https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/10/rudy-giuliani-mueller-report-corruption.html
"In May, at around the time that Rudy Giuliani was getting his Ukraine-Trump favor-trading scheme underway in earnest, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing with Attorney General William Barr that covered Robert Mueller’s recently released special counsel report on Russia and the 2016 election. At the hearing, Republican Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse observed that Donald Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, had worked for individuals connected to the Russian regime shortly before joining the Trump operation. One Manafort client—oligarch Oleg Deripaska—believed Manafort owed him money, and when Manafort began working for Trump on a “volunteer” basis, he offered to discuss the campaign with Deripaska in what appears to have been an effort to settle their financial dispute. Manafort would eventually supply Deripaska with internal campaign polling data, which was delivered via an intermediary who has, as they say, “ties” to Russian intelligence. More broadly, Trump took Russia-friendly positions on several foreign policy issues during Manafort’s tenure. Mueller did not charge Manafort with a crime for this activity, writing that his investigators were unable to interview Deripaska and Manafort’s intermediary or determine what the shared data was used for. Sasse’s point in bringing all this up was that Russia seemed to have gotten a significant return on its investment in Manafort without, apparently, having technically violated any American laws. What, he asked, would stop other foreign entities from putting well-connected Americans on their payrolls in the hopes that they, like Manafort, would coincidentally find “volunteer” roles from which they could advance those foreigners’ interests? The answer, Rudy Giuliani has demonstrated, is nothing!"
