To some of U.S. President Donald Trump’s entourage, it’s “the conspiracy of the black ledger.”

They’re convinced that the exposure of Paul Manafort’s secret payments in Ukraine was part of a scenario to destroy Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign by tarring Manafort, who was then Trump’s campaign manager. Manafort was quickly removed from the campaign after not even serving the entire summer, while Trump’s conspiracy theorists have to this day seized on the black ledger — which they regard as fake — to advance the fiction that Ukraine conspired to keep Trump from the White House. Manafort is now serving a 7.5-year prison sentence for tax and bank fraud, partly stemming from $12.7 million in payments from Ukraine.