Here’s a connection that perhaps we should all have seen coming. Just one day after it was finally confirmed that Paul Manafort had indeed taken millions of dollars in payments from a Kremlin intermediary, as had long been suspected, additional information is coming to light about how that money was funneled from Russia to Manafort. And it turns out to have been facilitated by one of Donald Trump’s Russian pals as well as one of Trump’s cabinet members.

The Associated Press is now reporting that the money flowed from Russia to Paul Manafort by way of the Bank of Cyprus. If the name of this bank sounds familiar, it’s because four weeks ago Palmer Report pieced together that Wilbur Ross and Dmitry Rybolovlev both have (or had) ownership stakes in that bank. Ross was also the vice chair of the bank.

Ross is now Donald Trump’s Secretary of Commerce. Rybolovlev has had suspicious real estate transactions with Trump, and he keeps flying in on a private plane to meet up with him in various cities. And now it turns out that, going back as long as twelve years, Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort was funneling his secret payments from the Kremlin through this same bank. But there’s much more to it.

As we reported six weeks ago, investigators for the state of New York busted Germany’s Deutsche Bank for laundering money from Russia through Bank of Cyprus into the hands of clients in New York City. In fact U.S. Attorney Preet Bhahara was pursuing a parallel federal investigation into Deutsche Bank for that same Russian money laundering scheme, when Donald Trump fired him earlier this month.

Deutsche Bank has also been notoriously loaning large amounts of money to Donald Trump in recent years, even though Deutsche has been struggling financially, and even though most banks view Trump as a poor loan risk due to his repeated use of corporate bankruptcy. These loans have never made sense, leading to the question of whether the Deutsche loans were a mere cover for Russia funneling money to Trump through Bank of Cyprus. And now it turns out Russia was in fact funneling money to Trump’s campaign chair through that same Bank of Cyprus, owned by Rybolovlev, who keeps flying in to meet with Trump. Contribute to Palmer Report