Internal Mueller documents show Trump campaign chief pushed unproven theory Ukraine hacked Democrats
President Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, suggested as early as the summer of 2016 that Ukrainians might have been responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee during the presidential campaign rather than Russians, a key witness told federal investigators last year.
Newly released documents show that Manafort’s protege, deputy campaign manager Rick Gates, told the FBI of Manafort’s theory during interviews conducted as part of former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. Gates told the FBI that Manafort had shared his theory of Ukrainian culpability with him and other campaign aides before the election.
The new information shows how early people in Trump’s orbit were pushing the unsubstantiated theory about Ukraine’s role. And it illustrates a link between Mueller’s investigation, which concluded in March, and the current House impeachment investigation of Trump. The president had pushed Ukrainians to open a probe into whether their country interfered in the election — an assertion his allies have made in an effort to discredit Mueller’s findings about Russia’s role.
The documents were released in response to lawsuits filed by BuzzFeed and CNN seeking documents related to Mueller’s investigation. BuzzFeed on Saturday published the first installment of internal Mueller records, released by the Justice Department to the news organization in response to a court order.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/internal-mueller-documents-show-trump-campaign-chief-pushed-unproven-theory-ukraine-hacked-democrats/ar-AAJKClj?li=BBnb7Kz
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In Ukraine Manafort worked for the party of Putin's boy Yanukovich who was ousted in 2014. Two years later Manafort may have seen a chance to get some revenge by accusing and demonizing those damn Ukrainians that replaced his corrupt pals in Kiev--the pals who had been paying him millions (of rubles?) for his "services." 
Of course shifting the blame would also deflect attention away from Putin's hackers.
I've always suspected the Dump campaign picked Manafort specifically because of his ties to the Kremlin, possibly even as a requirement to receive Putin's help. Plus Manafort volunteered to work for "free," which may just mean he was being subsidized under the table in rubles.
