Health, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebeysus, called the agreement with the foundation unique “because it includes capacity building of the healthcare system, which is very crucial…in the country’s strategic plan for health care. We want the Yale-Clinton Foundation mentors to think outside the box, tell us what they see and what they recommend, and then we will consider it. Whatever we do in these hospitals, we will export to other hospitals in Ethiopia.” (Philanthropy News Digest, 3/29/2006)  (Archive)

*******

(…) Tedros was voted WHO director-general in 2017, replacing another incompetent Chinese medical prodigy, Dr. Margaret Chan. Tedros is the first WHO director-general without a medical degree. He also has the worst job qualifications in the written history of employment.

“Tedros got his bachelors degree in biology from the University of Asmara in Eritrea. After his graduation, he served in a junior position at the Ministry of Health under the Marxist dictatorship of Mengistu. After the fall of Mengistu in 1991, he showed up in the UK and got a masters degree in Immunology of Infectious Diseases from the University of London. In 2000, he got a PhD in Community Health from the University of Nottingham. His dissertation was titled: “The effects of dams on malaria transmission in Tigray Region, northern Ethiopia.” From the writing style analysis of the treatise, it is unlikely that he wrote his own dissertation.

Just like another clueless British sponsored PhD, Joseph Mifsud, Tedros’s subsidized academic pedigree also hints of political grooming. This plan apparently derailed when Tedros chose to become a Chinese client instead of continuing to pay homage to his old (and cash-strapped) patrons at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

From 2005-2012, under Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, Tedros was the Minister of Health. During his tenure, he covered-up one of the worst outbreaks of cholera in Ethiopian history. Between 2012-2016, he was the Ethiopian foreign minister and was involved in the violent suppression and starvation of the rival Amhara clan. A little known biographical detail about Tedros is that he was the 3rd ranking member of the politburo of the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) Terrorist Organization.

Tedros’s rapid rise to the top of the directorship of the WHO began after his collaboration with Bill Gates and the Clinton Foundation and its CHAI initiative. Running some analytics on Tedros’s activity between 1991-2018 shows conduct riddled with fraud, corruption, the worst forms of human rights abuses, and scandals.

(Read more: Yaacov Apelbaum, 3/23/2020)  (Archive)

September 18, 2006 – Giustra says his chips are on Bill Clinton who is a “worldwide brand, and he can do things that no one else can.”

[…]”Several tables away, I was talking with Frank Giustra, a mining financier based in Vancouver, who started, ran, and sold Lions Gate Films. Giustra is in his late forties. He is short and trim and has close-cut white hair. The plane in which Clinton was touring Africa was Giustra’s, an MD-87 jet, complete with leather furniture and a stateroom. Giustra told me that he was still heavily involved in business—he travels frequently to Kazakhstan, to check on mining interests he has there—but that his wife had been pushing him to give away more of his money.

“All of my chips, almost, are on Bill Clinton,” he said. “He’s a brand, a worldwide brand, and he can do things and ask for things that no one else can.”

Clinton is the first post-President to tap into the newer generation of wealth—the hedge-fund and retail moguls, who have bigger planes to lend and more cash to burn than their upper-class predecessors ever had. Ronald Burkle, a supermarket tycoon, is another frequent travelling companion and airplane lender; Burkle made Clinton a partner in one of his investment funds. Clinton’s appeal for these tycoons is obvious: in exchange for giving money to a good cause—the Clinton Foundation’s budget last year was thirty million dollars—you not only have the usual tax break and the knowledge that you are doing good but also get to play Oh Hell until five in the morning with a two-term ex-President who knows how to have a good time. You become a certified Friend of Bill, which still has some currency, six years after one Clinton White House and, possibly, two years before another. Writing a check to the March of Dimes hardly provides the same multi-layered reward.” (Read more: The New Yorker, 09/18/2018)