Part Five: The Timing Is All Wrong

Let me tell you a story . . . about a plan that was all wrong from the get-go!  Sometimes the ‘smartest people’ with the ‘best lawyers’ talk themselves into following a stupid plan.  Admittedly there are a number of issues that have to be given priority, but still . . .

The background.  Manafort had been an international ‘deal maker’ for decades, working in the Ukraine and Russia, at times, as well as with other associated states and power brokers.  The U.S. public became aware of him as Donald Trump was clinching the delegate count in the primaries of May and June in 2016.  Trump was facing a desperate last-ditch battle for delegates to win the nomination at the GOP convention.  In came Manafort as Campaign Manager, and presto, the fight seemed to just dissipate.   Strange changes were made to the Republican platform and word of various Russian initiatives began to circulate.  Then, as the campaign got started, Manafort left but the ‘strangeness’ of the campaign’s sensitivity to all things ‘Russian’ continued.

Now, two years later, some that ‘Russian’ stuff is coming into focus.  Trump owes a lot of money to various Russian interests and may be complicit in money laundering using his real estate developments.  Second, the Russians very much want certain legal restraints lifted from them, restraints that hurt their ability to work in certain financial markets or gain overseas capital.  Manafort is tied into all of this intrigue.  The question is, “Is the Trump campaign and the present administration tied directly into this?”

The current situation.  It became ‘breaking news’ on Monday, August 27, 2018 that Manafort’s legal team had approached Special Counsel Mueller to explore a ‘guilty’ plea in the upcoming trial in exchange for leniency in jail time.   To understand the absurdity of this request we have to remember that Manafort and his lawyers had the opportunity, many months ago, to combine the just-completed ‘financial issues’ trial with the upcoming ‘conspiracy and collusion’ trial.  Combining the trials would have made sense for Manafort; the overwhelming documentation evidence of financial fraud and tax evasion would have been mixed in with the shadowy issues of ‘he said, she said’ of connections between individuals in the U.S., Administration and Campaign with various officials overseas connected to Russian interests.   There could be a lot of reasonable doubt in lots of areas.  Complexity could have made plea deals much easier to work out.

Now, the financial fraud and money laundering issues have been settled and guilty verdicts rendered.  The momentum is not with Manaford.  The evidence will be very heavy against him and collaborative sources have been developed.  

With the above screw-ups in planning all laid out, and the situation now being much worse, this becomes the basis for an interesting story.  How will the subject struggle and win against these impossible odds?  Well, we won’t know in the course of this blog.  The trial is set to start Sept. 17, 2018, more than two weeks from now.  But this chapter of the story can be shared.  (Story teller photo from Goggle images).

The first thing I look for in any of these Return and cyclic charts is the presence of a natal angle at one of the chart’s angles.  This chart above is an advanced chart taken from the t/Moon-to-n/Sun Return chart we saw in Part 3.  I have diurnally advanced that chart to August 27th when the above noted news broke.  On this day, Manafort’s plea request was turned down.  Mueller already had everything he needed, so why agree to a plea deal.  The whole strategy was to convict Manafort on the financial issues and obtain a lot of jail time to use as leverage, if and as needed.

• Here we have natal Ascendant at the IC angle of this Advanced chart.  Page 160 of ‘Personal Moon-to-Sun Returns 2’ notes ‘taking a new approach to life, changing your face or reputation.’  This pattern suggests that Manafort wants very much to start things off on a new basis after having suffered a staggering set-back in the first trial.
• t/Mars conjoins n/Jupiter near the MC angle.  Reaching out for a better opportunity.  This pairing, in a natal chart, is called ‘the greedy grabber.’  Here, Manafort is trying to grab something better in a bad situation.
• t/Uranus just above the Ascendant.  I often read such a positions as relating to something that has just passed.  Here, I would tend to say that a great realization has come to late.  The time to deal was much earlier.  
• The same is true of t/Pluto on the 9th house side of the MC.  The time for a power play has passed.  It is too late.
• t/Part of Fortune square n/PoF.  I’ve seen this before.  Chance and change, the keywords for the PoF, has to fight with itself.  It is either too many choices or options being available, or the choice of options is not understood.  Confusion, strife, inadequate efforts are the result.
• There are two angular Jupiters in this chart; n/Jupiter-10th and t/Jupiter-7th.  Normally this would suggest that opportunities and expansion of some sort was in the wind.  But, if we sneek a peek at t/Mercury-n/Pluto making a T-square to n/Moon-opp-t/Jupiter we get the sense that big powers are moving on this political stage and Manafort does not have a commanding role.

So, unless something else develops, this series of blog posts on Paul Manafort will wait until the trial date approaches.  Dave.