Paul Manafort, convicted of financial fraud and foreign agent registration failures, faces scrutiny over alleged non-consensual sexual acts involving his wife, documented via texts from daughters Andrea and Jess. His history of representing dictators like Jonas Savimbi, Mobutu Sese Seku, and Sani Abacha links him to hundreds of thousands of deaths and billions in stolen funds, exemplified by a risky $1 million extraction in Somalia. Despite surrendering $45 million in assets and wearing a $15,000 ostrich jacket, Manafort remains eligible for further prosecution, illustrating how his mercenary pursuit of profit over human rights ultimately led to his legal downfall. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Women Take Matters Into Their Own Hands00:01:50
This is an iHeart podcast.
Guaranteed human.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that.
Trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Gillespie and Michael Marcini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trapped.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Listen to the Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots five, City Hall building.
How could this ever happen to City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
Jeffrey Woods.
A shocking public murder.
This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
They screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
A tragedy that's now forgotten.
And a mystery that may or may not have been political, that may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
A Forgotten Tragic Mystery at City Hall00:14:45
I'm Laurie Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
An in-depth conversation with the man who's shaping our future.
My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hello, everybody.
I'm Robert Evans, and this is once again Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history.
And this week, today, I should say, we have a special bonus episode with our special bonus guest, Jamie Loftus.
Nice to be a bonus.
That's better than normal.
It's good.
If I was just like, this is just our boring ass run of the mill guest.
They're like, oh, we got this too?
Yeah.
All right.
This is a surprise.
This is like on Tuesday, we gave our audience like a sandwich.
And today, ice cream sundae.
Okay, I was going to say, not a bad surprise, not like a flash mob or anything.
No, like one of the ice cream sundaes they order on Star Trek that are gigantic and larger than any human being would ever actually eat.
Oh, yeah, people are always ordering ice cream sundaes on Star Trek.
Oh, I should watch that program.
It's got a lot of ice cream.
Really like pornographically large ice cream sundae.
More ice cream-based media.
So, Jamie, how are you doing today?
I'm good.
Thanks for having me back.
Thanks for coming back.
Now, regular listeners will note that Jamie was with us on our very first episode where we talked about Saddam Hussein's romantic novels.
Which we still have.
Which we still have.
We just need to get it translated.
Yeah, we've got a new romantic novel from Saddam.
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
That is his third novel, but the one that hasn't been translated that we're...
Prolific.
Yeah, we're going to crack the code and do some stage readings.
We have to translate it from Japanese, the only language it's been published in since he was hung.
Any listeners feel like translating an entire book?
Like 120,000 words.
But to be fair, we hear they're pretty good.
We hear it's pretty good.
It's supposed to be Saddam's Game of Thrones.
Yeah, tour date forthcoming.
But today we are talking about Paul Manafort.
But before we do that, I should introduce what you do, Jamie.
You have a podcast, The Bechtelcast.
I do on this very Hey Sluts, What's Up network?
That is what we call our network.
It's a rebrand.
It's located on the New York Stock Exchange as just sluts.
You need to, I know, I know.
It's true.
They're like, oh, wow, sluts.
Stock is up.
And they're not wrong.
Yeah, Bechtelcast, comedian, writer.
That's, yeah.
That's true.
Well, today, Jamie, you know who we're talking about because you just listened to the first two parts we done on.
Paul Manafort.
Re-listened.
Big fan, in fact.
Aw, that's very sweet.
I heard you do an ad about belts.
I'm actually wearing the belt that we advertise right now.
Wow.
I just spent $900 on belts.
You sold me on the belt.
That's a nice belt.
You ordered a lot of belts.
I got a lot of belts.
That's too many belts.
How much do the belts cost?
Less than $900.
I'm like Paul Manafort.
I don't know how much things cost.
Well, we'll be talking about Paul Manafort's taste in clothing and what he spends on clothing.
And we'll also be talking about some really painfully personal text messages between his daughters.
Oh, did you search the data?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And we're going to be right on the edge of good taste with this.
Yay!
Yay!
Everybody's excited.
So when we last left our dear friend, Paul Manafort, his trial for massive financial fraud and failing to register as a foreign agent was about to begin.
In the weeks since that episode, Paul Manafort has been convicted and rolled as far as a man can roll and signed a plea agreement with the Mueller or Mueller investigation.
So that's fun.
Kind of angry at him for having a name that makes me want to say Mueller when it's supposed to be Mueller.
It's Mueller.
I know.
He chose, I mean, at some point, the less fun pronunciation was canonical.
I imagine that he has this last name because for generations back in the old country, his family just molded wine, put like spices in hot wine.
That's all they did.
I always wonder, I'm like, what did my family have my family ever done anything?
They lofted.
They, what?
They had lofts.
They were built lofts.
My guess.
They're poor.
They weren't living in them.
They were just making them.
They were probably making them.
That or they were aircraft pioneers.
Ooh, that would be kind of nice.
Yeah, they were Italian aircraft pioneers, and it was the Oloftus family.
And then they came here in Ellis Island.
They were like, no, we're taking the A off.
No, and then now we're going to build lofts for other people.
And now you make that clat tail as old as time.
And now I do that today.
And Paul Manafort's ancestors manned forts.
Kind of true.
True enough.
I'm on this journey with you.
Everyone's last name holds the secret to their ancestry.
My relatives lived in vans.
There you go.
There we go.
So like digital vans.
Yes, evans.
Evans.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, I enjoyed that.
Yeah.
That was a fun little digression.
So at this moment, we don't know how long exactly Paul Manafort's going to spend in prison.
I think next February is when he gets sentenced.
The max from the plea deal he signed is a decade, but it'll probably be somewhat less than that.
However, since Paul is already 69, even a five-year sentence.
Swish.
Nice.
Pretty sick.
Even a five-year sentence is a good chance of being a life sentence for him.
The odds of Paul Manafort dying in prison seem to have raised recently based on an appearance he made in court on Friday, October 19th.
Is this the wheelchair thing?
This is the wheelchair thing.
Yeah.
Okay.
Paul was wheeled into court in a wheelchair and looking very sick.
His lawyer says that he has significant health issues related to the terms of his confinement.
He had like his one leg elevated and like a sock on instead of a shoe.
It was so much.
It was so much.
It reminded me of when Robert Durst went to court wearing a neck brace and was like, I couldn't have done it.
I was on meth.
That was what Manafort took it to an 11.
He's like, if Robert Durst had no personality.
Yeah, if nobody wanted to hang out with Robert Durst.
Which everyone unfortunately does.
I mean, who wouldn't?
He's so cool.
He's super cool.
I used to make calendars of my fan art of him.
I know that that's not joking.
Which takes it a step too far, and I stopped doing it.
Well, no, when you realize you've taken a step too far, what are your options?
You step backwards, or you step even further.
Or you make posters.
Yeah.
You make posters and you change your name.
Yep.
Anyway.
Paul Manafort.
Yeah, basically, it seems like he's claiming he has gout, and that's why he has to be in a wheelchair and his leg.
The rich man's rich man leg.
Yeah, rich man leg eating too much sugar.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Either gout or diabetes would be possible causes of something like that, or he might just be lying to try and get, you know, out of being in prison for longer.
Does he have a history of lying?
A history of what?
Paul Manafort?
Does he, has he ever lied before?
I don't know.
I don't know if we have any evidence of him being manipulative.
I mean, we have no evidence that Robert Durst killed anyone.
No, we don't.
Except in self-defense.
Except in self-defense.
And that time he admitted it in the bathroom.
He did.
The time he burped and said I did it.
And with Paul Manafort, of course, we have the text messages his daughter sent talking about the things their dad told him about the crimes that he was committing.
The daughters are so chaotic, evil.
It's amazing how almost no criminals at that level of crime can avoid admitting what they've done.
Like, you don't run into a lot of crack dealers who, in interviews with people, are like, yep, I sell crack.
Right.
Like, there's so.
I don't know.
If you're doing crimes, don't brag about it.
Don't brag about the crimes while you're committing them.
In public.
In public.
It's so crazy.
It's pretty wild.
Don't tell your daughters who text on unsecured cell phones about the crimes you're committing for a dictator.
These are lessons that nobody should actually learn because then these people wouldn't get caught.
Right.
Yeah.
That's true.
Yeah.
So Paul Manafort is apparently very sick and on death's door, according to Paul Manafort.
I have to be released.
Let me out of prison, please.
The prosecution does still have the option to waive a lot of his convictions if he helps them out enough.
So right now, the 10 things that he wasn't convicted for when he got his original sentence, they've said we're not going to try you again on these things, but we could try him again if he doesn't wind up giving the prosecution very much.
So is the deadline for that when his trial begins, or is that just indefinite?
I think it's by February or something.
You'll never know if they're going to try him.
It seems like there is a ticking clock.
We're going to see what else they get from him.
But yeah, it's possible he'll be dismissed and won't spend much more time in prison.
It's possible he will die there.
I do want to draw your attention, Jamie, to one last line from a CNN article that I read that was sort of introducing the fact that he'd come to court in a wheelchair.
Okay.
Quote, Manafort's wife was not in the courtroom on Friday.
She previously attended most of his hearings in the entirety of his Virginia trial.
Why might that be?
I don't know.
Was it perhaps that he was serially philandering on her and probably wasn't actually sick?
Now, his rampant cheating may have had something to do with the fact that she wasn't there.
Although she knew about, everyone knew about his rampant cheating when she was there for his Virginia trial.
True.
But some more information about Paul Manafort's love life has cropped up since the last time we discussed him.
Ooh.
Do you want to take a guess at what else he did?
Dish.
Did he do some freaky shit that wasn't legal?
Well, the legality is in question, but it seems like he repeatedly forced his wife to have group sex with anonymous men despite her horror at the idea and complete disinclination to do so.
That is absolutely horrible.
Now, that's just according to his daughters.
Oh, okay, so it's the most possible reliable source.
Okay, okay.
So wait, when was this happening?
Well, this apparently was happening for years, but the text message conversations, his daughters found out in late 2014.
So then why has his wife decided to just be angry enough to not come to court about that now?
It's interesting.
Part of me would guess that maybe it's, you know, with abusive relationships, oftentimes people feel sort of still attached to that person until they get enough distance to realize, oh my God, that was fucked up.
Or get like enough information of like, no, this person was doing all this stuff and then some.
You got to get to the end then some.
And they were together for a long time.
You know, she may have... 40 years or something.
Yeah, 40 years.
We're going to read some conversations between his daughters.
They give you some insight into his wife's head.
So she was clearly...
I'm not going to judge her at all.
I don't even feel comfortable using her name in the episode just because like, go live your life, lady.
Yeah, get out.
That's so horrible that he subjected her to that in the first place.
Yes.
So here's Paul's daughter, Andrea, texting her sister, Jess, about their mother.
This is right after Andrea found out what had been happening.
Okay.
Quote, she just admitted to me how she feels like she always does stuff he wants, but he doesn't do the stuff she wants.
And I asked, what does he make you do?
And she said group sex, and it makes her sick.
She is saying that we can never tell him we know that she is confiding in us.
But if he finds out we know, there is no way he will ever forgive her for telling us.
He likes to watch her.
To which Jess responded, she has to leave him if she doesn't want that, and he does.
Dad is a sex addict, Andrea.
I've known about this for a long time.
So.
Oh, God.
His daughters repeatedly make mentions of the fact that they think their dad is a sex addict.
So that seems to be like commonly accepted knowledge within the Manamfort family.
But I also think that's really unfair because it becomes clear later that what he's doing goes beyond sex addiction.
Okay.
So at one point, Jess claims that their dad refuses therapy because it feels to him like he isn't the dominant one.
That tracks.
In another conversation, his daughters describe, quote, the stuff he has made her do as outrageous, involving a room full of men and just her while dad tapes it all.
Yeah.
Okay.
I mean, it's, oh, that's so frustrating because when stories like that break, it just turns into like this kink shaming party when it's like, no, the issue is she did not want to do it and her husband was making her do it anyways because power dynamics be fucked up.
Yeah, the issue is not Paul Manafort's wife and Paul Manafort are having crazy group sex.
That's fine.
If you're both into it, if you're both into it.
Dope.
Dope.
Cool.
Leak the tape.
Otherwise, no.
Yeah, exactly.
Leak the tape.
I actually would like to rescind that statement.
I don't want to see Paul Manafort having group sex.
I just don't.
I don't want to see Paul Manafort having group sex, but I'm on record that I think if you are a federal-level politician in the United States and elected, you should be filmed.
Well, you should be filmed at all times.
Oh.
Like if you want to be in Congress, you want to be the president, you want to be a Supreme Court we see every time you go to the bathroom, every time you fuck, you can just tune in on a channel.
And if you screw up, they're like, we're leaking your poo-poo-pee-pee tapes.
Well, no, you'll just be available.
Everyone can stream that.
So for all politicians, it's the Truman show.
For all of them all the time.
If you want to be elected, that's what you do.
That's okay.
I think that would fix it.
You have a sinister view of.
I mean, if so, politicians have to get hotter immediately or no one's going to watch.
Well, that's probably all right.
At least that's true.
You don't want a lot of people watching.
You want just enough people to make really good super cuts of everyone in Congress pooping.
As a part of the hacker community, there will be hackers who develop technology to give you push notifications to your phone every time your favorite politician pee-pees.
And it'll slip fast.
Yeah, or like the Ted Cruz's fucking cam.
And everyone can know, do I want to see Ted Cruz?
No, he's just making love to a can of lukewarm soup.
I love that you give him the credit of assuming the soup would be lukewarm and not bone-chillingly cold.
No, he go, ooh, imagine just for everyone listening.
Yeah, I don't even know.
I think he has sex with a flaccid penis.
Yeah.
I think he, yeah, with a flaccid penis, fucks a lukewarm can of soup.
Yeah, Ted Cruz fucks a lukewarm can of soup and doesn't even care that the kind of the sharp edges of the can are grinding against his taint and cutting it open.
He's got all this.
He's got all these little cuts on his penis.
His wife's like, Ted, what's going on?
He's like, the soup.
He's honest about it.
He's honest about the soup.
Lion Ted.
And see, and that's why we're not going to kink shame Ted Cruz because that's fine.
Everyone should fuck a canopy.
Everyone has the right to fuck a can of soup.
Uncovering a Disturbing Pattern of Abuse00:12:26
At least once.
You got to know.
I'm more of like a bagged soup guy.
Whoa.
Is there bagged soup?
You've never had bagged soup?
Where do you get bagged soup?
Oh, you're an East Coastie.
Yeah, we got balls over there, baby.
On the West Coast, it's all in bags.
Why?
That's just the best way to carry soup.
Kmart bags?
Yeah, just karma.
Kmart bags?
You've never gone to one of those teenage sex parties where it's just a Kmart bag full of warm soup.
Honestly, I don't even like a soup.
It's like power that was left in the sun.
I don't like it.
I don't know how we got onto this digression, but it is.
So back to Paul Manafort's daughters.
So after noting that their dad tapes everything, Jess said, poor mom.
Andrea said, she says it's normal, that you and I probably do it.
I know.
I feel so, so, so bad for her.
Jess says, this is sick, Andrea.
It's filming a gangbang.
Andrea says, I know.
Jess goes on to call her father abusive and claims that he made their mother into a shell of a human being.
And then she said this.
Mom says you caught dad once on a website or something and confronted him about it, and he blew it off and told mom, see, she does it too.
Andrea responds that yes, she's caught their father several times and then says, I've seen the sites up on his Trump computer and I know that they had done group sex because of what Amanda told me she found.
I even thought I told mom about that.
So it seems like from what his daughters are saying, Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's campaign manager, was using his official Trump campaign-issued computer to set up questionably consensual gangbangs with his wife while the 2016 election was going on.
On the trail.
On the trail.
God.
This poor woman.
I mean, Jesus Christ.
So again, we're not trying to do kink shaming here.
Yeah, but I mean, you have your sex computer and then your regular, your work.
I don't know.
I mean, but I guess if it's a Trump-issued computer, it's okay to use it for sex crimes.
It's probably mostly for sex crimes, right?
Probably actually will work faster than if you were doing work.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The reason that I think this is worth bringing up in addition to the fact that it's just horrifying is that it's kind of evidence that Paul Manafort conducted his sex life and his family life the same way he conducted his job where it was all about what Paul Manafort could get and damn the human consequences of his actions.
Like Paul Manafort wanted a gangbang, so even though his wife was obviously traumatized by all this stuff, they were going to keep doing it.
He was like scheduling it too, like meetings.
Well, he's an organized guy.
He's an organized guy, conceiving children during conference calls, etc.
I just, I, wow, that is, whew, okay.
Jess later said, quote, I've been finding his weird shit my whole life.
I found his first black porn when I was 11, but I figured it was once in a while and mom was into it.
Clearly she was not.
Jess goes on to lament her father's serious control issues and then claim that what her own father did to their mother was, quote, basically rape, adding that, quote, she is a destroyed person.
Andrea agreed with this, saying, I agree this is emotional rape 100% and basically physically as well.
Basically.
Yeah, Paul Manafort's daughters think their dad is a rapist.
It is so, I mean, it's confusing and scary to me how self-aware of everything that is happening that his daughters seem, and yet ultimately always choose the path of evil.
Like, it seems like they could have busted their father so many times over if they had more.
I mean, them being self-aware is almost worse than if they were just like, yeah, who knows?
Like, this is just how people are.
Yeah, you know your dad is this gross, and you know that he's trying to help another guy become president.
Do you not wonder, like, maybe that guy's gross as hell too?
Maybe whatever side he supports in an election is the wrong one.
Right.
Like, just don't do like there's so many opportunities for them to get information from their dad and like help save something, someone.
Yeah.
Anyone.
I don't think they're good guys in this.
No, they're bystanders.
Yeah, they're bystanders when they didn't need to be.
So now that we've established Paul's ghoulish lack of fucks for the human beings he professes to love, I'd like to read one last quote about his sex life.
Okay.
Here's Jess.
Quote, did dad partake in the group?
Were there women?
Or was it always just him watching mom with other men?
To which Andrea responded, she said he did partake, but like he could never get off.
But apparently he has a thing for black men, hardcore.
One time it was six black men in a hotel room.
I hate him, Jessica.
I think I hate him.
She said she would often be so drunk she couldn't stand.
So again, I think we've got a pretty fair claim that Paul Manafort's a rapist on a legal level.
Yes.
Yeah, if he's drugging people to have, oh, God.
Well, what a nightmare.
He should be castrated.
He should be kissed.
Sounds like he can't get it up anyway.
It would be an easy cut.
Have you ever seen Hard Candy?
No.
Oh, a young Ellen Page cuts off Patrick Wilson's dick.
Whoa.
Sorry, spoiler alert.
She's 14.
The big centerpiece of the movie is she, like, baits a guy who's like trying to get little girls to come over to his house, goes to his house, and cuts his dick off.
That sounds like a fun movie.
It's a great movie, and I want it to happen to Paul Manafort.
You know what?
I would support him being let out of prison if Ellen Page had to cut off his penis.
It has to be Ellen Page.
It has to be Ellen Pafa.
I insist on Ellen Page.
Someone's got to fly a helicopter to the island she owns.
You're needed, Miss Page.
Okay, so part of me feels a little bit voyeuristic and even kind of gross peering through these text messages, but I think Paul Manafort lived his life too publicly and involved himself too deeply in the lives and deaths and freedom of tens of millions of people to deserve any sort of privacy here.
The outrageous and vile way he treated his family is relevant because he's a man who sought to and did impact the world.
And on that note, Paul's daughters had some interesting things to say about their father's actions in Ukraine.
In the prior episodes, we covered how Paul's advice to former Ukrainian president Yanukovych was to basically exacerbate the divide between East and West in order to consolidate power.
Manafort also urged the would-be dictator to crack down violently on the Maidan protesters.
His actions were a major influence in the murder of more than 100 protesters, often by government snipers.
Now, at one point in February 2014, when these protests were going on, and when, in fact, the government was murdering people with snipers at Paul Manafort's behest, one of Andrea's friends texted her to ask if her dad was mentally and emotionally okay over all this.
So I'm guessing that like Andrea's friend saw vague TV news about unrest in Ukraine and was like, oh boy, I know that Andrea's dad spends a lot of time over there.
I better check in on her.
Okay.
Andrea replied, yes, what are you even talking about?
Her friend explained all the protests in Ukraine.
Andrea said, what about them?
And he said, I don't know.
Isn't that stressful on him?
Andrea said, he's totally fine.
And her friend said, oh, okay, good.
I think you misspelled that.
No, I think it was a cutesy middle school reply.
Okay.
Okay.
Bye-bye.
So two days later, President Yanukovych fled Ukraine in disgrace and the protesters won.
The Civil War sparked off pretty much immediately afterwards.
And two days after that, Andrea's friend texted her again, asking, how's your pops doing with all the Ukraine BS?
To which Andrea responded, he's peachy keen, doesn't affect him.
Okay.
Ote.
Jesus Christ.
Thanks for checking in.
And speaking of, there was more.
Where's it going?
There's no need in there.
It's an ad pivot.
Oh, you got a better pivot than that, Lofty?
You know what's really, Ote.
The goods and services you're about to be advertised.
Nailed it.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
Oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Mona.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Oespi and Michael Maracini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trap.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news out of Maricopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots fired, City Hall building.
A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene from iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios.
This is Rorschach.
Murder at City Hall.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that!
Jeffrey Hood did it.
July 2003.
Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
Everybody in the chamber ducks.
A shocking public murder.
I screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
Those are shots.
Get down.
A charismatic politician.
You know, he just bent the rules all the time.
I still have a weapon.
And I could shoot you.
And an outsider with a secret.
He alleged you.
That may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach.
Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
We're back.
Okay.
Okay.
The Cost of Arrogant Political Suits00:15:47
So I should note that the text we just read came several months before Andrea first became aware of the extent of her father's sexual abuse of her mother.
She seems to take a perverse sort of pride in her father's crappitude at this point, and that seems to have changed over the course of 2014.
So in November of 2014, she texted her sister this, quote, I hate him, Jessica.
I am being really strong right now and telling mom it's okay and I don't judge her.
And the only thing that really upsets me is how all this made her feel and how he made her feel that way.
But between you and me, I fucking hate him.
He gets off on controlling her.
He orders food for her.
He dresses her.
He gives her to-do lists.
She is his puppet.
No wonder she is a shell.
So it's an interesting, she is capable of understanding how shitty her dad is when he hurts her mom.
But when he's ordering a crackdown in a foreign country that leads to hundreds of deaths and eventually thousands, it's like, ah, he's fine.
Most wealthy people can't see past the tip of their own nose.
Yeah.
And you would think that like there would have been some like wake-up moment.
I don't know when she realized how bad her dad was like, oh, maybe the things he's been doing around the world are terrible.
And I should take a look.
Let's take a look and try to expose how awful a man my dad is once he starts leading a presidential campaign.
Right.
So here's Andrea.
He rented her at Hampton's house a mile from us and would see her every week from Monday, Wednesday and tell my mom he was working.
And then the dumb bitch posted pics of our homes all over Instagram.
He's way too smart to have been this dumb about it.
He either wanted to be caught or is next level arrogant.
Or doesn't understand how the internet works.
Just a dumb old man.
Yeah.
It's like, if you look at his, he's born in 1949.
I feel like there does reach a point with a lot of like politicians and world leaders where it's like you can be a genius, but if you don't know how computer work, you're fucked.
Yeah, someone's like, can I post this on Instagram?
And he's like, maybe he thinks that's Flickr or something else where it's like a private photo.
Yeah, he doesn't know.
Yeah.
I mean, Google it.
Whatever.
Yeah.
Google it.
Computer.
Because she's significantly younger than him, right?
Way younger than him.
So she understands.
Listen, some people die flexing on the gram.
It's an epidemic.
Flexing on the gram.
Flexing on the...
Robert, are you not flexing on the gram?
I have never used the gram.
I know.
I think, Sophie, do you, Sophie runs the Gram.
Sophie runs the Graham.
Sophie runs the Graham.
You guys are flexing on the Gram.
I don't even know what that would mean.
Get that dopamine.
That sounds like you're talking about dealing drugs.
I am.
You got to do it.
Flex the Graham.
Now I'm admitting it on a podcast classic.
You heard it here first, folks.
If you want to buy drugs.
HMU.
Okay.
Okay.
So it gets grosser.
According to Jess, quote, I mean, he has taken her on his playlist of places, as in like the restaurant he celebrates my mom's birthday every year with her, the place they went on their honeymoon to, all the restaurants they go to when they go to Paris for decades.
So again, Paul Manafort, gross piece of shit.
Yeah.
And there's a piece of resonance.
Okay.
Oh, yeah.
So while Jess was parsing out the full extent of her dad's awfulness, Andrea realized that, quote, he was at a beach resort off the coast of Ukraine with her the weekend of my fucking engagement party.
No, that's so many levels.
He's just Ukraine on top of that.
He's just so consistently as bad a human being as he can possibly be.
He's going to let people down at every turn.
It almost makes Donald Trump's lack of awareness that he has a younger daughter.
Like, he's a better parent to Tiffany than Paul Manafort's been to either of his daughters.
A lack of parenting is better than, God, I still, I used to believe that Tiffany was going to save us.
Why would you want to?
I wanted her because I love her because of the single.
She what?
She had a song.
I had no idea.
Tiffany song.
I wanted Tiffany Trump.
She wouldn't save us for us, but I think she would have enough daddy rage to save us by accident.
That was my hope.
Okay.
But it didn't work out.
Well, maybe Tiffany Trump, if you're a fan of the show, I don't know.
What are you doing?
What are you doing?
What could she do?
I mean, I'd try to try.
I'd be willing to guess that the average reporter in D.C. has talked to her dad more than she has.
Probably.
But then what are in her texts?
Well, yeah.
Like the TIFF texts.
So Paul Manafort's a gross slam bucket of a human being.
So let's get back to the court case.
If you just sort of skimmed the news headlines about it, you were probably aware of the fact that Mr. Manafort used some of his ill-gotten dictator money in order to buy a $15,000 ostrich skin jacket.
Have you looked at a picture of this jacket?
No.
Do you have a pic?
Oh, yeah.
Uh-huh.
And it'll be on our website, behindthebastards.com.
Look at this piece of shit.
It's not even a nice-looking jacket.
No, it just looks like...
Why does it have to be ostrich skin if it just looks like any jacket?
It looks like any black faux leather jacket.
Yeah, you could get that at top shop.
Well, and also, it looks like you can tell Paul Manafort wearing it when you see Paul Manafort pictures.
He wears it because he wants to look like a greaser.
Yeah, he thinks he's the fawns.
He thinks he's the fawns.
That's why he bought this $15,000 ostrich jacket.
How embarrassing.
And I think when people were making fun of it online, they were expecting it was some sort of like ridiculous ostrich plume jacket.
It looks like a black jacket that you would buy for $200 somewhere.
Only Paul Manafort would spend that much money on a jacket that's boring and sucks.
That's the only thing he buys is expensive, boring, shitty stuff.
Not even fun.
Not even fun to look at.
So, God bless him, the New York Post tracked down the Manhattan tailor who sold Paul Manafort his stupid, ugly ostrich jacket.
And it turns out this guy had sold Paul Manafort most of his other stupid, ugly, and unbearably expensive rich person clothing.
Cool.
In the interview with the tailor, a guy named Maximilian Katzmann, who sounds like a rich guy to me.
Okay, he sounds, I can hear his mustache.
First off, if your name is Maximilian and you don't introduce yourself as Max, you're a tailor for rich people.
That's just the way it goes.
So Max worked for Alain Couture.
I guess that's how it's spelled.
A luxury menswear shop in New York City where the elite meet to spend more than the GDP of some countries on suits that all look the same.
Katzman said of the ostrich jacket purchase, this was during a fitting.
It simply caught his eye.
So it was like an impulse buy.
So Paul Manafort just sees this jacket and is like, God, should I throw this jacket the price of a nice mid-sized sedan on the pile?
Jesus Christ.
Yeah, two jackets that pay off my student loans.
Paul.
Fucking Paul.
So Katzman's dad owns Alan Couture, and he comes across as a rich fashion industry douchewaffle who's probably completely baffled by the idea that anyone would find it horrifying to spend $15,000 of dictator blood money on a jacket.
He called Manafort's style the quote professional politician look, nothing too bold, nothing too artsy, nothing that could offend someone in a very formal setting.
So I'm going to guess any individual suit Mr. Manafort wears probably costs more money than the combined net worth of you and I. Suck.
Here's a picture of him in a suit.
Tell me that doesn't look like a Brooks Brothers $150 suit.
It's just a fucking blue suit, Paul.
It doesn't even look good.
This is, oh, this is like every rich guy in politics.
I don't.
Okay, I mean, do you ever come up against this?
Do you ever get frustrated when a bastard won't go all the way?
Yeah, that's why I like L. Ron Hubbard.
Because you're a crazy, rich, evil monster, but you bought your own navy and made it search for gold.
You walked the walk.
You walked the walk.
You walked the psycho walk.
I don't like, yeah, this weird rich man.
It's like, I'm wearing what you're wearing, but mine is $30,000.
And more people died for it.
Yeah.
It's like buying a private jet, which is like, no, that's just a way to waste more money if you're rich.
Now, like that Google guy who's buying a blimp that's a house that he can fly around the world, that's okay.
NSC evil and bad?
Yes, sir.
Sure.
But at least he's not boring.
But he exactly.
There's creativity there.
At least he's got a blimp.
At least he's got a fucking blimp.
At least when he's inevitably taken down, someone gets a blimp.
Someone gets a blimp.
It's like Eric Prince, horrible guy, but yeah, at least he's like trying to buy a navy in his own.
He's not like...
Don't do the boring shit that every rich asshole does and spend all of your money on stupid things.
Horse and clothes.
Yeah.
Fucking a horse.
A horse.
Grow up.
That's some Mitt Romney bullshit there.
Like, buy a blimp.
God, Mitt Romney, the world's most boring rich man.
Yeah.
Okay.
So we know that Paul Mitt spent more than $900,000 at Alan Couture between 2010 and 2014 while he was working for Yanukovych.
Katzmann said of the ostrich jacket, this is the epitome of, you know, opulence.
This is as over the top as we could get.
That's the nicest way I could put it.
That's his sales pitch.
It's a sales pitch.
I'm going to read one last quote from this guy.
Okay.
We sell over the moon exotic things on a regular basis, Katzman said, noting that a Vikuna wool suit made from the underbelly of Peruvian camels runs $35,000.
I'm surprised to see that this has become a thing.
Now, when you're spending the income of an average American family on a suit that doesn't look any different from a normal suit, you might get people wanting to guillotine you.
That's just kind of how it works.
It seems like they're coming for you first.
It seems like they're going to eat you.
And also, whenever people like that casually express surprise of like, yeah, no idea why people are into it.
You're like, then stop.
Then stop selling that kind of shit.
Then stop.
If you want to be a kind of person who wears a boring suit, go buy a $300 boring suit from Brooks Brothers or something.
And then buy a blimp.
And then buy a fucking blimp.
Buy a blimp.
So at least if we're going to live in an oligarchy where the rich crush everyone who doesn't have as much money as them, at least there will be blimps in the sky.
Let's bring back the Zeppelin.
Make Zeppelins great again.
Make Zeppelins great again.
And then because then one poor person per Zeppelin can just spark.
Exactly.
And we're done with riches.
And then we can just Hindenburg all the Zeppelins.
If we can convince the oligarchy that Zeppelins are cool, and then we Hindenburg the oligarchy.
There we go.
There we go.
Hashtag Hindenburg the oligarchy.
So Paul Manafort will not be keeping his ostrich skin jacket.
Oh, no.
I know.
That's a heartbreaker.
He looks so good in it.
There's no way.
He will not be keeping most of the ill-gotten gains he earned in decades of helping the world's worst people torture, murder, and suppress millions upon millions of human beings.
In total, his plea deal involves him giving up some $45 million worth of assets, enough to pay for the entire Mueller investigation to date more than two times over.
Yeah, I know.
Mueller investigation is very cash flow positive right now.
I was, I would say, I'm surprised it's been that cheap.
It's cost like $18, $20 million, but then you get $45 million from one guy.
Now you're in the black.
You're in the black.
Go catch some more rich guys breaking laws.
Go, Jim.
Maybe that's most of what law enforcement should be.
Okay, so according to the BBC, quote, he's accepted responsibility, said Manafort defense lawyer Kevin Downing after Thursday's court appearance.
He wanted to make sure that his family was able to remain safe and live a good life.
So it seems like what Manafort was trying to do was making this plea deal so that his family could keep some of their money so that his kids and wife don't die poor.
I'm guessing it's more because he hopes he'll get out of prison in time.
And you and take it.
And take it from him.
Yes.
I don't think Paul Manafort gives a fuck about another human being.
No.
Except for maybe his Instagram mistress.
Yeah, what a weird Achilles heel to have.
Everybody's got one.
That's true, and they always have a violent Instagram presence.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, well, like King Leopold and that teenage prostitute that he loved.
Yeah, she would have told her.
And she had a great story.
She had a really compelling online presence.
The best Instagram in 1909.
She truly is.
By far.
I'd like to conclude by talking about the fact that Rick Gates, Paul Manafort's aide and wingman for decades, completely rolled on him as soon as the FBI got involved.
In roughly one hour of testimony on the fifth day of the Manafort trial, Gates had admitted to faking expense reports to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from his boss, partly in order to fund a love nest in London for him and his mistress.
Gates also admitted to helping Paul Manafort hide millions of dollars in offshore bank accounts.
Manafort's former accountant also testified against him in exchange for immunity for her crimes in helping Paul hide tens of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains.
Just about the only person who hasn't completely written Paul Manafort off as a human being is Donald Trump.
Wow.
Yeah, that is.
He's a real one.
He's a loyal guy.
Wow.
He famously labeled his former campaign manager a brave man.
I'm not really sure what he was referring to here in terms of bravery.
Mainly the fact that he hadn't directly implicated Donald Trump at any crimes?
That's what I call courage.
Yeah, it's brave enough not to do the one thing that he could do in his whole life that would be helpful.
When I think of bravery, number one is those young boys storming that beach at Iwo Jima.
And number two is Paul Manafort not rolling on the only person who could exonerate him.
Yeah, nothing.
I just, there's nothing braver than when Paul Manafort doesn't snitch.
You know, and normally I'm anti-snitched, but not in this case.
This is a clear one must snitch.
Snitch on financial crimes.
Right.
Exactly.
Snitch carefully.
So I do want to take this point now that we're closing to the end of our special little episode.
I want to put together a little list that I should have added to the first two-parter we did on the matter, which is my best attempt to kind of create a Paul Manafort kill count.
So yeah, we're going to get into that now.
So the Ferdinand Marcos regime, who Manafort backed and received tens of millions of dollars from, killed about 3,257 people.
The Angolan Civil War, which Paul Manafort lengthened by as much as a decade by securing rebel leader Jonas Savimbi arms from the U.S. government, killed more than 500,000 people in 27 years.
The Maidan Revolution cost 130 people their lives.
Manafort's own daughters claim, based on the things he told them, that he advised Yanukovych to use deadly force to split up the protests.
More than 10,000 people have died in the ongoing Ukrainian civil war.
Manafort also represented Mobutu Sese Seku, the dictator of the Congo, while he plundered the nation of virtually all its wealth.
It's hard to pin an exact death toll on this one, but I think it's worth noting that Paul Manafort was part of the long, proud Western tradition of fucking over the people of the Congo for a little bit of cash.
Now, is there more?
You just flipped the page.
We're not done with the dictators.
Paul Manafort's help.
Okay, okay.
Yeah.
So, Paul also worked with Sanny Abacha, dictator-president of Nigeria from 1993 to 1998.
Again, it's hard to pin an exact death toll on this one, but Sanny had at least dozens of dissidents executed and many more tortured.
He also stole $5 billion from the country, some of which wound up in Paul Manafort's slimy pockets.
It's probably worth noting that the oil company Shell has also been accused of being implicated in some of the killings.
I know.
Wait.
Shell.
I know.
It makes me think of the ocean.
What thinks of beautiful oil-filled beaches?
There's a big sign over Boston, the Shell sign.
I don't know why I felt such loyalty to a gas company.
I know.
It really hurts.
It really hurts.
I got to go and look at that sign and be like, I don't take any joy in you.
Sign.
You expect this shit from Chevron.
Yeah, I mean, because they've got text in their logo.
Grow up.
And that's horrifying.
But a Shell.
Shell.
Shell.
Okay.
I don't like Shell anymore.
We don't always have great detail on the extent of Manafort's work with the individual monsters that he represented because he was committing international crimes and tried to hide his tracks.
But he has also been tied to work with the former Kyrgyz dictator Bakiev.
And Paul Manafort has also been tied to work with C. Ed Barr, the former dictator of Somalia.
The UN claims that Barr's regime had, quote, one of the worst human rights records in Africa.
Death Threats and Fake News on Twitter00:06:30
I found a fun Guardian article written about Rita Levinson, who worked for Paul on the bar case.
So she wrote of her old boss, quote, arrogant, narcissistic, egotistical, brilliant, all of that I can handle in Paul, but it is Paul's mercenary attitude that puts us at odds.
So basically, she told a story about when Barr's regime was collapsing in Somalia.
This is like the last regime before Somalia becomes a failed state, essentially.
So while it's falling apart, Paul Manafort sent her and a colleague over to Somalia to try to get a million dollars out of the Barr regime as it was collapsing.
Just to twist the knife?
Just to try to get a little bit more money out of them.
He was basically claiming, like, I can get you some last-minute aid and help if you throw some money our way.
So it didn't work out, and they got very sick and almost died because the country was collapsing into a failed state.
And she kind of got pissed at this because she realized afterwards that, like, he knew we might die, but it was like, well, if two people die, that's not that big a deal.
And if we win, we get an extra million bucks.
Like, that was Paul Manafort's calculation.
Oh, my God.
She was really pissed about this.
Yeah.
And she said, and she was 25 years old at the time.
So, like, she was in a questionable industry, but also she was fucking 25 years old.
Who isn't doing that when they're 25?
I was definitely in Somalia when I was 25.
Yeah, yeah.
Different purposes.
But we were all there.
We were all shooting down U.S. helicopters.
We were all risking our lives for millionaires in Somalia.
That too, some of us.
This is a quote from Rita writing afterwards about the time Paul Manafort almost got her and a colleague murdered in Somalia.
Yes.
I realize now that to men like Manafort, the world really is one huge game of Stratego, and he plays to win.
The consequences are secondary.
He sent John and me on this wild goose chase, this utterly pointless mission, one that could have killed us both, simply because he could.
Which is, I think, why Paul Manafort does everything that he's ever done.
Yeah, and is experiencing the first consequence ever?
A consequence at age 69.
A consequence at the age of.
Okay, yeah.
Well, poor him, though.
He's got a cast.
He does.
And his foot, he can't wear a shoe.
He can't.
He's got to get rolled around.
He can't wear it.
His grandfather's got Instagram and his daughter's text, and I screwed, man.
Now we screwed.
Wow.
Paul Manafort is the one that we should feel sorry for.
I think that he's really the victim in all of this.
He's the great victim in Western civilization.
Do we know what his daughters think about having their text leaked, or have they come down?
I think they've gone to ground a little bit.
But there is a searchable database online now of all of the Manafort daughter texts.
Can't wait to get some Netflix recommendations from there.
I just started searching for individual words, and you'll find some fun stuff.
But most of it was like, yeah, you search for fart or something, and you just get a lot of really fun conversations, but none of which was super relevant.
Well, a bonus to the bonus.
Yeah.
The Manafort girls talk farts.
That'll be the next episode.
This is our two-person show playing the Manafort Daughters.
Man, if we ever get booked at Madison Square Garden, that'll be the headline.
Perfect.
All right.
Jamie.
Yeah.
President of Loftistan.
Loftistan, yes.
Loftistan.
Yes.
You got a plug a pluggable?
I got a little pluggie.
You can listen to the Bechtel cast every Thursday.
And yeah, you used to be able to follow me on social media.
Now you kind of can't.
Twitter's the real bastard here.
Twitter's Jack Dorsey.
When's that episode?
Jesus Christ.
You can find me on Instagram, FlexingontheGraham, a Jamie Christ superstar.
And if it so disposes you, maybe yell at Twitter about banning Jamie Loftus when they don't ban white nationalists.
You threaten to murder people.
Let them know what you were doing.
It was pretty bad.
I mean, I did.
Well, first, I made silly videos about figure skating.
That was bad.
That was very bad.
Next, I posted a death threat made to me, and that got me banned for the first time.
The same as making a death threat.
It's the same.
Reporting it is basically doing it.
And then you threaten to murder the fictitious Zamboni brothers.
I did say I was going to find the Zamboni brothers and kill them, but the Zamboni brothers are cartoons.
Let's not.
They're my cartoons.
They're literally my cartoons.
But, you know, I did, and I'm a danger to society.
I threatened them.
You are.
I threatened them.
Just because you create a fictional character doesn't mean you can fake threaten to fake murder them.
You're right.
That's Twitter rules.
I'm fake sorry.
I am real Robert Evans, and this has been Behind the Bastards.
You can find us on social media at BastardsPod on Twitter and Instagram, but I will not be looking at the Instagram because I don't know how to use Instagram.
We're going to change that.
Sophie's going to interact with you there, but she's a better person than me, so you can enjoy it.
And you can find us on behindthebastards.com.
You can find us every Tuesday, most Thursdays from now until the heat death of the universe or until everyone decides to stop being shitty.
Oh.
Yeah.
Okay, so three weeks or never.
Yeah, one of the two.
Oh, also, you can buy shirts and hoodies and boxes and stuff with things that we've designed on them, cups.
Boxes and stuff?
Like for laptops.
A box for your laptop.
Okay, okay, okay.
Phone cases.
On TeePublic, Behind the Bastards.
Some of the money will get to me, and I will use it to buy narcotics.
And ostrich jackets.
I am waiting for this show to get big enough that I can have an ugly ostrich jacket that is visually indistinguishable from a $70 Kmart jacket.
Isn't that the goal of this show to make you so wealthy that you yourself become a bastard?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's when it's canceled.
Yeah, and then I will get a blimp.
Yeah, and then you get a blimp, and then we burn the blimp.
Sorry.
At least I'd die on a blimp.
If I learned one thing from 20th century history, it's he who dies on a flaming blimp wins.
I'm going to get a Durido's Nut Dictators mug.
I just decided.
Oh, well, that's a great mug that you can buy on our TeePublic store.
Boom.
All right.
I love about 40% of you.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
Burning Blimps and Buying Mugs00:02:09
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that.
Trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Gillespie and Michael Manchini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trapped.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots five in the City Hall building.
How did this ever happen in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
A shocking public murder.
This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
They screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
A tragedy that's now forgotten.
And a mystery that may or may not have been political.
It may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Laurie Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
An in-depth conversation with a man who's shaping our future.
My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.