Paul Manafort Got Help From Wilson Center Scholar?

Here is more from Daily Beast:

An influential American think tank chief helped Paul Manafort advocate for his Russia-friendly Ukrainian client, according to an email Manafort sent that surfaced in federal court filings Friday.

The scholar, Matthew Rojansky, heads the non-partisan Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, which focuses on American relations with Russia and Ukraine. The Wilson Center, which Congress established 50 years ago, is considered one of Washington’s most influential think tanks.

In an email, Manafort claimed one of its scholars coordinated with him on an op-ed about his client Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russia Ukrainian strongman who had imprisoned his top political opponent, Yulia Tymoshenko.

Under Rojansky’s leadership, the Kennan Institute has faced turmoil. A host of former Ukrainian alumni of the Center’s programs wrote an open letter in February of this year lambasting Rojansky and calling his organization “an unwitting tool of Russia’s political interference.” 

It noted that the Institute hosted a concert featuring musicians who praised Russia’s annexation of Crimea and gave an award to billionaire Alfa Bank head Petr Aven. The Institute later shuttered its Kyiv office. 

In a statement released in March of this year on the closure of the Institute’s Ukraine office, Wilson Center CEO Jane Harman praised Rojansky’s work.

Here is a link to Matthew Rojansky's work.

Comey Shared Secrets with Brookings Institution Scholar

A variety of think tank scholars are friends with people in high places, allowing them to gain access to secrets about the internal workings of the White House and broader US government.  Here is an example from The New York Times:

Mr. Comey has spoken privately of his concerns that the contacts from Mr. Trump and his aides were inappropriate, and how he felt compelled to resist them.

“He had to throw some brushback pitches to the administration,” Benjamin Wittes, a friend of Mr. Comey’s, said in interviews.

Mr. Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, the editor in chief of the Lawfare blog and a frequent critic of Mr. Trump, recalls a lunch he had with Mr. Comey in March at which Mr. Comey told him he had spent the first two months of Mr. Trump’s administration trying to preserve distance between the F.B.I. and the White House and educating it on the proper way to interact with the bureau.

Mr. Wittes said he never intended to publicly discuss his conversations with Mr. Comey. But after The New York Times reported earlier this month that shortly after his inauguration Mr. Trump asked Mr. Comey for a loyalty pledge, Mr. Wittes said he saw Mr. Trump’s behavior in a “more menacing light” and decided to speak out.

Here is Benjamin Wittes post in Lawfare entitled "What James Comey Told Me About Donald Trump."  Here is a link to PBS Newshour's interview with Wittes, in which he notes that he is a longtime friend of Comey but not among his closest friends or one of his intimate advisors.  He also said that they "periodically" have lunch.

Besides being editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings, Mr. Wittes is also co-chair of the Hoover Institution's Working Group on National Security, Technology, and Law.

And for longtime readers of Think Tank Watch, you may remember that Mr. Wittes was a part of the highly esteemed Brookings Fight Club.