Web of Ties Connects Ed Gillespie and Paul Manafort

I guess the following information I received this morning (not from the Kremlin, by the way, which is apparently where the 2016 Trump for President campaign got a lot of its information) is not surprising, given that both Gillespie and Manafort are a) Republicans and b) “swamp creatures,” but still interesting to know.

• Ed Gillespie and Paul Manafort were next-door neighbors on Mount Vernon Circle in Alexandria for 15 years, from 2000 to 2015.
• Gillespie and Manafort have likely known each other since at least 1996, when Manafort managed the Republican National Convention (see Manafort in this video from 7/31/96) while Gillespie was RNC Communications Director.
• Manafort and Gillespie were each quoted in a 7/24/96 Washington Post article discussing TV programming for the 1996 Republican National Convention.
• A top Gillespie donor, Reginald Brown, was Paul Manafort’s attorney this year, from March 24 through August 10, as Manafort was being investigated.

Lovely, eh? Also, here’s just a bit of background regarding the work Paul Manafort was doing out of his Alexandria home…

• Created a shell company to hide his work for a Putin-allied Russian oligarch, possibly at the direction of the Kremlin; the shell company was registered at Manafort’s home
• Conducted business for Oleg Deripaska, a close Putin ally, through a shell company named “LOAV,” which was registered at Manafort’s Alexandria home. “Manafort pitched the plans to aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, a close Putin ally with whom Manafort eventually signed a $10 million annual contract beginning in 2006, according to interviews with several people familiar with payments to Manafort and business records obtained by the AP. Manafort and Deripaska maintained a business relationship until at least 2009, according to one person familiar with the work. […] For the $10 million annual contract, Manafort did not use his public-facing consulting firm, Davis Manafort. Instead, he used a company, LOAV Ltd., that he had registered in Delaware in 1992. He listed LOAV as having the same address as his lobbying and consulting firms in Alexandria, Virginia. In other records, LOAV’s address was listed as Manafort’s home, also in Alexandria. Manafort sold the home in July 2015 for $1.4 million. He now owns an apartment in Trump Tower in New York, as well as other properties in Florida and New York.”