Paul Manafort

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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Feb 18, 2018 12:28 pm

THE CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD THE UNITED STATES BACKBONE OF THE INTERNET RESEARCH AGENCY AND MANAFORT INDICTMENTS

February 17, 2018

Presidential Election, emptywheel, Mueller Probe /by empty wheel

In this post, I suggested there was an important parallel between the structure of the Internet Research Agency indictment rolled out Friday and the Paul Manafort and Rick Gates indictment.

Both use a conspiracy to defraud the US (of its ability to enforce campaign finance and transparency law) as their backbone.

Just as way of comparison, Charge 1 in the IRA indictment alleges conspiracy to defraud the US because defendants impaired the lawful functions of the FEC, DOJ, and State in administering disclosure about foreign involvement in US politics.

From in or around 2014 to the present, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, Defendants, together with others known and unknown to the Grand Jury, knowingly and intentionally conspired to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the Federal Election Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the U.S. Department of State in administering federal requirements for disclosure of foreign involvement in certain domestic activities.


Charge 1 in the Manafort indictment alleges conspiracy to defraud the US because the defendants impaired the lawful functions of DOJ and Treasury to require disclosures about foreign political activity in US politics.

From in or about and between 2006 and 2017, both dates being approximate and inclusive, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, the defendants PAUL J. MANAFORT, JR., and RICHARD W. GATES III, together with others, knowingly and intentionally conspired to defraud the United States by impeding, impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful governmental functions of a government agency, namely the Department of Justice and the Department of the Treasury, and to commit offenses against the United States, to wit, the violations of law charged.


Whatever else is true, both indictments start there, and go onto other related crimes (compellingly money laundering for Manafort and identity theft for IRA) from there.

Several people have already commented on the use of the conspiracy to defraud as backbone in the IRA indictment. Jamil Jaffer (not the Knight Foundation civil liberties guy, but the hawkish former DOJ NatSec guy) argued that this structure might provide a way to charge Americans who help foreigners interfere with our elections.

Today’s indictment also represents a significant step forward for the Mueller investigation and, in many ways, breaks new ground for a federal indictment. The conspiracy charge is significant because if upheld by a federal court, it shows how additional conspiracy charges might be brought against individuals–even Americans–that help foreigners interfere with our electoral system.


The Democrats’ campaign finance guru Bob Bauer laid this out in considerable more depth. He starts by observing that while evidence of campaign finance violations is abundant, Mueller instead uses only the backbone.

The indictment alleges facts that support charges of federal campaign finance law violations—such as the prohibition on foreign national contributions—but does not charge any such offenses. This is clearly not for want of evidence, since the indictment sets out in considerable detail the millions in foreign national spending to influence the 2016 election.

While it’s not clear that this is why Mueller approached it this way, Bauer notes that foreigners aren’t going to comply with campaign finance laws and the FEC is largely dysfunctional anyway.

Now, of course, those engaged in illegal campaign finance activity, such as spending from foreign national sources, won’t ever make an exception and comply with self-incriminating reporting requirements. And the irony of the premise–that the FEC would get the job done if given the needed facts–will not be lost on those who have observed the agency’s decline.

So, while in that paragraph, he didn’t go that far, Bauer implies that Mueller couldn’t charge campaign finance violations because the legal infrastructure for enforcing our country’s campaign finance laws has been shredded.

When I pointed out this parallel on Twitter, Jaffer argued the difference was that the Manafort indictment charged FARA violations (counts 3 through 6) in addition to the conspiracy to defraud backbone.

Plus in the Manafort case, it isn’t just a pure bootstrap because they they also charge the underlying crimes. Here, not so.


But let’s look at what Paul Manafort lawyer Kevin Downing argued after his arraignment: the surprising thing about the Manafort indictment is that Mueller charged Foreign Agents Registration Act, because it had so rarely been charged before and only once led to a conviction.

Today, you see an indictment brought by an office of Special Counsel using a very novel theory to prosecute Mr. Manafort regarding a FARA filing. The United States government has only used that offense six times since 1966 and it only resulted in one conviction.


Downing doesn’t dispute the letter of the law. He instead credibly disputes that Manafort could be expected to believe the law means what it says because it has never been enforced.

Admittedly, immediately after the indictment, there was a surge of compliance with FARA.

The number of first-time filings like SCL Social Limited’s rose 50 percent to 102 between 2016 and 2017, an NBC News analysis found. The number of supplemental filings, which include details about campaign donations, meetings and phone calls more than doubled from 618 to 1,244 last year as lobbyists scrambled to avoid the same fate as some of Trump’s associates and their business partners.


But that is, itself, testament to the fact that, at least when charged, no one believed FARA was a law. FARA, like other prohibitions on foreign campaign donations, didn’t work because those donating the money didn’t give a fuck and the agencies — FEC, DOJ, State, Treasury — mandated with protecting us from foreign tampering couldn’t do their jobs without the required reporting.

So we have a range of dysfunctional campaign transparency and finance laws, and two indictments charged as conspiracy to defraud the agencies empowered to oversee those laws, and only thereafter substantiated with more traditional crimes like money laundering and identity theft.

You see the parallel yet?

After arguing that FEC doesn’t work anymore anyway, Bauer argues you’re not going to charge foreigners with campaign finance violations because that would break too much legal ground.

Mueller and his team may have concluded that straight statutory campaign finance allegations rest on too much untested ground and would complicate what may well be the next phase of their investigation. This consideration would not affect the foreign national side of the case: Foreign nationals are plainly prohibited from spending in the manner detailed in the indictment. But how the law reaches American co-conspirators is less certain, and the special counsel’s theory of the case, pleading the campaign finance aspect of the case through conspiracy-to-defraud, may allow more securely for the prosecution of American actors.


So to sum up thus far: campaign finance expert Bob Bauer, after admitting the FEC has been gutted, further argues that the theory of the conspiracy to defraud is necessitated by the involvement of foreign actors. His argument is based largely on the exclusion of FEC charges.

Yet Bob Mueller omitted any direct charge for violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act.

Instead, the indictment builds the campaign finance issues into a conspiracy to defraud the United States—it alleges that the Russians conspired to obstruct the capacity of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to enforce the law. The act of obstruction was a failure to report their illegal expenditures. If the FEC did not know about the expenditures, it could not enforce the law.


Click through to read that part of Bauer’s argument. Bauer seems to argue (I’m not convinced) that Mueller left off the FEC violations because he was only indicting foreigners.

But Bauer turns immediately to an invented necessity (having already proven that the underlying law is basically defunct) of sucking in Americans’ complicity that otherwise might hypothetically be covered by FEC.

If, however, Mueller possesses evidence of Americans’ complicity in these violations, he may have decided on a different theory of the campaign finance case that more reliably sweeps in U.S. citizen misconduct.

On the face of it, the law prohibits a U.S. campaign or person from “soliciting” something “of value” from a foreign national, and it bars rendering “substantial assistance” to illegal foreign national spending. It seems clear that the facts known to date implicate these rules. It is also true that there is little precedent and arguably an increased risk of a defense grounded in the “vagueness” of these prohibitions. Some commentators have expressed unease about the constitutional limiting principle that would govern the enforcement of these provisions. I do not share this view, but it is held strongly in some quarters and, therefore, appropriately and respectfully noted.

The Mueller indictment is conceivably one way to solve this problem.


Bauer argues, breathtakingly, that instead of using America’s defunct campaign finance and transparency law, Mueller can use America’s insanely overbroad conspiracy law.

It alleges a conspiracy to prevent the FEC from taking up and addressing the regulatory issues, and American co-conspirators may be brought in on any overt act in furtherance of this illegal scheme. Any U.S. citizen who intentionally supported the Russian electoral intervention could be liable. Examples would include U.S. citizens engaged in conversations like those in Trump Tower in summer of 2016, or Don, Jr.’s communications with WikiLeaks about the timing of the release of stolen emails. The conspiracy to defraud the United States could also envelop any Americans who helped cover the Russians’ illegal electoral program by lying to federal authorities about the campaign’s Russian contacts.


That is, Bauer is imagining Mueller might charge Trump associates in a conspiracy with IRA because they did really attenuated things — things like meeting with Russian lawyers in Trump Tower — that are associated with the conspiracy. That’s effectively what Jaffer argued, thought not in as unattenuated a way. “It shows how additional conspiracy charges might be brought against individuals–even Americans–that help foreigners interfere with our electoral system. ”

Maybe Bauer, who has the advantage of actually being an expert and a lawyer and a muckety muck, is right on this point.

But my guess is Mueller is, thus far, doing something more modest and more exciting.

To understand why, consider what Manafort is both alleged, in his indictment, to have done, and what is hanging over his head. He is alleged to have laundered both political influence (via some subordinate lobbying firms, including Tony Podesta’s) and money. The allegation is that this money and influence stems from misrepresenting the interests of his pro-Russian Party of Regions work in influence-peddling in the United States.

It is illegal to act as an agent of a foreign principal engaged in certain United States influence activities without registering the affiliation. Specifically, a person who engages in lobbying or public relations work in the United States (hereafter collectively referred to as lobbying) for a foreign principal such as the Government of Ukraine or the Party of Regions is required to provide a detailed written registration statement to the United States Department of Justice. The filing, made under oath, must disclose the name of the foreign principal, the financial payments to the lobbyist, and the measures undertaken for the foreign principal, among other information. A person required to make such a filing must further make in all lobbying material a “conspicuous statement” that the materials are distributed on behalf of the foreign principal, among other things. The filing thus permits public awareness and evaluation of the activities of a lobbyist who acts as an agent of a foreign power or foreign political party in the United States.


Effectively, the Manafort indictment argues that Manafort illegally hid the influence of Russian money and persuasion on US politics — in the form of face-to-face lobbying, among other things — in the same way that IRA obscured the financial backing and persuasion of Russia in the 2016 operation. The hidden object, Russian money and influence, is the same in both conspiracies to defraud the US indictments.

One of the biggest complaints from Republicans about the Manafort indictment, including from the President, is that Manafort’s Party of Regions work has nothing to do with his campaign. But once you define it as a conspiracy to hide Russian involvement in our politics, it goes right to the heart of whether the people running the Trump campaign, via their one-time campaign manager Paul Manafort, were honest about whose interest the campaign served.

Which brings us to the stuff hanging over Manafort’s head, the stuff Mueller seems to be trying to flip him to get. Manafort is suspected of acting as Trump’s campaign manager during key periods of staffing and policy commitment while serving the interests of Russia via some oligarch cut-outs, notably but not exclusively Oleg Deripaska.

It’s not clear how you’d charge this, in an era where campaign finance and transparency are dead. Particularly given that Manafort worked for free, bypassing every law imposed on actual donations, and therefore making it really easy for a foreign country to pay you to run a campaign.

Until you get to the conspiracy to defraud framework, to Manafort’s role in a conspiracy to hide the fact that the Russians were actually paying him to ensure Trump got elected.

I don’t actually think Don Jr will be charged (as Bauer surmised might be possible) with conspiracy to defraud based off the IRA indictment because he attended that June 9 meeting; the campaign’s data people might be different.

Which is to say that Mueller is not going to name Trump or his spawn in a conspiracy to defraud the government based off really attenuated claims that the conspiracy all derived from the IRA operation. The import of the Manafort charges (even in the limited form they exist) is that Mueller seems to be larding on the “conspiracy to defraud” charges from multiple directions, from Russians and whatever co-conspirator intermediaries to those who paid Manafort’s bills for getting Trump past the challenge of the Republican convention. Though I expect once that Marine running SCO gets all his leverage points into place they might all have that conspiracy to defend structure. Including, I suspect, the foreign policy priorities implemented, at Jared Kushner’s direction, immediately after the election.

There are many acts, starting with the June 9 Trump Tower meeting, where principals might have criminal liability directly. But the IRA indictment made me realize why the Manafort indictment was so solidly within the scope of Mueller’s authority: because the larger project is to demonstrate that, by bypassing the agencies mandated with preventing foreign sabotage of our democratic process, the Russian-backed efforts broke a more fundamental law.

And I’m certain they’ll get there with far more evidence than Mueller laid out in the IRA indictment. But I suspect they all will use that conspiracy structure as backbone.

Update: Cleaned this up for clarity purposes.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/02/17/t ... dictments/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Feb 18, 2018 4:57 pm

Manafort is facing up to 80 years in prison if convicted of all charges:

Former Trump aide Rick Gates to plead guilty; agrees to testify against Manafort, sources say

By DAVID WILLMAN
FEB 18, 2018 | 11:25 AM
| WASHINGTON

Former Trump aide Rick Gates to plead guilty; agrees to testify against Manafort, sources say
Rick Gates departs U.S. District Court on Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018, in Washington. (Alex Brandon / AP)

A former top aide to Donald Trump's presidential campaign will plead guilty to fraud-related charges within days – and has made clear to prosecutors that he would testify against Paul J. Manafort Jr., the lawyer-lobbyist who once managed the campaign.
The change of heart by Trump's former deputy campaign manager, Richard W. Gates III, who had pleaded not guilty after being indicted in October on charges similar to Manafort's, was described in interviews by people familiar with the case.
"Rick Gates is going to change his plea to guilty,'' said a person with direct knowledge of the new developments, adding that the revised plea will be presented in federal court in Washington "within the next few days.''
That individual and others who discussed the matter spoke on condition of anonymity, citing a judge's gag order restricting comments about the case to the news media or public.
Gates' defense lawyer, Thomas C. Green, did not respond to messages left by phone and email. Peter Carr, a spokesman for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, declined on Saturday to comment.
Mueller is heading the prosecutions of Gates and Manafort as part of the wide-ranging investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and whether Trump or his aides committed crimes before, during or since the campaign.
The imminent change of Gates' plea follows negotiations over the last several weeks between Green and two of Mueller's prosecutors – senior assistant special counsels Andrew Weissmann and Greg D. Andres.
According to a person familiar with those talks, Gates, a longtime political consultant, can expect "a substantial reduction in his sentence'' if he fully cooperates with the investigation. He said that Gates is apt to serve about 18 months in prison.
The delicate terms reached by the opposing lawyers, he said, will not be specified in writing: Gates "understands that the government may move to reduce his sentence if he substantially cooperates – but it won't be spelled out.''
One of the final discussion points has centered on exactly how much cash or other valuables – derived from Gates' allegedly illegal activity – that the government will require him to forfeit as part of the guilty plea.
Gates, 45, who is married with four children, does not appear to be well positioned financially to sustain a high-powered legal defense.
"He can't afford to pay it,'' said one lawyer who is involved with the investigation. "If you go to trial on this, that's $1 million to $1.5 million. Maybe more, if you need experts'' to appear as witnesses.
The Oct. 27 indictment showed that prosecutors had amassed substantial documentation to buttress their charges that both Manafort and Gates – who were colleagues in political consulting for about a decade – had engaged in a complex series of allegedly illegal transactions rooted in Ukraine. The indictment alleged that both men, who for years were unregistered agents of the Ukraine government, hid millions of dollars of Ukraine-based payments from U.S. authorities.
According to the indictment, Gates and Manafort "laundered the money through scores of United States and foreign corporations, partnerships and bank accounts'' and took steps to evade related U.S. taxes.
If Manafort maintains his not-guilty plea and fights the charges at a trial, the testimony from Gates could provide Mueller's team with first-person descriptions of much of the allegedly illegal conduct. Gates' testimony, said a person familiar with the pending guilty plea, would place a "cherry on top'' of the government's already-formidable case against Manafort.
The same individual said he did not believe Gates has information to offer Mueller's team that would "turn the screws on Trump.'' The president has repeatedly called the special counsel's investigation a "witch hunt.''
Gates joined Trump's presidential campaign in June 2016, when the candidate hired Manafort as its chairman. At the Republican National Convention the next month, Gates directly handled the campaign's operations as Manafort's top aide.
Perhaps the most controversial step taken by Trump's campaign at the convention concerned how the U.S. should deal with the tense relations between Russia and Ukraine, which repudiated Moscow in a 2014 revolt.
When a delegate proposed that the Republican platform call for "providing lethal defensive weapons'' to Ukraine's military in its struggle against Russian-backed armed forces, the Trump campaign defeated the effort. Instead of U.S. weaponry, the convention platform committee accepted the campaign's substitute language, which offered Ukraine "appropriate assistance.''
In mid-August 2016, Trump fired Manafort following reports of possibly improper payments he had received from a pro-Russia political party aligned with his longtime client, Viktor Yanukovych, who was Ukraine's prime minister from 2010 to 2014.
Gates, however, remained with the Trump campaign through the election, serving as a liaison to the Republican National Committee. He also assisted Trump's inaugural committee.
david.willman@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-p ... story.html


emptywheel‏

Here's the other part of the story I find odd. Gates is taking a huge risk here. Maybe that's why the lawyers who're trying to ditch Gates wanted to ditch him.
Image

Maybe this claim is why Mueller's not making promises in writing.
Image

Remember, Manafort forwarded Papadopoulos email to Gates saying they had to avoid sending signals.


October 30, 2017/34 Comments/in Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
In response to yesterday’s server hiccups and in anticipation that Mueller is nowhere near done, we expanded our server capacity overnight. If you think you’ll rely on emptywheel reporting on the Mueller probe, please consider a donation to support the site.

There is now some debate about what this footnote, from George Papadopoulos’ plea, means.

On or about May 21, 2016, defendant PAPADOPOULOS emailed another high-ranking Campaign official, with the subject line “Request from Russia to meet Mr. Trump.” The email included the May 4 MFA Email and added: “Russia has been eager to meet Mr. Trump for quite sometime and have been reaching out to me to discuss.”2

2 The government notes that the official forwarded defendant PAPADOPOULOS’s email to another Campaign official (without including defendant PAPADOPOULOS) and stated:

“Let[‘]s discuss. We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.”

The question is, does this mean the speaker was trying to agree to meetings, but keep it low level to hide the intent to cooperate with Russia, or send a low level person to reject the meeting.

As southpaw has noted, this exchange was actually included in a WaPo post this summer claiming that Papadopoulos was ignored by the campaign. The two campaign officials involved are … Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, who were surely shocked to learn Papadopoulos had flipped on them three weeks ago as they pled not guilty today.

Several weeks later, Papadopoulos forwarded the same message from Timofeev to Manafort, the newly named campaign chairman.

“Russia has been eager to meet with Mr. Trump for some time and have been reaching out to me to discuss,” the adviser told Manafort.

Manafort reacted coolly, forwarding the email to his associate Rick Gates, with a note: “We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips.”

Gates agreed and told Manafort he would ask the campaign’s correspondence coordinator to handle it — “the person responding to all mail of non-importance” — to signify this did not need a senior official to respond.

Already, it’s clear that whoever shared this content with WaPo was spinning, hiding the context.

But the complaint against Papadopoulos written to support an arrest this July says something different. It shows that on July 14, Papadopoulos wrote Timofeev proposing an August or September meeting in the UK.

On or about July 14, 2016, PAPADOPOULOS emailed Foreign Contact 2 and proposed a “meeting for August or September in the UK (London) with me and my national chairman, and maybe one other foreign policy advisor and you, members of president putin’s office and the mfa to hold a day of consultants and to meet one another. It has been approved from our side.”

That is, less than two months later, Papadopoulous at least claimed that a meeting including Manafort had been approved, though not including Trump.

Mind you, back to the plea, by August 15 it was decided just Papadopoulous and an unnamed “another foreign policy advisor to the Campaign” [which WaPo has identified as Sam Clovis] should “make the trip[], if it is feasible.” But it then says that the meeting did not take place.

That’s likely not because at that time, August 15, Manafort was being ousted from the campaign because his corrupt ties to Ukraine (basically, the stuff he got indicted on today) was causing a scandal. Which is to say that particular meeting didn’t happen (though Papadopoulos remained on the campaign and — in Facebook messaging he tried to destroy after meeting with the FBI — remained in contact with his Russian handlers as late as October 1), but it didn’t happen not because Manafort wasn’t game, but because Manafort’s ties to Russia became toxic, precisely the kind of “signal” Manafort was trying to avoid in May.

And the connotation of that May 21 email is important because it shows Manafort’s mindset in the weeks before, on June 9, he met with a Russian lawyer hoping for dirt he likely expected to include stolen Hillary emails.


Image


Malcolm Nance
24m24 minutes ago

With Gates turned state evidence Manafort will plead soon. He will give up Trump, Kushner & Trump jr for a deal. Mueller’s Money laundering end game could come as fast in 60-90 days. Does not mean impeachment but will open up Trump’s tax returns.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Feb 20, 2018 8:42 am

“We had [Paul Manafort in kleptocracy investigation] in 2014,” one of the former officials said. “In hindsight, we could have nailed him then.”


Manafort Under Scrutiny For $40 Million In “Suspicious” Transactions
As the special counsel investigated President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, authorities obtained details on “suspicious” banking activity that was first unearthed in 2014 and 2015. Those records were part of an FBI operation to track international kleptocracy that ultimately failed, but which Robert Mueller’s team resurrected.

Posted on February 19, 2018, at 9:32 p.m.
By Jason Leopold (BuzzFeed News Reporter) Anthony Cormier (BuzzFeed News Reporter) Tanya Kozyreva (BuzzFeed Contributor)

Former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort.

Federal law enforcement officials have identified more than $40 million in “suspicious” financial transactions to and from companies controlled by President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort — a much larger sum than was cited in his October indictment on money laundering charges.

The vast web of transactions was unraveled mainly in 2014 and 2015 during an FBI operation to fight international kleptocracy that ultimately fizzled. The story of that failed effort — and its resurrection by special counsel Robert Mueller as he investigated whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to interfere with the 2016 election — has never been fully told.

But it explains how the special counsel was able to swiftly bring charges against Manafort for complex financial crimes dating as far back as 2008 — and it shows that Mueller could still wield immense leverage as he seeks to compel Manafort to cooperate in the ongoing investigation.

Last week, Mueller’s team told a judge that it had evidence Manafort committed bank fraud, and news organizations have reported that the special counsel may be preparing additional charges.

Manafort’s spokesperson declined to comment for this story, but Manafort pleaded not guilty to all charges in the October indictment. In the past, Manafort has maintained that his financial dealings have all been above board and proper. Manafort is also suing the Justice Department, seeking to overturn the appointment of the special counsel on grounds that Mueller’s mandate is too broad and gives him “carte blanche to investigate and pursue criminal charges in connection with anything he stumbles across.”

The kleptocracy squad

In 2014, then–attorney general Eric Holder announced an FBI team that would tackle international kleptocracy — and its first target would be ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, Manafort’s longtime client and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

To find the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars Yanukovych and his aides were suspected of stealing, the task force scoured the globe, working with governments in Cyprus, Latvia, Ukraine, and elsewhere, said two former federal law enforcement officials with direct knowledge of the effort. In doing so, the team stumbled across Manafort. As one of the former officials recalled, agents were told that he might have leads on where Yanukovych had stashed his money.

As a political consultant, Manafort buffed the image of Yanukovych and autocrats across the world, including Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). He earned a fortune and spent millions on art, clothes, home theaters, even antique rugs. As the task force heightened its scrutiny of Manafort, the US Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit unearthed a mountain of evidence about him.

Eight banks filed 23 “suspicious activity reports” between 2004 and 2014, which includes the years that Manafort and his consulting company, Davis Manafort Partners, worked for Yanukovych. These reports, reviewed by BuzzFeed News, show that between October 2008 and July 2013, Manafort’s personal and business accounts received about $30 million from banks in offshore havens such as Cyprus, Kyrgyzstan, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Got a tip? You can email tips@buzzfeed.com. To learn how to reach us securely, go to tips.buzzfeed.com.
By law, banks must file suspicious activity reports with the Treasury Department when they spot transactions that bear hallmarks of money laundering or other financial misconduct. Such reports can support investigations and intelligence gathering — but by themselves they are not evidence of a crime.

Throughout 2014, the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, conducted further investigation into the transactions flagged in the bank’s suspicious activity reports. Treasury officials requested additional information from law enforcement agencies in other countries, and they prepared numerous and extensive reports about Manafort's financial dealings. Those reports — sent to FBI agents and federal prosecutors, and reviewed by BuzzFeed News — stated that Manafort appeared to be running shell companies and that his transactions often lacked a clear business purpose and showed signs of “layering,” meaning that they seemed designed to obscure the original source of the money.

In the summer of 2014, an FBI special agent questioned Manafort at his attorney’s office in Washington, DC. Manafort denied knowing anything about money reportedly stolen by the Yanukovych government, according to internal FBI emails reviewed by BuzzFeed News, and promised to turn over documents to the Bureau. He never did, according to the two officials.

“We had him in 2014,” one of the former officials said. “In hindsight, we could have nailed him then.”

The FBI’s top brass, both of the former officials said, deemed Manafort’s suspected financial crimes as too petty: They amounted to only tens of millions of dollars — small potatoes compared to what Manafort’s boss, Yanukovych, was suspected of stealing.

But the task force didn’t get Yanukovych either. The US government, the former officials said, devoted far too few resources to build a case of the scale and complexity needed to prosecute the former Ukrainian president, and agents assigned to the task force left because they felt they were unable to properly do their jobs.

When the investigation petered out, the reports on Manafort and the detailed financial records that supported them were all shelved, two former law enforcement officials who worked on his case told BuzzFeed News. But banks continued to send in suspicious activity reports on transactions involving Manafort or his companies all the way through 2016. For instance, in April and September 2015, PNC Bank flagged two transactions for a total of about $75,000.

The special counsel’s investigation

In May 2017, Mueller was appointed to investigate “any links and/or coordination” between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. In late July, FBI agents raided Manafort’s home, seizing financial and tax documents. In September, according to the two former law enforcement officials, Mueller’s team dusted off the FBI’s investigative files on Manafort and used them to help indict him the following month, in late October.

But the $18 million cited in that indictment leaves millions more in transactions flagged as suspicious, and three current and former law enforcement officials said that Mueller’s team is poring over them as it considers leveling new charges against Manafort. On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times reported that Manafort's business partner, Rick Gates, intends to plead guilty to fraud charges and will testify against Manafort.

Among the transactions not in Manafort’s October indictment are $5 million in suspicious transfers to and from Maho Films Investment Company, based in Puerto Rico. Bank officials flagged the transactions, made in 2003 and 2004, as suspicious because Manafort refused to provide invoices and payment documents showing what the money was to be used for. The company was registered at an office building in San Juan, and its principal business was “investing in film industry projects and other lawful activity,” according to a 2003 certificate from the Puerto Rican government.

Manafort and his friend, tech entrepreneur Hector Hoyos, were the directors. Hoyos told BuzzFeed News that he and Manafort established the company to obtain film-related tax credits from the Puerto Rican government and that he left the company “in 2004 or 2005.” During his time as a director, he said, he was unaware that any funds came into Maho.

“As far as I knew there was no activity,” Hoyos said. “It’s news to me that there was money moving into the company.”

While Manafort managed Yanukovych’s affairs, he also sent $1.2 million to a group of political consultants close to Russia. Bank officials said the transactions were suspicious because the funds came from financial institutions based in offshore havens, and it was unclear to bankers what the money was specifically to be used for.

Among those recipients was someone Manafort worked with for years: Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian Army–trained linguist on whom US intelligence agencies have collected information. The Washington Post reported that during the US presidential campaign, Manafort emailed Kilimnik, offering to give “private briefings” about the race to a Russian oligarch close to Putin. Manafort’s spokesperson told the Post that no briefings ever took place and that Manafort was merely offering to give a “routine” update on the campaign.

Between 2009 and 2013, Manafort's companies sent Kilimnik more than $325,000 in wire transfers that banks flagged as suspicious, citing reasons such as the money came from offshore companies or the transfers might have been connected to Yanukovych's 2010 presidential election victory. In a report to the FBI, the Treasury’s financial crimes unit said the wire transfers seemed to serve no legitimate business purpose or could be related to “political corruption.” Kilimnik did not return phone calls over the weekend.

The records also show banks tracked much smaller transactions made by Manafort. Some of these were flagged because they showed suspected debit card fraud or structuring, which means money was withdrawn or deposited in amounts below the threshold that would trigger an automatic alert by the bank.

For instance, in June 2006, Wachovia Bank officials noted that a Manafort company account registered two cash withdrawals of $7,500 apiece about four hours apart and at different branches.

Wachovia officials also flagged $25,000 in “fraudulent charges” at Duane Reade stores in New York City in September 2007. Bank officials said the debit card was in Manafort’s possession during that time.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jasonleopold/m ... .mdM4BxbNb


emptywheel

19m19 minutes ago

Anyway, here's the gist of my argument about how the conspiracy to defraud applies to Manafort and gets right to the heart of Trump campaign.

He was pretending to run a campaign for US when in fact repping RU interests.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Feb 21, 2018 1:36 pm

New charges filed in Manafort-Gates case

The notice of sealed charges comes after prosecutors accused the former Trump campaign chairman of bank fraud.

JOSH GERSTEIN02/21/2018 11:13 AM EST

Last week, prosecutors told the court they'd received new evidence that Paul Manafor (pictured) took part in "a series of bank frauds and bank fraud conspiracies" in connection with a loan he sought in 2016. | Matt Rourke/AP Photo
New charges have been filed in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's criminal case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and aide Rick Gates, but the charges were put under seal by the court, obscuring the nature and import of the development.

The new charging document filed in federal court in Washington could be a superseding indictment, adding new charges or even new defendants to the charges filed last October, accusing Manafort and Gates of money laundering and failing to register as foreign agents for their work related to Ukraine, among other crimes.

Last week, prosecutors told the court they'd received new evidence that Manafort took part in "a series of bank frauds and bank fraud conspiracies" in connection with a loan he sought in 2016. Mueller's team said Manafort obtained the loan using “doctored profit and loss statements” that overstated "by millions of dollars" the income of his consulting business.

The bank fraud allegations were disclosed in a bail-related court filing made public on Friday that did not contain any indication of what action, if any, Mueller's team planned to take over the alleged fraud.

Manafort and Gates have pleaded not guilty. Their attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

During a court hearing last Wednesday, prosecutors did have a private exchange with Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is handling the case against Manafort and Gates. At the same session, she expressed frustrations with delays in the case, but did not set a trial date.

There have also been persistent media reports in recent weeks that Gates is negotiating with Mueller's office about a potential plea deal. That could involve filing a new charge or charges in the case, but doing so would not be necessary if he agreed to plead to one of the counts in the indictment returned last year.

A spokesman for Mueller's office had no comment on the development, first reported by the Washington Post.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/ ... ase-419685


Mueller asking if Manafort promised banker White House job in return for loans

by Tom Winter and Hallie JacksonFeb 21 2018, 12:19 pm ET

Federal investigators are probing whether former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort promised a Chicago banker a job in the Trump White House in return for $16 million in home loans, two people with direct knowledge of the matter told NBC News.

Manafort received three separate loans in December 2016 and January 2017 from Federal Savings Bank for homes in New York City and the Hamptons.

Stephen Calk, who was announced as a member of candidate Trump's council of economic advisers in August 2016, is the president of Federal Savings Bank.

Special counsel Robert Mueller's team is now investigating whether there was a quid pro quo agreement between Manafort and Calk. Manafort left the Trump campaign in August 2016 after the millions he had earned working for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine drew media scrutiny. Calk did not receive a job in President Donald Trump's cabinet.

The sources say the three loans were questioned by other officials at the bank, and one source said that at least one of the bank employees who felt pressured into approving the deals is cooperating with investigators.

In court filings Friday related to Manafort's bail, federal prosecutors said they have "substantial evidence" that loans made from the bank to Manafort were secured through false representations made by Manafort, including misstatements of income.

When asked by NBC News if Manafort had lobbied the Trump transition team or the White House for a position for Calk, the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for Calk did not return multiple calls and e-mails over a period of several weeks requesting a response, nor did the CEO of the PR firm that represents the bank, The Harbinger Group.

Jason Maloni, a spokesperson for Manafort, referred NBC News to his previous statements saying that Manafort's loans were over-collateralized and above-market rate. He would not respond to specific questions regarding the Federal Savings Bank loans.

Mueller's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The existence of a federal probe of Calk and the Federal Savings Bank by the U.S. Attorney's Office was first reported by Bloomberg News.

Manafort's home loans

On Aug. 19, 2016, Manafort left the Trump campaign amid media reports about his previous work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine, including allegations he received millions of dollars in payments.

That same day, Manafort created a holding company called Summerbreeze LLC. Several weeks later, a document called a UCC filed with the state of New York shows that Summerbreeze took out a $3.5 million loan on Manafort's home in the tony beach enclave of Bridgehampton.

Manafort's name does not appear on the UCC filing, but Summerbreeze LLC gives his Florida address as a contact, and lists his Bridgehampton home as collateral, as NBC News previously reported.

The loan was provided by a company called SC3 capital and according to Manafort's spokesperson the note was meant to be a bridge loan.

Image
Stephen Calk The Federal Savings Bank

Maloni told NBC News last year that the loan was repaid in December.

Manafort's LLC, Summerbreeze, then took out a new $9.5 million loan in December using the Hamptons property as part of the collateral. The lender was Federal Savings Bank of Chicago, whose chief executive, Calk, was an economic adviser to the Trump campaign.

In January 2017 Federal Savings Bank also lent Manafort and his wife mortgage loans in the amount of $5.3 million and $1.2 million for a separate property located at 377 Union Street in Brooklyn, New York.

The loans for the 377 Union property totaled 6.5 million and were for a property that Manafort initially bought for less than $3 million.

Between the Hamptons property and the Brooklyn property the Federal Savings Bank loaned Manafort $16 million dollars or 5 percent of all of the bank's loans, according to records kept by the FDIC.

The loans were first examined by investigators and prosecutors working for Mueller, two people familiar with the probe told NBC News.

When there was no immediate nexus between the case and allegations of interference by the Russian government the case was referred to prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, one person familiar with the matter told NBC News.

Friday's filing by prosecutors regarding Manafort's bail indicates that once again Mueller's team has interest in the loans.

Mueller's team told a federal judge in response to the filing that at the next bail hearing, "We can proffer to the Court additional evidence related to this and the other bank frauds and conspiracies, which the Court may find relevant to the bail risk posed by Manafort."
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald ... rn-n849916
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Feb 22, 2018 5:43 pm

Prosecutors say the crimes occurred from 2006 to 2017


Today's indictment of Manafort and Gates includes 32 new charges against them for hiding $75,000,000 in offshore accounts, laundering over $30,000,000, filing false tax returns, committing bank fraud & submitting doctored financial statements.

Special counsel Mueller files new charges in Manafort, Gates case

President Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Manafort's associate Rick Gates appeared on Nov. 6 before a federal judge for a bond hearing. (Reuters)
By Devlin Barrett and Spencer S. Hsu February 22 at 4:27 PM

New charges were filed Thursday against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his business partner, ratcheting up the legal pressure on them as they prepare for a trial later this year.


Robert Mueller ‘files new criminal charges in Paul Manafort case’
Former Trump campaign chair is alleged to have concealed money from the government, an allegation he denies

Jeremy B White San Francisco Wednesday 21 February 2018 23:11 GMT24

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team has reportedly filed a new charge or charges in its case against a former Trump campaign adviser and his associate.

A sealed filing at a clerk’s office for a district court in Washington, DC could indicate additional indictments in the case against President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates, or it could be a type of charge called a criminal information, which would indicate an agreement between prosecutors and a defendant.

Both men were charged last year as part of Mr Mueller’s investigation into Russian efforts to meddle in the 2016 election.

Manafort has been working with man 'linked to Russian intelligence'

An indictment filed in October of 2017 alleged that Mr Gates and Mr Manafort concealed from the US government millions of dollars they made working for the Ukrainian government. The indictment also alleged that they failed to report having overseen the lobbying of American officials on behalf of Ukraine.

Both men have pleaded not guilty to all charges against them, although reports in the past week have suggested that Mr Gates may be negotiating a plea deal with Mr Mueller’s team.

Both CNN and Reuters reported the new filing, but It is unclear when or if any new charges will be announced publicly.

A filing from the Special Counsel’s office last week hinted at a new dimension to the government’s case against Mr Manafort, saying prosecutors had uncovered “additional criminal conduct” that included “a series of bank frauds and bank fraud conspiracies,” including “criminal conduct” relating to a mortgage on one of Mr Manafort’s properties.

A spokesman for Mr Manafort declined comment. An attorney representing Mr Gates could not immediately be reached.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 22196.html



YOU AIN'T GETTING A PARDON FROM STATE CHARGES....BE PREPARED TO SPEND THE REST OF YOUR LIFE EITHER IN JAIL OR ON BAIL

New York Seeks Bank Records of Former Trump Associate Paul Manafort
Loans issued by a bank run by former campaign adviser Steve Calk are focus of subpoena
By Michael Rothfeld
July 17, 2017 5:31 p.m. ET
New York prosecutors have demanded records relating to up to $16 million in loans that a bank run by a former campaign adviser for President Donald Trump made to former
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-s ... 2?mod=e2tw


Seth Abramson‏

Perhaps the most telling item in the new Manafort/Gates indictments: only one of the co-defendants *opted* to face cases in DC *and* Virginia. I'm guessing the defendant was Manafort—and Gates making the unusual decision to waive a venue challenge is a sign he'll eventually flip.
1:48 PM - 22 Feb 2018

2/ Normally a defendant would challenge the change of venue to avoid what Manafort and Gates would likely presume were less friendly (to them) DC jurors. (Being in two venues at once could also cost more money.) I think Gates waived venue because he doesn't intend to go to trial.


Think the indictment against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates is unrelated to Trump?
The second half of their alleged financial scheme was carried out entirely during their time working for the Trump campaign.
Image


I'm blown away. Following my ID of the mysterious company Telmar Investments Limited, Robert Mueller has included the company in his new indictment against Manafort. The Special Counsel alleges that Manafort used some of the Telmar loans to commit fraud. https://medium.com/@ScottMStedman/the-u ... 7188fce1c1
Image



Y'all I'm dying, Manafort created an incriminating paper trail because he needed someone to help him convert a Word doc to PDF
Image


Look at paragraph 38-40. They wanted their female bookkeeper to falsify the books, but she refused. So they found someone else to do it, but it was so messy, their conspirator inside the bank told them to try again!


Image




12 counts in October....

Mueller files new tax charges against Manafort and Gates...superseding indictment

again Manafort is looking a life in prison if he does not flip on trump

there is a long line of possible cooperating persons give it up on Manafort...I can't wait to turn that name red...here's looking at you.......Gooliani your name will never be red will it?


manafort manafort manafort ....being saying it for 2 years



seems official now

Ex-Trump aide poised to plead guilty, cooperate with special counsel, sources say

Trump’s one-time campaign aide Richard Gates is expected to plead guilty in the special counsel’s criminal case against him, setting up the potential for Gates to become the latest well-informed Trump insider to assist in the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential contest, according to sources close to the matter.

The potential for a guilty plea could dramatically change the dynamics in the investigation, just one day after special counsel added a raft of new financial and tax charges to the criminal case against Gates and his longtime colleague, .

Gates has for weeks been vacillating between fighting the charges and pleading guilty, and remained undecided through much of this week, according to the sources. Legal teams for President Trump and Manafort appeared to be unaware as late as Thursday about Gates’ intentions.

Gates, who has a young family, has endured immense pressure throughout, facing charges that carried the potential for more than a decade in jail, and risking the remainder of his savings. The deal hammered out between Mueller’s team and Gates’ legal team has the potential to spare him jail time.

This was a “gut-wrenching decision” for the 45-year-old former campaign official, a source familiar with his thinking told ABC News. Gates also faced a significant financial burden, the source added.

Despite speculation for weeks that Gates was close to or had made a deal, the source told ABC News, a deal with the special counsel’s team did not come together until the middle of this week, and prior to that deal it had looked unlikely.

The exact terms of the deal are still unclear. The special counsel’s office declined to comment.

Manafort and Gates pleaded not guilty last fall on all charges stemming from special counsel Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The first round of charges contained 12 counts: conspiracy against the United States; conspiracy to launder money; serving as an unregistered agent of a foreign principal; false and misleading Foreign Agents Registration Act statements; false statements; and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. Both charges from the first indictment in Washington and the second round of charges filed Thursday in Virginia center around Manafort and Gates’ past lobbying and financial activities and are not related to their work directly for the Trump campaign.

Manafort emerged as a key figure in Mueller's inquiry because of consulting work he previously did on behalf of the Ukrainian government.

In July 2017, the same month he retroactively registered as a foreign agent because of his lobbying work, the FBI executed a search warrant at Manafort's Virginia home, in connection with the Russia investigation. A source familiar with the matter described armed FBI agents' waking Manafort early in the morning as they knocked on his bedroom door.

Manafort, 68, joined the Trump campaign in March 2016 as its convention manager and was promoted to campaign chairman two months later. He was fired from the campaign by then-candidate Trump in August 2016 amid questions about his foreign business ties.

Gates joined Manafort's international firm, Davis Manafort Partners, in 2006. Gates' connections to Trump before and after the election include leading the campaign's operations at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland and serving as a top deputy to Tom Barrack, who served as chairman on the Presidential Inauguration Committee.

Gates later joined America First Policies, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit created after the election that supports Trump positions. Gates left his role with the group after he was indicted.

Mueller was appointed special counsel in May 2017 by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein; Attorney General Jeff Sessions has previously recused himself from all matters related to the 2016 presidential election.

In addition to Mueller's investigation, Manafort had been heavily scrutinized by multiple congressional committees conducting their own investigations into Russian meddling. Since his indictment last year, Manafort has stopped cooperating with the congressional investigations.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-ai ... d=53300996



Wondering if anyone wants to start a betting line on what date Paul Manafort will flip?

There's no question the Gates plea puts enormous pressure on Manafort to cut a deal or else spend the rest of his life in prison. And remember that trump told friends—per NBC—that Manafort could hurt him if he flipped. So this breaking news is a big deal.

I wonder what this Dutch lawyer practicing in London and married to an Alfa Bank oligarch's daughter from Russia did besides lie to the FBI.

These crimes were not only durin' the campaign, but the transition.


THIS IS THE DEPUTY CAMPAIGN MANAGER
Gates pleads guilty to CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE UNITED STATES


was looking at several decades now looking at
pleading guilty to lying and conspiracy 5 years on each count


Gates pleads to CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE UNITED STATES That’s going to end up being the big conspiracy when we’re done.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Feb 23, 2018 5:48 pm

MUELLER FILES MORE CHARGES THIS AFTERNOON AGAINST MANAFORT

Bribes ---SECRET PAYMENTS to former Europeans politicians to lobby on behalf of Ukraine in the U.S.

Off shore accounts

2 million euros


Mueller just singled out a Republican congressman in unsealed Trump-Russia indictment
BY GRANT STERN
PUBLISHED ON FEBRUARY 23, 2018


Special Counsel Mueller just filed a new criminal charge today (embedded below) alleging a criminal cover-up of ex-Trump aides Paul Manafort and Rick Gates’ illegal foreign lobbying efforts with the House Republican best known as Putin’s favorite Congressman.

Rick Gates has pled guilty to this new felony charge, which comes as a direct result of Mueller’s dramatic early morning raid on Paul Manafort’s Alexandria, Virginia home last summer.

In August, we reported that a series of criminal charges had been filed against multiple Republican Congressmen by lawyer J. Whitfield Larrabee, which the Attorney General’s office referred to Mueller. Larrabee has identified the meeting participants in Mueller’s charges today through his criminal complaint’s analysis of Paul Manafort’s and “Company A” Mercury’s FARA registration filings.

Former Minnesota Republican congressman turned top-five lobbyist Vin Weber, Paul Manafort and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) participated in the formerly secret meeting cited by Mueller, which became the basis for Larrabee’s complaint against the California Republican legislator for illegally accepting foreign campaign funds.

“Mueller’s superseding indictment today vastly increases the likelihood that Rohrabacher, Vin Weber, and other Mercury lobbyists could be indicted,” says attorney J. Whitfield Larrabee, who explained:

“Rohrabacher is immersed up to his nose in these crimes. Just three days after Rohrabacher met with Manafort and Weber in March 2013, Rohrabacher accepted $2,000 in campaign contributions from Weber and Kutler. Although he was notified that the contributions illegally originated with the Party of Regions and were laundered by Manafort and Gates, Rohrabacher has stubbornly refused to disgorge the money from his campaign fund.”

“The lobbyists criminally violated federal election laws by acting as conduits for the Ukraine Party of Regions, and Rohrabacher criminally violated federal election laws by accepting the contributions. It is a federal crime for foreign political parties to directly or indirectly make campaign contributions, for individuals to act as conduits for foreign political parties in making contributions to federal candidates and for candidates to knowingly accept contributions directly or indirectly made by foreign political parties or foreign nationals.”

“Vin Weber and Ed Kutler, lobbyists for the Mercury firm, appear to be just as culpable as Gates and Manafort of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. They worked hand in hand with Rohrabacher to transfer payments they received from Manafort, originating with the Party of Regions, to Rohrabacher and two other members of Congress.”
Mueller’s new charges conclusively show that Manafort, Weber and current Rep. Dana Rohrabacher discussed the rapidly deteriorating situation in Ukraine on March 19th, 2013.

Trump’s former campaign advisor Gates admitted three weeks ago that he and Manafort then lied to the FBI about the purpose of that meeting to conceal their purpose and involvement as agents representing the interests of Victor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian puppet leader of Ukraine.

Since that 2013 meeting, Gates and Manafort’s former Ukrainian paymaster has fled to Russia and their business fortunes crashed, culminating in yesterday’s indictments for mortgage fraud.

But when the Department of Justice came asking about the pair’s foreign lobbying efforts in November 2016 and February 2017, both Manafort and Gates concocted a phony excuse for having already destroyed evidence of their communications about the 2013 meeting with Rohrabacher.

So late last July, Special Counsel Mueller’s team called their bluff and obtained key evidence of the pair’s guilt in a dramatic pre-dawn raid unusual for a white collar criminal case. Today’s criminal information identifies DMI as a front company for Manafort and Davis, saying:

Absent the greater issue of Russia’s sophisticated efforts to impact last year’s elections, Manafort’s foreign money trail itself raises major questions about who is funding the entire Republican party.

Meanwhile, the involvement of Republican super-lobbyist Vin Webber is strongly reminiscent of the Jack Abramoff scandal, the last criminal GOP lobbying scam which propelled the last major blue wave that swept corruption out of the House of Representatives in 2006.

In a remarkable coincidence, last year convicted felon GOP lobbyist Abramoff returned to Washington, DC, and promptly became involved with lobbying Rep. Rohrabacher. Abramoff registered as a foreign agent lobbyist once again last summer.

Today’s news vaults the formerly obscure Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher into the spotlight once again, because whatever was discussed with Paul Manafort about Russia’s interests in Ukraine back then was so sensitive, that it required a criminal conspiracy and cover-up nearly five years later.

“The five year anniversary for the March 19, 2013 Manafort meeting is only three weeks away,” says Larrabee, “which means that the Special Counsel may need to indict Rohrabacher and Weber within the month to beat any applicable 5-year statutes of limitations on filing criminal charges.”

Whatever Gates and Manafort were advancing at this mysterious 2013 meeting, its relevance to the Special Counsel’s probe is definitely in the clear evidence of crimes committed.

Today’s charges could also reveal the root of Trump’s top aides’ reasons for alignment with the Russian state interests, which they were paid handsomely to advance in Ukraine, and what – if any – role that played in their decision to join the last Republican presidential campaign.
http://washingtonpress.com/2018/02/23/m ... ndictment/



Grant Stern

Manafort passed information to Deripaska and on to the Kremlin via his man in Ukraine, "Kostya from the GRU" (that's Russian military intelligence) who showed up at a couple of key times during Manafort's run as Trump campaign manager.

Manafort’s man in Kiev

The Trump campaign chairman’s closeness to a Russian Army-trained linguist turned Ukrainian political operative is raising questions, concerns.

Jack Shafer08/18/2016 09:27 PM EDT
In an effort to collect previously undisclosed millions of dollars he’s owed by an oligarch-backed Ukrainian political party, Donald Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been relying on a trusted protégé whose links to Russia and its Ukrainian allies have prompted concerns among Manafort associates, according to people who worked with both men.

The protégé, Konstantin Kilimnik, has had conversations with fellow operatives in Kiev about collecting unpaid fees owed to Manafort’s company by a Russia-friendly political party called Opposition Bloc, according to operatives who work in Ukraine.

A Russian Army-trained linguist who has told a previous employer of a background with Russian intelligence, Kilimnik started working for Manafort in 2005 when Manafort was representing Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, a gig that morphed into a long-term contract with Viktor Yanukovych, the Kremlin-aligned hard-liner who became president of Ukraine.

Kilimnik eventually became “Manafort’s Manafort” in Kiev, and he continued to lead Manafort’s office there after Yanukovych fled the country for Russia in 2014, according to Ukrainian business records and interviews with several political operatives who have worked in Ukraine’s capital. Kilimnik and Manafort then teamed up to help promote Opposition Bloc, which rose from the ashes of Yanukovych’s regime. The party is funded by oligarchs who previously backed Yanukovych, including at least one who the Ukrainian operatives say is close to both Kilimnik and Manafort.

Kilimnik has continued advising Opposition Bloc, which opposes Ukraine’s teetering pro-Western government, even as the party stopped fully paying Manafort’s firm, leaving it unable to pay some of its employees and rent, according to people familiar with the firm and its relationship to Opposition Bloc.

All the while, Kilimnik has told people that he remains in touch with his old mentor. He told several people that he traveled to the United States and met with Manafort this spring. The trip and alleged meeting came at a time when Manafort was immersed in helping guide Trump’s campaign through the bitter Republican presidential primaries, and was trying to distance himself from his work in Ukraine.

Russia and its relationship with Ukraine have emerged as a major issue in the race as have Manafort’s connections in the region. Allies of Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton have sought to use Trump’s stances on, and ties to, Russia to cast him as the preferred candidate of one of the U.S.’ top geopolitical foes.

That criticism intensified last month after a series of events. First, Trump’s campaign gutted a proposed amendment to the Republican Party platform that called for the U.S. to provide “lethal defensive weapons” for Ukraine to defend itself against Russian incursion, backers of the measure charged. The move defied a strong GOP consensus on the issue. Then, the U.S. government blamed Russia for a politically damaging hack of the Democratic National Committee, and finally Trump called for Russia to hack Clinton’s emails, though he later said he was “being sarcastic.”

Joking aside, Trump has demonstrated more interest in Russia’s affairs than in perhaps any other area of foreign policy. And his laissez faire approach toward Russia’s confrontational relations with its neighbors, combined with his open admiration of its authoritarian President Vladimir Putin and his employment of Manafort, have led experts from across the political spectrum to predict that a Trump presidency would augur to the Kremlin’s benefit.

With Trump receiving his first classified security briefings, and concerns about him spiking in the intelligence community, talk of Kilimnik’s connections to Russian intelligence — combined with his affiliation with the Russia-allied Opposition Bloc — could become a liability for Trump, predict associates of Manafort and Kilimnik.

That’s quite a turnabout from Manafort’s work in Ukraine, where Kilimnik’s Russian military background was seen as an advantage in working for the pro-Russian Yanukovych.

“There was a time that that didn’t bother us because our interests converged, but then at the end when Yanukovych was going down the wrong path, our interests diverged, and for whatever reasons, Paul kept him on,” one operative close to Manafort said of Kilimnik.

**

Kilimnik, a short man who goes by “Kostya” or sometimes “KK,” was born in the sprawling industrial city of Kriviy Rikh, Ukraine, in 1970, back when Ukraine was still a part of the Soviet Union.

Kilimnik attended a Soviet military school where he learned to speak fluent Swedish and English, which complemented the Russian and Ukrainian he already spoke. He joined the Russian Army as a translator, work that closely aligned him with the army’s intelligence services — an account pieced together from a handful of people who worked with him or were briefed on his background, including a former senior CIA official with direct knowledge of Kilimnik’s activities.

But the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, when Kilimnik was only 21, and it’s unclear whether he spent much time in active service. After the dissolution of the Communist-controlled country, Kilimnik bounced around a bit, doing freelance translating, until eventually landing a job in 1995 in the Moscow office of the International Republican Institute. The nonprofit group, which has branches around the world, works with political parties and candidates to bolster the democratic process — a mission viewed with suspicion in post-Communist Russia.

Kilimnik did not hide his military past from his new employer. In fact, when he was asked how he learned to speak such fluent English, he responded “Russian military intelligence,” according to one IRI official, who quipped, “I never called [the Russian military intelligence agency] GRU headquarters for a reference.”

It soon became an article of faith in IRI circles that Kilimnik had been in the intelligence service, according to five people who worked in and around the group in Moscow, who said Kilimnik never sought to correct that impression.

“It was like ‘Kostya, the guy from the GRU’ — that’s how we talked about him,” said a political operative who worked in Moscow at the time. “The institute was informed that he was GRU, but it didn’t matter at the time because they weren’t doing anything sensitive.”

IRI spokeswoman Julia Sibley confirmed that Kilimnik worked at IRI but wouldn’t comment on his background, explaining “Mr. Kilimnik hasn’t worked with IRI in over a decade and has no affiliation with us.”

Kilimnik — presented with a series of questions about his background, his relationship with Manafort and his current work — declined to comment.

People who worked with Kilimnik at IRI and in subsequent jobs describe him as an easygoing person and a brilliant linguist who was not prone to braggadocio, at least early in his career. They also say he was largely non-ideological or, if he was driven by any particular ideology, it was not easily detectable. For instance, they say he didn’t come across as opposed to the democratization of Russia, but nor did he appear to be an ardent reformer.

“He took the job at IRI for the money, not because he believed in the mission,” said another former IRI official. “When there was better more lucrative employment, he took that.”

In fact, Kilimnik, while still employed by IRI, did accept a second, higher-paying job translating and interpreting for a Manafort team that was working for the pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch — and leading Yanukovych backer — Akhmetov in early 2005, according to four people who worked in or around IRI at the time.

Kilimnik “was always smart enough to get close to the money, and there was good money working for Akhmetov,” said a fellow Russian who was a longtime acquaintance.

At the time, Akhmetov was assembling a team of consultants to burnish the reputation of his business. It was facing regulatory action from a new government that had taken over when Yanukovych, who had been prime minister, lost his hold on power after his party tried to rig an October 2004 election to make him president.

Kilimnik was recruited to join Manafort’s team by a former IRI official named Philip M. Griffin, who had worked with Kilimnik at the institute. When IRI officials found out, they asked Kilimnik to resign for violating the nonprofit’s moonlighting prohibition. Several people around IRI say they suspected the institute regarded Kilimnik as too closely allied with Russia — even before he went to work for Akhmetov.

Whatever the reason, IRI employees were warned not to associate with Kilimnik after his resignation in April 2005, even though he continued to travel in the same circles as the group’s officials, according to one former IRI employee.

“I was advised that this is not a person that I want to be having a conversation with — that he could not be trusted,” the former employee said.

By the time Kilimnik left IRI, he had a wife and two children living in a modest house near Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport.

He started spending more time in Kiev and apart from his family, and he eventually started adopting a flashier lifestyle. He hung out with the political movers and shakers in the city’s Hyatt hotel and was ferried around town by a chauffeur in European luxury sedans. He started wearing expensive suits and began living in a lavish mansion with a pool.

The lifestyle was sort of a JV version of the jet-setting existence of his boss, Manafort. Kilimnik and Manafort would work closely together over the next decade, traveling together and developing a bond that associates say continues to this day.

**

Manafort, now 67, made his name helping Republican presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan in the 1970s and 1980s. But he spent most of the past three decades carving out a lucrative niche as a globe-trotting consultant to deep-pocketed foreign politicians and businessmen often looking to buff away stains on their reputations from allegations of corruption, plundering or human rights abuses. Among the boldfaced names in his client portfolio were Angolan guerilla army leader Jonas Savimbi, and former presidents Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire.

But those jobs would pale — both in terms of financial reward and degree of difficulty — to the gig to which Akhmetov referred Manafort and his team: returning Yanukovych to power.

A former trucking official who had been convicted and incarcerated as a teenager for serious crimes, Yanukovych had become a popular symbol of the corruption that plagues Ukraine after his team tried to rig the 2004 presidential election. A series of protests, which became known as the Orange Revolution, forced a re-vote, which Yanukovych lost.

While Manafort initially protested that Yanukovych was too deeply flawed to revive, Akhmetov eventually prevailed upon his American consultant to help Yanukovych and his political party, the Party of Regions, try to make a comeback in the 2006 parliamentary elections.

Manafort and his team, including Kilimnik, set about to recast Yanukovych as an inspiring leader who could work with the West. Under Manafort’s guidance, Yanukovych began studying English, and communicated in Ukrainian with the pro-European western part of the country, while using Russian to push pro-Russian themes in the east, which is linguistically, culturally and religiously aligned with Russia.

Manafort also implemented polling, micro-targeting and get-out-the-vote strategies that are de rigueur in American politics, but which Yanukovych had not previously used. Manafort even coached Yanukovych on his appearance, reportedly urging him to start blow-drying his hair, though one Manafort associate called the blow-drying claim a myth that was “total bullshit.”

Remarking on the transformation, a U.S. diplomat, in a hacked cable posted on WikiLeaks, wrote that the “Party of Regions is working to change its image from that of a haven for mobsters into that of a legitimate political party. Tapping the deep pockets of [Akhmetov], Regions has hired veteran K Street political help for its ‘extreme makeover’ effort … [Manafort’s firm] is among the political consultants that have been hired to do the nipping and tucking.”

Kilimnik was key to this effort, according to several people who worked with the team.

“The language was so important because you wanted to capture the nuances,” said one operative who worked with Manafort for the Party of Regions. “And because Paul doesn’t speak Russian or Ukrainian, he always had to have someone like that with him in meetings, so KK was with him all the time. He was very close to Paul and very trusted.”

The Party of Regions won the most seats in the 2006 parliamentary elections, and again in 2007 elections, paving the way for Yanukovych’s re-ascension as prime minister.

Manafort’s team began parlaying their connections into business ventures in the region, with Manafort and Rick Gates, who is now Manafort’s right-hand man on the Trump campaign, in late 2006 creating a private-equity fund in the Cayman Islands. The fund, called Pericles, used millions of dollars contributed by the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to purchase a Ukrainian cable and internet company.

But the venture soon collapsed. And, in a Cayman Islands legal filing to recoup Deripaska’s cash, lawyers named Kilimnik as one of seven “key individuals” involved in the partnership along with Manafort, Gates, and a handful of then-associates. Gates declined to comment.

A lawyer involved in the effort to recoup the investment didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Manafort entered into other ventures with other oligarchs, as well. And the operative who worked with Manafort’s team said, “These guys had a lot of stuff going on outside the campaign context, and KK was involved in all of that as well.”

In 2009, Yanukovych declared his candidacy for president in the following year’s elections. Manafort beefed up the operation running out of his Kiev office, and Kilimnik began playing a bigger part, orchestrating key campaign logistics in a way that transcended his initial role as translator and interpreter.

Throughout the Yanukovych campaigns, the operative said, “There was no secret that [Kilimnik] had been in the intelligence services back in the Soviet Union. He would talk about it. Others on the campaign — Paul, Phil Griffin, Rick Gates — they were pretty open about his background.” But the operative added, “The view was that they were all in the Soviet Union at one point in time, and now they’re Ukrainian and they’re trying to get something going in their own country.”

When Yanukovych finally won the presidency in 2010, he shelved his promises about adopting a more open, pro-Western government. He moved to exert increased control over the media, as well as the legislative and judicial branches of government, the latter of which prosecuted, convicted and jailed his vanquished 2010 election rival. He backed away from a commitment to the European Union, and moved closer to Russia, eventually accepting a $15-billion aid package from the Kremlin.

Some on Manafort’s team began raising concerns about Kilimnik’s background in the Russian military and rumored affiliation with the country’s intelligence service.

Griffin, who did not respond to a request for comment, had been serving as Manafort’s deputy, but he left the team for another consulting gig in 2011. Kilimnik assumed many of his duties, taking charge of Manafort’s Kiev office and running the operation while Manafort was out of the country, which was much of the time, according to people who worked with and around Manafort’s firm.

Unrest was spreading in Ukraine as activists alleged rampant corruption and plundering by Yanukovych’s regime and demanded closer ties with Europe, while Russia sought to exert more control.

But Manafort continued working for the Party of Regions, and he and Kilimnik continued traveling the country together. The pair flew aboard a private jet to Crimea for a day in mid-2013, according to Ukrainian border control records and a flight manifest.

The Party of Regions paid Manafort’s firm millions of dollars a year, multiple sources said.

Ukraine’s anti-corruption agency obtained documents showing that from 2007 through 2012, Yanukovych’s party had earmarked $12.7 million in off-books cash payments for Manafort, The New York Times revealed this week.

Manafort, who’s been criticized by some former colleagues for prioritizing cash over principles, rejected the report. He asserted in a statement that “the suggestion that I accepted cash payments is unfounded, silly, and nonsensical.”

The statement stressed that in his domestic and overseas campaign work, “all of the political payments directed to me were for my entire political team: campaign staff (local and international), polling and research, election integrity and television advertising.”

**

Yanukovych’s reign came to an abrupt end in early 2014, when widespread protests over corruption and a demand for more integration with Europe prompted him to step down and flee to Russia under Putin’s protection.

But Yanukovych’s exile wasn’t the end for Manafort and Kilimnik. They began working for Opposition Bloc, which won some seats in Parliament during an October 2014 election.

Manafort this week issued a statement declaring that his “work in Ukraine ceased following the country’s parliamentary elections in October 2014.” But his trips to Ukraine continued, according to entry data reviewed by POLITICO and interviews with people who worked with or around Manafort in the country; Manafort traveled to Kiev several times after that election, all the way through late 2015. And one Russian-language media report indicated that he offered advice to Opposition Bloc politicians in late 2015.

Asked about the report and whether his travels to Ukraine last year contradicted his claim that he ceased working in Ukraine after the 2014 elections, Manafort told POLITICO via text message: “I had no contract and did no business after 2014 elections.”

He did not respond to questions about his relationship with Kilimnik, the unpaid bills from Opposition Bloc or whether his protégé’s background was a cause for concern.

The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment, nor did Opposition Bloc.

Ukrainian political insiders say that Kilimnik did continue working for Opposition Bloc after the 2014 parliamentary elections.

Kilimnik has represented Opposition Bloc in meetings with international diplomats, according to several people in the international business and diplomat community in Kiev, where Kilimnik is regarded as an important liaison both to Opposition Bloc and to an influential oligarch who is playing a leading role in the party. “From 2013, he was the face of the organization here,” said one operative in Kiev.

At some point, Opposition Bloc had stopped paying what it had owed Manafort’s firm, according to people familiar with the situation. They said that the party still owes Manafort’s company a significant amount of money.

One person with direct knowledge of the unpaid bills wouldn’t say how much was owed to Manafort, but said, “It’s an amount you would definitely want it in your bank account.” Another person who has discussed the unpaid bills with people close to Manafort said the amount was in the “millions” of dollars.

When the party stopped paying its bills, Manafort’s Kiev office, which was being run by Kilimnik, began running late on its rent and employees’ salaries, according to several people familiar with the situation.

“They didn’t pay the Ukrainian office. They didn’t pay rent or salary for people,” said a person who worked in the office.

Another former team member said “KK is averse to conflict, so when the money wasn’t coming in, he just went dark and that pissed a lot of people off.” The former team member recalled that when Manafort traveled to Kiev in 2015 to try to secure the cash he was owed, he was “ambushed” in the lobby of the city’s Hyatt hotel by the landlord for his office demanding back rent.

Some U.S. foreign policy types see Kilimnik as a reasonable representative of an oligarch who can be reasoned with, and they discount talk about his ties to Russian intelligence.

“I always understood that he was in the Russian Army intelligence for a couple years,” said an international political consultant, who has worked with Kilimnik, and who stressed that, at the time, all Russian men were required to serve in the military. But the consultant added, “I don’t think it was as big a deal as people made it out to be.”

Bill Browder, an American-born investor whose business in Russia led to him being blacklisted by Putin’s regime as a national security threat, differed. “It’s not like you can say, 'I used to work for [Russian intelligence].' It’s a permanent affiliation. There is no such thing as a former [Russian intelligence] officer.”

David Stern, Bryan Bender, Michael Crowley, Josh Gerstein and Nahal Toosi contributed to this report.

CORRECTION: This article was updated to correct a reference to Rinat Akhmetov, who is Ukrainian, not Russian.
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/ ... nik-227181

Let me explain how Paul Manafort's #TrumpRussia indictments are rolling rapidly from election inference into a replay of the Jack Abramoff scandal, but on STEROIDS, involving the secretive sale of American foreign policy for dark money.

Manafort and Gates lobbied in the US for Kremlin-linked oligarchs & political parties for a decade, but before their scorched earth, divisive GOP politics inflamed a regional war, they went on a secret diplomatic offensive on behalf of their client, kleptocrat Victor Yanukovych.

Manafort founded the European Center for a Modern Ukraine to be a secret western lobbying front group for Yanukovych.

For obvious reasons, his kleptocratic client had a perception problem, i.e. reality.

Yanukovych is Putin's vassal.

Manafort hid his involvement for years.

But in an ironic twist of fate, Mueller is proving that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.

Like Jack Abramoff before him, Manafort's less glamorous financial crimes of loan fraud are (in his case comically) easy to prove.

So, how does this all relate to TrumpRussia?

For starters, the obvious: Manafort was working for Russia the whole time.

His Ukrainian boss was one master, but really he was the student, remade in Manafort's image.

Manafort was also taking money from a key Putin ally...
https://twitter.com/grantstern/status/9 ... 7202664448


Oleg Deripaska. The AP reported he paid Manafort $10 million per year until he got burned in a bad deal.
Manafort wanted to 'get right' with Oleg Deripaska by passing him reports on the Trump campaign.

Pro-Russia GOP Congressman Features Prominently In Trump Aide’s Plea Document

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher has been interviewed by congressional investigators but not yet by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Akbar Shahid Ahmed

WASHINGTON ― The criminal information document released by special counsel Robert Mueller ahead of Trump campaign aide Rick Gates’ guilty plea on Friday contains prominent references to “a member of Congress” who met in 2013 with future Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and another lobbyist.

HuffPost has identified that member as Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), a loudly pro-Russia lawmaker who has drawn the attention of Mueller and congressional investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Mueller has not yet interviewed Rohrabacher, the congressman’s spokesman told HuffPost on Friday in a message that also confirmed the 2013 meeting with Manafort. But Mueller’s team wanted to interview Rohrabacher as of late last year, according to news reports, and the criminal information released in advance of Gates’ plea suggests they were asking about Rohrabacher recently. The congressman has already been interviewed by the House and Senate Intelligence committees.

Gates has told a court that he lied to federal investigators on Feb. 1, 2018, about his knowledge of the meeting between Rohrabacher, Manafort and lobbyist Vin Weber when he falsely claimed he did not know Ukraine was discussed. Ukraine is one of the top foreign policy concerns of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Manafort spent years working for Ukrainian politicians close to Moscow. And Rohrabacher was one of only a few U.S. lawmakers to oppose American assistance to a new government in Ukraine established in 2014 after protests against Putin’s allies in that country.

Rohrabacher has become notorious for being what The New York Times calls “an apologist” for Putin. “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said during a 2016 meeting of the GOP’s top brass, according to a secret recording shared with The Washington Post. (McCarthy later said he was joking.) Russian intelligence officials gave Rohrabacher a code name because they viewed him as a valuable source, The New York Times revealed last year.

Rohrabacher maintains that he is simply motivated by a sincere desire for better relations between Washington and Moscow. In a 2014 Twitter exchange, the congressman wrote, “Have known Manafort 35 years. As in all matters, I make up mind based on truth & right, not donations or even friendship.”

Officials speaking with The New York Times last year said they did not believe Rohrabacher was actively working with the Russians.

As both chair of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee covering Europe and a former anti-Soviet hawk, the congressman argues that the two countries with the world’s largest nuclear arsenals need to get along and that Americans should have more sympathy for Russia’s priorities and its fears of Western encirclement.

His team said that Friday’s news does not show any wrongdoing.

“As the congressman has acknowledged before, the meeting was a dinner with two longtime acquaintances ― Manafort and Weber ― from back in his White House and early congressional days. The three reminisced and talked mostly about politics. The subject of Ukraine came up in passing,” Ken Grubbs, Rohrabacher’s spokesman, told HuffPost in an email. “It is no secret that Manafort represented [pro-Putin Ukrainian President] Viktor Yanukovych’s interests, but as chairman of the relevant European subcommittee, the congressman has listened to all points of view on Ukraine. We may only speculate that Manafort needed to report back to his client that Ukraine was discussed.”

Still, Rohrabacher has emerged as an important figure in the investigations into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian efforts to help President Donald Trump and hurt his rival Hillary Clinton.

One of a mere handful of well-known GOP figures in Washington who were enthusiastic about Trump before his election victory, Rohrabacher was once under consideration to be the new administration’s secretary of state. He has cast doubt on the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence community about the election and said voters benefited from the hacks of Clinton campaign messages. Last year, he met with Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, the group that released the stolen Clinton materials, and said he wanted to give Trump information proving the hack was not committed by Russia. Soon afterward, top Republicans curtailed his powers on his influential subcommittee. And in 2016, Rohrabacher had meetings with Trump adviser Michael Flynn ― who is now cooperating with Mueller ― and with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya ― who is known for a Trump Tower meeting she had with Donald Trump Jr., Manafort and others hoping that Russia would share information damaging to Clinton.

The 15-term congressman is courting controversy even as he faces what observers describe as his toughest re-election race yet in a California district that seems to be turning more liberal. He appears unfazed.

“My constituents couldn’t care less about this,” Rohrabacher told The New York Times last year. “They are not concerned about Russia.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/da ... 55731bf427




NEW charges against Manafort:

1. Conspiracy against the US
2. Conspiracy to LAUNDER MONEY
3. Unregistered agent of a foreign principal
4. False & misleading FARA statements
5. FALSE statements

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ASSET FORFEITURE

Mueller went for the JUGULAR

The grand jury found "probable cause" to SEIZE *at least* FOUR houses from Manafort (3 in NY, 1 in VA), a life insurance policy (not a good time to lose that!), a brokerage account & a bank account
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Manafort must be very afraid of the Russia or otherwise, he'd have flipped long ago. Multiple legal experts say that Manafort has little chance of avoiding spending the REST OF HIS LIFE BEHIND BARS

NEW: Can confirm that the politicians named in the new Manafort Indictment are (likely) Alfred Gusenbauer, Austria's former chancellor, and Romano Prodi, Italy's former prime minister.

Per:
Manafort-linked lobbying firm registers as foreign agent; ex-Trump campaign chair backtracks

Jeff Horwitz, Chad Day and Stephen Braun

A Washington lobbying firm that worked under the direction of Paul Manafort's firm registered Friday with the Justice Department as a foreign agent — the same day a spokesman for Manafort backed off his previous statement that Manafort had decided to register.

Jason Maloni, a spokesman for Manafort, said he was wrong when he told The Associated Press earlier this month that Manafort would register with the Justice Department. Maloni said Manafort, who served as President Donald Trump's campaign chairman, is still considering his options after receiving guidance from the federal authorities about formally disclosing his efforts to influence U.S. policy and public opinion on behalf of a foreign client.

As of Friday, two of the lobbying firms involved in the influence campaign on behalf of Ukrainian interests have acknowledged that their work should have been disclosed to the Justice Department. The AP reported in August that Manafort's consulting firm covertly orchestrated the lobbying and public opinion operation on behalf of a pro-Russian political party, the Ukrainian Party of Regions, and its leader, former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

The latest registration came Friday from Mercury LLC, which disclosed that Manafort was involved in its lobbying work, attending meetings with Mercury managing partner Vin Weber. Weber had previously told the AP that Manafort played no role in Mercury's work.

Former Trump campaign chairman Manafort to register as foreign agent
In a statement to the AP, Maloni downplayed Manafort's involvement as it was detailed in Mercury's filing. "One meeting with one lawmaker connected to this topic in a two-year period looks like incidental contact to fair-minded Americans," Maloni said, referring to a meeting Manafort had with Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif, who later opposed a 2014 aid package to the government that replaced Yanukovych's.

That Rohrabacher meeting was one of four attended by Manafort which were detailed in the filing.

Mercury partner Mike McKeon denied that his firm had taken direction from Manafort's firm, DMP International. He said that, in addition to setting up lobbying meetings on behalf of Ukrainian government officials, Mercury had also worked with other Ukrainian political interests.

"We work for and under the direction of the Centre, no one else," McKeon wrote in an email to the AP.

But emails obtained by the AP last August show that Manafort's firm and his deputy Rick Gates, also a Trump campaign aide, directed Mercury's efforts on specific lobbying tasks.

Who's who in the Russia-Trump investigation
The emails show Gates directing Mercury lobbyists to set up meetings between a top Ukrainian official and senators and congressmen on influential committees involving Ukrainian interests. Gates had the firms gather information in the U.S. on a rival lobbying operation and directed efforts to undercut sympathy for Yulia Tymoshenko, an imprisoned rival of Yanukovych.

Mercury had announced earlier this month that it would register for the work as a foreign agent after another lobbying firm, The Podesta Group, did so. The Podesta Group acknowledged its work could have benefited the Ukrainian government and should have been disclosed to the government under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Mercury's filing says it does not know who ultimately was behind the European Centre, though the group was initially set up in Brussels with members of the Party of Regions on its board. In its retroactive registration Friday, Mercury said it has "no direct knowledge" of what people or entities funded the Centre, but said Mercury's goal was to help Ukraine build closer ties with the European Union.

Throughout 2013, the firm also set up "educational events" and meetings that featured Ukrainian government officials and other experts on Ukraine and the EU. It is not clear from the documents whether Mercury's experts were also paid. Among the firm's listed experts were Alfred Gusenbauer, Austria's former chancellor, and Romano Prodi, Italy's former prime minister. The firm said it also arranged meetings with legislators and congressional staffers as well as think tanks and the media.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nati ... story.html


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Source documents per FARA https://www.fara.gov/docs/6170-Exhibit- ... 428-29.pdf

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The Hapsburg Group...

@ScottMStedman

Alfred Gusenbauer managed Manafort's secret European group that propped up Yanukovych. Gusenbauer works on the Rhodes Forum whose founder is Vladimir Yakunin - Putin's "close personal and financial associate"

Yakunin and Gusenbauer are pictured here. Everything ends up in Moscow.
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Here's Gusenbauer with Putin. Make no mistake, Putin was running Manafort's secret lobbying in Europe. Perhaps not directly, but certainly through his ideology and allies
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Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Feb 25, 2018 12:14 pm

NEW: MUELLER is looking into SkaddenArps's work with MANAFORT & GATES for pro-RUSSIAN Ukrainian regime. Skadden has produced documents to special counsel & has designated a top atty as point person for dealing with the probe. Lawyers at firm are on edge.

RUSSIAN INTEL WATCH: a consultant who worked with SkaddenArps on the Ukraine report tells me that one of the people involved was KONSTANTIN KILIMNIK, a longtime MANAFORT/GATES associate who MUELLER has assessed as having ties to Russian intelligence.

How Skadden, the Giant Law Firm, Got Entangled in the Mueller Investigation

By KENNETH P. VOGEL and MATTHEW GOLDSTEINFEB. 24, 2018


The law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, whose headquarters are in Manhattan, has come under scrutiny in the Russia investigation. Sam Hodgson for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — For much of its 70-year history, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom has been a go-to firm for Wall Street, representing corporations like Pfizer and DuPont in acquisitions and becoming the first law firm in history to broker $1 trillion in mergers in a year.

But when one of its former lawyers, Alex van der Zwaan, admitted this past week that he lied to the special counsel investigating Russian election interference, his guilty plea shined a light on a profitable line of business that Skadden mostly keeps quiet: its work for unsavory foreign figures and their Washington lobbyists.

Mr. van der Zwaan, 33, acknowledged that he misled investigators about his communications related to the firm’s work for the Russia-aligned former president of Ukraine, Viktor F. Yanukovych, done in tandem with the former Trump campaign aides Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. Both were indicted on money laundering and other charges related to their work in Ukraine. Mr. Manafort has denied wrongdoing; Mr. Gates pleaded guilty on Friday and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

The interest of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, in Skadden appears to go beyond Mr. van der Zwaan. Mr. Mueller’s team has requested and received documents from Skadden related to its Ukraine work, according to two lawyers familiar with the investigation. The special counsel has investigated $4 million in secret payments that Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates are accused of funneling to Skadden and other firms from accounts in Cyprus, and could get more information on Skadden from Mr. Gates, who worked closely with the firm. Lawyers at Skadden are on edge, according to people who have worked with the firm.

Mr. Mueller’s inquiry threatens the delicate balance that Skadden has struck between lucrative sources of revenue. The firm has made huge profits from corporate work for image-conscious United States companies, while also representing riskier international clients, such as Russian oligarchs and companies with close ties to President Vladimir V. Putin and former Soviet states.

Skadden’s work advising controversial foreign clients was probably prompted by the same aggressive risk-taking that fueled the firm’s rise from scrappy upstart to top-grossing legal giant with a range of practice areas, said Lincoln Caplan, a research scholar at Yale Law School and the author of “Skadden: Power, Money, and the Rise of a Legal Empire.”

“The mentality is that Skadden wouldn’t be afraid of doing something like this, if there was a chance to utilize their skills and status to take advantage of what sounds like a very lucrative business, and they saw no legal or ethical proscription against their taking on the matter,” he said.

Skadden’s work is part of a trend in recent years of lobbyists and lawyers earning increasingly larger paydays by marketing their connections in Washington to foreign politicians, countries and companies willing to pay hefty fees to burnish their reputations in the United States and on the international stage.

Among those reaping windfalls are large international law firms like the Washington-based Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, which represents the governments of Japan, the Maldives, Nicaragua and South Korea, among others.

Newer lobbying upstarts like Ballard Partners have won foreign clients by capitalizing on ties to President Trump. Founded by Brian Ballard, a lobbyist based in Tallahassee, Fla., who was a leading fund-raiser for Mr. Trump’s campaign, transition and inauguration, Ballard Partners has signed contracts with government entities or political parties in Albania, the Dominican Republic, Kosovo and Turkey, all since the inauguration.

Those firms, which have not been accused of impropriety, disclosed the foreign contracts to the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The law requires anyone who lobbies or does public relations for foreign individuals, companies, governments and political parties to reveal detailed information about their work and payments for it. The act is intended to prevent foreign actors from surreptitiously influencing American public policy.

But for years, many American consultants have skirted the law’s requirements. Mr. Mueller’s inquiry has focused on such undisclosed lobbying among some of its leading practitioners, including Mr. Manafort, who helped pioneer the model for international consulting three decades ago. The investigation has left other firms rushing to ensure their own compliance.

“This is creating concern in the Washington lobbying community about not only complying with FARA, but also a new emphasis on enforcement that perhaps folks didn’t think was happening or would happen,” said Thomas J. Spulak, a lawyer in the Washington office of King & Spalding who specializes in lobbying compliance.

Mr. Mueller has scrutinized Skadden on two fronts — its own work for Mr. Yanukovych’s government, and its role advising to two other powerhouse Washington lobbying firms paid to bolster his government, Mercury Public Affairs and the Podesta Group.

Mr. Mueller accused Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates of orchestrating a complicated scheme through which Mercury and Podesta were paid about $1 million each through a nonprofit front group to advocate on behalf of Mr. Yanukovych’s government.

As part of his plea agreement, Mr. Gates admitted that he knowingly misled Skadden — though the firm is not named in court filings — in a scheme to avoid FARA registration by indicating incorrectly that the nonprofit was not supervised or controlled by Mr. Yanukovych’s government. Relying on that information, Skadden prepared a legal opinion in 2012 that the lobbying firms used in opting not to register under FARA.

Skadden’s opinion, which was written by a partner, Kenneth A. Gross, and an associate, and was reviewed by The New York Times, asserted that the firms were not required to register because their client, the Brussels-based European Center for a Modern Ukraine, “is a private nongovernmental organization” not controlled or funded by a foreign government or political party.



Alex van der Zwaan, a former lawyer from Skadden, admitted that he lied to the special counsel investigating Russian election interference. Yuri Gripas/Reuters
The Justice Department, which enforces FARA, began investigating the arrangement in 2016, and Mercury and Podesta registered, belatedly, under the act last year. The special counsel has continued looking into the matter, subpoenaing the firms for testimony about their Ukraine work.

Despite Mr. Gates’s admission that he misled Skadden, people who worked with Podesta and Mercury privately blame the law firm for the faulty guidance.

Mercury, which relied on Skadden for years for FARA advice and for assistance last year in responding to subpoenas from the special counsel, is no longer working with Skadden, according to three people in the lobbying industry who were briefed on the change.

Lobbyists who worked with the Podesta Group, which largely collapsed under the glare of Mr. Mueller’s scrutiny and attacks from the right, have grumbled that the firm erred in relying on the legal opinion that Skadden prepared for Mercury, rather than paying for its own.

Mercury said in a statement that it “acted appropriately, following our counsel’s advice from the start.” The firm said that Mr. Gates, in pleading guilty, admitted that he “didn’t tell the truth to our lawyers when he spoke to them about this project.”

Representatives from Podesta as well as Mr. Gross declined to comment.

Skadden has been cooperating with prosecutors, a spokeswoman, Melissa Porter, said in a statement. Lawrence S. Spiegel, a partner who specializes in government enforcement and white-collar crime, has been assigned to handle interactions with the special counsel, and Ms. Porter noted that the firm dismissed Mr. van der Zwaan and said that the lying charges he pleaded guilty to are “contrary to our values, policies and expectations.”

But Skadden may not be able to limit its legal exposure by distancing itself from Mr. van der Zwaan if the special counsel can implicate the firm in wrongdoing in the work or payments on behalf of Mr. Yanukovych’s government, said Rebecca Roiphe, a professor at New York Law School who specializes in legal ethics.

“Why he was lying is a big question, and did anyone else at the law firm know he was lying?” Ms. Roiphe said. “If he was lying for his own purposes, I don’t think that knowledge would be imputed to other lawyers at the firm.”

The answers to those questions are not entirely clear.

Mr. van der Zwaan admitted misleading prosecutors about two conversations in September 2016 with Mr. Gates and an unidentified business associate of Mr. Gates and Mr. Manafort. They discussed their belief that Skadden’s work for Mr. Yanukovych exposed the firm to possible criminal charges in Ukraine. No such charges have been filed.

After the conversation with the business associate, prosecutors said, Mr. van der Zwaan called the senior Skadden lawyer on the Ukrainian project, Gregory B. Craig, who served as the White House counsel under President Barack Obama. Court filings do not reveal what was discussed, and Mr. Craig was not identified by name by prosecutors.

Skadden worked for the Ukrainian government on a 2012 report analyzing the prosecution of one of Mr. Yanukovych’s leading political rivals, the former Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko. Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates used an offshore account to “funnel $4 million to pay for the report,” according to court papers, which note that the financial arrangement “was not disclosed.” It is not clear how much of the $4 million went to Skadden.

Adding a layer of intrigue, a consultant who worked on the report said that it was facilitated in part by Konstantin V. Kilimnik, a former Russian Army linguist and longtime associate of Mr. Gates and Mr. Manafort who is “assessed to have ties to a Russian intelligence service,” according to court papers. Mr. Kilimnik did not respond to a request for comment.

The study was used by Mr. Yanukovych’s allies to rebut international criticism that the prosecution and jailing of Ms. Tymoshenko was politically motivated and lacked sufficient evidence. But it was widely dismissed as a flawed attempt to paper over concerns about Mr. Yanukovych’s abuses, and other lobbyists promoting Mr. Yanukovych’s government said they declined to promote the report for lack of credibility.

Skadden did not respond to questions about the financing of its Ukraine work, but it said in a statement that the report was independent and noted that it found that Ms. Tymoshenko “was denied basic rights under Western legal standards.”

The Washington lobbyists who worked on the issue with Mercury and Podesta said that Mr. Craig himself was involved in promoting the report to journalists and members of Congress — activity that experts said should have prompted FARA registration requirements.

Skadden internally reviewed the FARA implications of its Ukraine work before deciding not to register, according to the consultant who worked with the firm on the report.

Ms. Porter, the Skadden spokeswoman, said that neither Mr. Craig nor any of the firm’s other lawyers “engaged in any activity that required them or the firm to register under FARA.” Mr. Craig did not respond to requests for comment.

Less than a year and a half after the release of the Skadden report, Mr. Yanukovych fled Ukraine for Russia amid street protests over his government’s corruption and its pivot toward Moscow. Mr. Yanukovych’s government collapsed and Ms. Tymoshenko was freed.

And last year, as the Justice Department was inquiring about the Ukrainian work, Skadden returned about half of the reported $1.1 million it was paid by the Ukrainian government.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/24/us/p ... ation.html


“Weissmann said in court that Van Der Zwaan secretly recorded a follow up conversation in which Person A said the “payments [to Skadden] that were public” were the tip of the iceberg.”

Person A is very likely Konstantin Kilimnik. He was the intermediary between Manafort and Deripaska.

What This Lawyer’s Guilty Plea Tells Us About Mueller’s Investigation
Charges against Alex Van Der Zwaan come as Rick Gates reportedly prepares to cooperate against Manafort
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... stigation/
.


Skadden got a $1.1 million payment frm Ukraine after writing that horrible memo justifying the arrest of opposition leader Tymeshenko - (which was a farce) - then when DOJ asks abt it they say “oh oops we got over paid by about $550k” and refunds part of it-is that abt right?
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Feb 28, 2018 6:37 pm

Manafort, The Cinematic Arc of History And The Wildest Coincidence
By Josh Marshall | February 28, 2018 4:03 pm

I mentioned last week that a cluster of new revelations had given us a fresh and deeper view of Paul Manafort’s dire financial straits and desperate personal situation in the months and weeks leading up to his entry into the Trump campaign in March 2016. Today we have another report from Bloomberg which paints a similar picture and adds some additional details, specifically just how recently before he went to work for Trump that Manafort was working for the shell of the Russia-aligned party in Ukraine.

As we’ve learned last night, when Jared Kushner became the top advisor of the President-Elect Trump, his precarious financial situation and need for money appeared as a point of opportunity and leverage for a number of foreign governments who had critical interests at stake with the United States. This is unsurprising. It’s why security reviews always look at business interests and especially debts and secrets that can be used to pressure, manipulate or threaten. Manafort fit that bill in spades, far more than Kushner, whose family finances were perilous.

But what deserves more focus, even though it’s by no means hidden or at all secret, is the sheer historic sweep of Manafort’s involvement, his central place in so many aspects of the big, big story.

Let’s start with one key point: The main deliverable Vladimir Putin wanted from the Trump administration, whatever role he played in the latter’s election, was an end to the punitive sanctions imposed by the US and Europe after the Russian seizure of the Crimean Peninsula and incursions into eastern Ukraine in February 2014. There are many parts of the package Putin wanted and Trump seemed to want to provide, from things as limited as the late 2016 sanctions imposed by President Obama to as maximal and aspirational as the disruption of the NATO alliance. But the end of the 2014 sanctions and the acceptance of Russian sovereignty in Crimea was the core deliverable at the heart of a broader rapprochement or even global US-Russian partnership. That was the big thing Russia wanted and indeed still wants.

Manafort wasn’t simply at the heart of the 2016 election story, he was at the center of this origination point story as well. Manafort’s meal ticket and main client was Viktor Yanukovych, the Russia-aligned President of Ukraine. Yanukovych was driven from power by his inability to manage the cross-cutting fissures in Ukraine, the pulls of Russia and the EU, specifically his decision to reject a deeper association with the EU and swing around to a redoubled bond with Russia. It was Yanukovych’s fall from power and subsequent flight to Russia which at least triggered the annexation of Crimea and Russia’s shadow war in the east. In other words, the fall of Manafort’s client in Ukraine was the triggering event which led to the punitive sanctions the removal of which was the core thing Vladimir Putin was hoping to receive from Donald Trump. That Manafort, who’d been Yanukovych’s political advisor and fixer for a decade would end up running Trump’s campaign is, to put it mildly, remarkable. Whether this is a great historical irony or something more planned and sinister is the great question about which we are in the throes of writing the first draft of history.

After Yanukovych was driven from power, Manafort tried to scrounge together business, rebranding the remnants of Yanukovych’s political movement as an opposition to the new regime. But the money paled to what it had been before Yanukovych’s fall and Manafort didn’t get paid a bunch of what he claimed to be owed. Just as ominously, the new government was digging into Yanukovych’s corruption, which was prodigious, and of which Manafort was if not complicit than at least a beneficiary.

Then two things happened in late 2014.

Manafort’s family discovers he’s been carrying on an affair, adding personal crisis to his financial woes. Back in the US, something else was happening. I’ve noted many times that Adrien Chen wrote about the Internet Research Agency well before the 2016 campaign and before Donald Trump seemed to have any part of it. In Chen’s June 2015 New York Times Magazine article he notes that the IRA operatives appeared to get started in the US in late 2014. There were efforts to create social media-driven panics about hoax natural disasters. (They seemed to be trial runs. A fascinating hoax Chen writes about was a purported industrial accident in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana.) These operatives also got into the mix amplifying fears and spreading misinformation about the Ebola mini-outbreak in late 2014. We don’t know whether these first efforts had any connection to or foreknowledge of Trump’s eventual run for President. But it’s clear that the more aggressive posture was spurred by the deep freeze in relations after the crisis in Ukraine.

Through 2015, Manafort’s life appeared to spiral out of control. As Frank Foer notes, Manafort was apparently so desperate and perhaps depressed that he told one of his daughters he was contemplating suicide. By the close of 2015, Manafort had checked himself into some sort of in-patient treatment facility in Arizona for what his daughter describes as an emotional collapse. Weeks later he was asking his friend Tom Barrick to help him get an unpaid job working for Donald Trump’s campaign.

This does sound like a highly suspicious and improbable turn of events. But it’s important to remember there is a sleazy but not quite sinister explanation that is plausible if not quite probable. Manafort had every reason to believe at this point that his Ukraine-based fortune was at an end. He hadn’t been a player in the US for years. So he was in no kind of demand for the US political work or influence peddling he’d originally made his name at. But there was a presidential candidate who looked like he might win the nomination but who lots of legit consultants wouldn’t touch. But that wasn’t a problem for Manafort. Working for untouchable strongmen was his line of work. If Manafort could have a strong run with Trump, he could recharge his influence batteries and go back into business stateside. If Trump managed to win, he might have more juice than ever. If this theory is true, it’s a perfectly adequate explanation of why he was happy to work for free. It wasn’t about a six-month salary. It was about building back a reputation and gaining influence to peddle to support his extravagant lifestyle.

This is possible.

But we can’t ignore the context. As noted, Russia appears to have begun testing out information warfare possibilities in mid-to-late 2014. We don’t know when Donald Trump came into focus as a possible tool – witting or otherwise – of Russia. But events were clearly coming together. Russian operatives began hacking into DNC servers in late 2015 and continued these efforts into the spring. It was in March that Russian operatives successfully hacked John Podesta’s email. It was also in March that Trump announced Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, and three others as his foreign policy advisory team. Papadopoulos had learned earlier in March that he’d be working for Trump. He’d already attracted the attention of Russian intelligence operatives in London who would tell him about Russia’s dirt on Hillary Clinton.

All of this is coming together in February and March of 2016. And it’s right then that Manafort shows up eager to work for Donald Trump – to ‘get back in the game’. It was in late January or early February when Manafort reached out to Barrick, February 29th when Manafort’s memos were passed on to Trump by Barrick and March 28th when Trump hired Manafort to join the campaign. Two months later he’s running the whole operation.

Life is messy and filled with coincidences. But it is well to remember a key fact. Part of the work Manafort did for Yanukovych was helping him run campaigns and political operations in Ukraine. But a big, big part of his work was influencing politics in the US on behalf of Yanukovych and the Russian interests who backed him. He was literally in the business of acting as a foreign agent in the US representing the interests of the then-pro-Russian government of Ukraine. That’s actually one of the things Mueller charged him with doing – not the representation itself but failing to properly register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

Manafort’s a guy who had a lot of experience doing this. You can make a decent argument – though it’s admittedly muddy – that he’d spent a decade doing it specifically for the players who in 2016 were authorizing the disruption campaign which was coming together right as Manafort entered the Trump campaign. It is, to put it mildly, a helluva coincidence.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/ma ... re-1113913


Judge sets Sept. 17 trial date for Manafort on Mueller charges

Move could put former Trump campaign chairman on trial at height of midterm election season

JOSH GERSTEIN
02/28/2018 09:51 AM EST

The decision from U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson would put Paul Manafort (pictured) on trial at the height of the midterm campaign season. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
A judge in Washington on Wednesday set a Sept. 17 trial date for former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort on charges from special counsel Robert Mueller, including money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent.

The decision from U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson would put Manafort on trial at the height of the midterm campaign season, a potentially unwelcome distraction for Republicans as they try to maintain majorities in Congress.

Manafort also faces the prospect of another trial in Alexandria, Virginia, on a separate indictment Mueller's team obtained earlier this month accusing the veteran lobbyist and political consultant of 18 counts of tax and bank fraud. Manafort is scheduled to be arraigned in that case on Friday. No trial date has been set there.

During the brief hearing Wednesday morning at which Jackson scheduled the Washington trial, Manafort stood before the judge and entered a formal "not guilty" plea to a revised indictment in the D.C. case that effectively transfers to Virginia some charges related to offshore bank accounts.

Jackson also scolded Manafort and his team for a statement his spokesman issued Friday maintaining his innocence despite the guilty pleas tendered earlier that day by his longtime aide, Rick Gates, who is now cooperating with Mueller's office.

The judge said the comments appeared to run afoul of the order she issued in November limiting public statements about the case by lawyers involved and by the defendants.

"I can understand the impulse to not let that go by without stating your innocence, [but] in issuing that statement about the prosecution, I believe it's contrary to the order," said Jackson, an appointee of President Barack Obama.

Jackson said she wasn't going to take action in response to last week's statement but warned she would if there were further violations.

Manafort defense attorney Kevin Downing indicated that he believes Jackson's order and a 1991 Supreme Court precedent it cited do not authorize a complete blackout of all comments by the parties in a criminal case. The defense lawyer said, as he's suggested before in court, that he plans to file a motion to clarify the order.

The order's language does not appear to bar all public comments by the parties and lawyers but only those "that pose a substantial likelihood of material prejudice to this case."

However, Jackson noted that she offered both sides the opportunity to object to her order last year and neither did. "I'll read anything you file," she said.

During Wednesday's hearing, the judge also expressed some concern about "overlap" between the Washington case and the Virginia one, although she said ultimately the burden of two successive trials is likely to fall most heavily on the defense.

"It seems the government is setting itself up to put on the same evidence twice in different courtrooms," Jackson said. "There's a risk of inconsistent [rulings] on the motions and evidentiary rulings and jury findings."

Ultimately, though, Jackson said she didn't view the parallel cases as a big problem. "The burden is at its least on the courts. We can handle two trials," she said.

Prosecutor Greg Andres stressed that Mueller's team gave Manafort the option to face a single case in Washington on all the charges, but Manafort declined to waive his right to have the tax charges brought in Virginia, which is where he lived when he filed the tax returns at issue.

Jackson predicted the case in Virginia will move along rapidly in a court known for hosting what many lawyers call a "rocket docket."

"You'll have a trial date soon there," she said.

As Manafort sat at the defense table Wednesday, there was much more room than at past sessions. It was the first public court hearing in the case at which Gates and his legal team were absent.

At the outset of the hearing, the judge expressed her condolences to Manafort about the death of his father-in-law last week.

Jackson has rejected a couple of offers by Manafort to secure his release from house arrest by pledging properties to secure the $10 million bail. But the former Trump campaign chairman thanked the judge for allowing him to travel to Long Island earlier this week to attend wake, funeral and burial services for his father-in-law, Joseph Bond, who died Saturday at age 89.

"I appreciate the court's indulgence," Manafort said just before his arraignment Wednesday.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/ ... ges-430621
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Mar 02, 2018 2:51 pm

Rick Gates tells judge he's canceling trip due to threat invoking Russian mafia

Ex-Trump campaign aide Rick Gates pleads guilty

Washington (CNN)Former Trump campaign deputy Rick Gates told a federal court Thursday afternoon that he and his wife believe it's "not prudent" for them to take their four children on a trip to Boston, after feeling threatened by an online commenter who invoked the Russian mafia.

A Boston Globe report on Gates' scheduled trip, planned for next week and approved by Judge Amy Berman Jackson, "generated comments on the internet, some of which were of a threatening character," Gates' attorney said in a court filing.

Following his guilty plea and agreement to cooperate in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation last Friday, Gates had asked to take his family to Boston for spring break to learn about the Revolutionary War.

He is only allowed outside of the Washington, DC, and Richmond, Virginia, areas, where his lawyers are based and where he lives, with special permission from the judge.

Gates' attorney said Thursday that Gates hoped for permission to travel with a different itinerary. The judge approved. The filing did not say when or where the requested trip would take place.

One Globe reader posted two comments referencing possible violence against Gates in response to an online Boston Globe story published February 26 and titled "Following guilty plea in Mueller probe, Rick Gates plans to visit Boston." The comments suggested Russians living in Boston could be angry with Gates, if Mueller targeted them in his probe.
The Globe late Thursday blocked the two comments.

Charges dropped


Also on Thursday, a federal judge in Virginia formally dismissed criminal charges pending there against Gates. Prosecutors had sought the dismissal as part of Gates' plea bargain.

Gates' co-defendant Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, has maintained his innocence while he faces federal criminal charges brought by Mueller's team in Washington, DC. Manafort will appear in court in Virginia Friday afternoon to enter a plea in that case, which alleges that Manafort committed bank fraud and tax crimes in a decade-long scheme built upon his Ukrainian political lobbying work.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/01/politics ... index.html
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Mar 03, 2018 7:40 pm

EU citizenship for sale as Russian oligarch buys Cypriot passport

Exclusive: Oleg Deripaska joins hundreds of rich people who have bought Cypriot nationality

Luke Harding
Last modified on Fri 2 Mar 2018 17.01 EST

The Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska has bought a Cypriot passport under a controversial scheme that allows rich investors to acquire citizenship and visa-free access to the European Union, the Guardian can reveal.

Deripaska, an aluminium magnate with connections to Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, is one of hundreds of wealthy individuals who have applied for Cypriot nationality. His application was approved last year.

The revelations will revive concern about oligarchs with Kremlin connections buying EU passports. Large numbers of the Russian and Ukrainian elite featured last year in a list of hundreds of people granted Cypriot citizenship over the past four years.

The island also offered citizenship to Viktor Vekselberg, a major shareholder in the Bank of Cyprus, the country’s biggest bank, documents show. Vekselberg appears to have turned the offer down. His spokesman said he only had Russian citizenship.

Deripaska and Vekselberg appeared on another list issued by the US Treasury in January of oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin. Deripaska has denied claims that he served as a back channel between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, as an investigation by the special counsel Robert Mueller into possible collusion continues.

The Cypriot documents seen by the Guardian and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) show that Deripaska’s first attempt to become a Cypriot citizen was unsuccessful.

Cyprus has been accused of failing to vet passport candidates vigorously enough, heightening concerns in EU circles about people being able to buy EU citizenship. On this occasion, however, Deripaska was asked to resubmit his case because of a preliminary inquiry into his affairs in Belgium. The inquiry was subsequently dropped in 2016.

Cyprus’s council of ministers sent Deripaska’s case back to the island’s interior ministry, the Cypriot documents say, asking it to investigate further. The oligarch’s naturalisation bid had to be re-examined before a final decision could be made.

Viktor Vekselberg, left
Viktor Vekselberg, left, appears to have turned down the offer of a Cypriot passport. Photograph: Vyacheslav Prokofyev/TASS
Deripaska’s name was made public this week when an interior ministry document listing beneficiaries of the collective investment scheme was distributed inside Cyprus’s parliament. Clerks left it in a room used by journalists, and several picked up a copy.

Leaked documents show that the Cypriot “golden visa” scheme remains a lucrative source of revenue for the island, generating at least €4.8bn (£4.3bn). Cyprus has given citizenship to 1,685 “foreign investors” since 2008 – many from the former Soviet Union, and from China, Iran and Saudi Arabia – and 1,651 members of their families.

The finance ministry has previously said it carries out stringent checks on all citizenship by investment applications, with funds required to undergo money laundering controls by a Cypriot bank. Cyprus is not the only EU country to have granted citizenship to high net-wealth Russians, it says. There is no suggestion of wrongdoing on the part of beneficiaries.

Vekselberg’s Renova group is one of Russia’s biggest conglomerates. He made a major investment in the crisis-hit Bank of Cyprus in 2014, buying almost 10% of its stock. The move at a time when the island’s economy was depressed meant he was an “exceptional case deserving of honorary naturalisation”, the documents say.

Vekselberg’s spokesman, Andrey Shtorkh, said: “Mr Vekselberg has only one citizenship, of Russian Federation and was never granted any other citizenship including Cypriot.”

Cyprus made it easier for rich foreigners to gain citizenship in September 2016. It had previously required investors to have at least €5m in domestic assets, including real estate, firms and government bonds. Applicants could also take part in a collective investment scheme by spending a minimum of €12.5m, or €2.5m per person. The ruling council reduced the eligibility threshold to €2m and ditched collective schemes.

The fresh trove of scheme beneficiaries obtained by the Guardian and the OCCRP confirms the extent to which Cyprus’s citizen-by-investment programme has become a main avenue for Russian oligarchs who wish to get a European passport.

The Portuguese MEP Ana Gomes described the visa scheme as “absolutely perverse, immoral and increasingly alarming”. The European commission launched its own inquiry last year into citizenship-by-investment programmes in the EU. The outcome is expected to be revealed later this year.

Cyprus, along with Malta, is one of the countries under scrutiny. “Cyprus is the biggest European investor in Russia and a great number of Russian nationals acquired Cypriot passports. We are all aware that there is also a big problem of recycling money. The point is that Cyprus, like other countries, is not just selling its passport. It is marketing European citizenship,” Gomes said.

Naomi Hirst, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, said EU states that sell citizenship should carry out “the sharpest of checks” on applicants.

“The source of wealth and background of these individuals should be scrutinised,” she said. “If not, then the whole of the EU could be made vulnerable to those who will use these schemes as a ‘get out of jail free card’ to move freely around Europe.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... are_btn_tw
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 08, 2018 7:00 pm

Manafort, one month from now... :D
Image



Things Are So Bad For Paul Manafort He Now Has To Wear Two GPS Monitoring Bracelets
Manafort pleaded not guilty on Thursday to a new indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Virginia.

Posted on March 8, 2018, at 2:51 p.m.

Zoe Tillman
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Alexandria, Virginia
Reporting From
Alexandria, Virginia
Paul Manafort will stay under home confinement after pleading not guilty Thursday to the latest set of charges filed by special counsel Robert Mueller's office, but now he'll wear two GPS monitoring bracelets, instead of just one.

Manafort is facing an 18-count indictment returned last month by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, in addition to the indictment he's already facing in federal court in Washington, DC. He made his first appearance in the Alexandria courthouse on Thursday afternoon.

US District Judge T.S. Ellis III ruled Manafort could be released pending trial, subject to home confinement and electronic monitoring, the same conditions he's under in DC. A Virginia probation officer explained to the judge that because of limits to the technology, she couldn't access the data from the DC bracelet, hence the need for two.

Manafort got a taste for the scheduling speed that the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia is known for; it's often referred to as the "rocket docket." Ellis III set a trial date for July 10, well before the Sept. 17 trial date in the DC case, which was filed in October.

The government said it would be ready for trial in Virginia by mid-May, disagreeing with Manafort's lawyer Kevin Downing that it was a complex case that required more time. "I think you're wrong," Ellis told special counsel prosecutor Andrew Weissmann. Downing successfully negotiated for a later date, but told the judge that his preferred trial date would be in November, if he were wearing "rose-colored" glasses.

"Well, you need to go back to the optometrist," Ellis replied. "That ain't gonna happen."

Ellis found that Manafort posed a flight risk, given his substantial financial assets. He said he would be open to considering lifting home confinement once Manafort finalized a bail package that satisfied the judge handling the case in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson. But Ellis isn't bound to do what Jackson does, a point he made clear during Thursday's hearing.

Weissmann told the judge the special counsel's office anticipated needing 8 to 10 days to present the government's case at trial, and that the government expected to put on 20 to 25 witnesses.

On Feb. 22, the special counsel's office announced that the Virginia grand jury had returned a superseding indictment against Manafort and his longtime associate and former Trump campaign deputy director Rick Gates. The 32-count indictment charged the two men with filing false income tax returns, failing to report foreign financial accounts, and bank fraud.

The charging document also upped the amount of money that Manafort was accused of laundering, from the $18 million alleged in the original indictment out of Washington, DC, to $30 million. Manafort isn't charged with money laundering in Virginia — he's already facing that charge in the case originally brought by the special counsel's office in Washington, DC — but the indictment included the accusation in its description of his alleged criminal activities over the years.

A federal grand jury in DC first returned an indictment against Manafort and Gates in late October. The 12-count indictment accused the two men of conspiring to defraud the US government, money laundering, failing to register with the government as agents for foreign entities, failing to report foreign bank accounts, and making false statements.

Ellis expressed concern about overlap between the two trials. Weissmann noted that they had given Manafort the choice of having the Virginia charges brought in DC — prosecutors said the alleged criminal activity at issue only took place in Virginia, which means they couldn't bring the case in DC without Manafort waiving the venue issue — but Manafort declined, as is his right.

Downing said Manafort planned to challenge both criminal cases on the grounds that Mueller's appointment as special counsel was invalid; Manafort is also pursuing that argument in a civil lawsuit against the Justice Department. Ellis said he expected only one judge would rule on that issue.

Manafort has maintained his innocence. When Gates pleaded guilty on Feb. 23 after taking a deal and agreeing to cooperate with the special counsel's office, Manafort released a statement through a spokesman saying that Gates's plea "does not alter my commitment to defend myself against the untrue piled up charges contained in the indictments against me."

The special counsel's office has dropped the charges against Gates in Virginia, per his plea agreement, leaving 18 counts against Manafort. The bank fraud charges carry the most serious maximum penalties of all the criminal counts he faces in DC or Virginia — up to 30 years in prison. In court papers filed Feb. 28, the special counsel's office estimated that on the tax fraud charges alone, Manafort faces an advisory sentencing guidelines range of between 97 and 121 months in prison — about 8 to 10 years.

In the DC case, the government said Manafort faced an advisory sentencing guidelines range of 188 and 235 months in prison — about 15 to 19 years.

Manafort's civil lawsuit against the Justice Department and Mueller argues that Mueller's appointment was invalid and that the special counsel's office has exceeded the scope of its investigatory authority. The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, asks for a court order "setting aside all actions taken against Mr. Manafort pursuant to" Mueller's appointment by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, but Manafort's lawyer has previously said in court that they aren't asking for dismissal of the criminal case against him.

US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is presiding over Manafort's civil lawsuit as well as the criminal case against him, expressed confusion about how Manafort's lawyer's statements squared with the text of his lawsuit. The Justice Department has filed a motion asking Jackson to dismiss the lawsuit; Jackson has yet to rule.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/zoetillman/thi ... .wjb4wlDJk
Paul Manafort pleads not guilty to tax and fraud charges in Virginia court

Paul Manafort arrives at federal courthouse for arraignment

President Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was arraigned on charges related to the Russian election probe in Alexandria, Va. on March 8. (Reuters)
By Rachel Weiner March 8 at 2:17 PM

President Trump’s former campaign manager pleaded not guilty to tax and fraud charges in federal court in Virginia Thursday, as he appeared before a judge in the second criminal case brought against him by the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Paul J. Manafort last week also pleaded not guilty in a related case in Washington, D.C., where he is set to go to trial Sept. 17. Manafort lives in Virginia and was indicted there in February.

During the Thursday hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, a trial date was set for July 10. It is expected to last eight to 10 days.

[Inside the Manafort money machine]

Manafort’s former business partner, Rick Gates, pleaded guilty in D.C. to conspiracy and lying to the FBI. At the request of prosecutors, charges have been dropped against Gates in Virginia, though they could be resurrected should he fail to live up to his plea agreement.

That agreement requires him to offer information on any matters that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III deems relevant.

Both indictments accuse Manafort of hiding the work he did for and the money he made from a Russia-friendly political party in Ukraine and former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. In Virginia, Manafort is accused of hiding foreign bank accounts, falsifying his income taxes and failing to report foreign bank accounts.

In Washington, he faces counts of conspiracy to launder more than $30 million, making false statements, failing to follow lobbying disclosure laws and working as an unregistered foreign agent.

Manafort also faces bank fraud charges in Virginia not directly related to his work in Ukraine. After his business there dried up, according to prosecutors, Manafort fraudulently secured over $20 million in loans in part by using his real estate as collateral.

Manafort is innocent of the Virginia charges, his spokesman Jason Maloni said in a statement after the indictment was announced.

“The new allegations against Mr. Manafort, once again, have nothing to do with Russia and 2016 election interference/collusion,” the statement said. “Mr. Manafort is confident that he will be acquitted and violations of his constitutional rights will be remedied.”

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If convicted of bank fraud in Virginia, Manafort faces up to 270 years in prison, but prosecutors say federal sentencing guidelines call for much less time: four to five years. He faces up to 15 years on the charges of filing false tax returns and up to 20 years on the charges of failing to report foreign bank accounts. Guidelines call for about eight to 10 years, though.

Manafort’s case is before Judge T.S. Ellis III, a senior judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1987.

Manafort had been set to appear in Virginia this past Friday, but that hearing was delayed because of a severe windstorm in the D.C. area that closed government buildings.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/pu ... 93824b8fec
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Thu Mar 08, 2018 8:35 pm

How A 2016 NYT Report Led To Mueller’s Coverup Charges Against Manafort And Gates

By Caitlin MacNeal | March 7, 2018 6:00 am

In mid-August 2016, the Trump campaign was hit with a New York Times story revealing a secret ledger with $12.7 million in planned payments from a Ukrainian political party to Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign chairman at the time.

The Trump campaign already appeared to be in turmoil at the end of the summer, with Trump itching for a staff shakeup and the Republican National Committee facing pressure to pull funding for Trump. The Times’ story laying out Manafort’s ties to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych only added to the list of the Trump campaign’s woes, and Manafort was fired a few days later.

At the time of Manafort’s ouster, the staff shakeup was seen in part as another sign of the chaos in Trump’s campaign — reports on Manafort’s resignation noted that Trump and Manafort had been butting heads over the direction of the campaign for weeks.

However, the latest revelations in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s charges against Manafort and his associates that dropped last month reveal that the New York Times report sent Manafort and his team scrambling to cover their tracks as the Justice Department narrowed in on their lobbying work. Manafort and Gates allegedly engaged in a coverup while still working for the Trump campaign, and several of the charges handed down in the indictments cover conduct during the span of Trump’s presidential run.

Trump tried to dismiss Manafort’s indictment back in October by claiming that the conduct occurred only before he joined the campaign.

However, while Manafort and Gates ended their lobbying work for Yanukovych’s political party in 2014, they were accused by Mueller of defrauding the U.S. and lying to government officials through 2017 and laundering money through 2016. Their alleged coverup began in August 2016 while still working for the campaign, and Gates continued to try to cover his tracks as he remained on the campaign through the election, court documents show.

In the days following the Times’ initial report, several outlets detailed that Manafort and his right-hand man, Rick Gates, who also worked for the Trump campaign, organized lobbying efforts for the Party of Regions, Yanukovych’s pro-Russia Ukrainian political party, and funneled money from the Party of Regions to those lobbying groups through a so-called think tank, the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine. Manafort and Gates carried out those efforts without registering as lobbyists for a foreign power, as the Associated Press reported at the time.

Top Trump aides initially defended Manafort from the Times report, and the campaign chair was merely sidelined initially by Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway. But further reporting on Manafort and Gates’ lobbying scheme angered Trump, according to a Washington Post report from the time, and Manafort was asked to resign on Aug. 19.

Though Manafort was sacrificed, Gates flew further under the radar and merely moved to a new role as the liaison to the Republican National Committee. Gates worked for Trump through the end of the campaign and then joined the Presidential Inaugural Committee, even as the Justice Department heightened its scrutiny of Gates and Manafort.

The reports in August about the lobbying efforts run by Manafort and Gates prompted the two to engage in a coverup and try to distance themselves from the lobbying efforts they had orchestrated, the indictments would later allege. At the same time, the Justice Department started to home in on their failure to disclose their foreign lobbying, laying the groundwork for Mueller’s indictments in the fall of 2017 and winter of 2018.

Just two days after the New York Times published its report on the secret ledger, on Aug. 16, 2016, Manafort and Gates reached out to the two lobbying firms in the U.S. they allegedly engaged to conduct work for the Party of Regions with “false and misleading,” talking points, according to the initial federal grand jury indictment against the two former Trump campaign aides. In those talking points, Manafort and Gates distanced themselves from the lobbying work that they allegedly oversaw closely. At this time, both men were still employed by the Trump campaign.

After several additional news reports linked Manafort and Gates to the lobbying work for the Party of Regions in Ukraine, the Justice Department reached out to Manafort and Gates in September 2016 to ask whether they acted as agents of a foreign principal, according to Mueller’s initial indictment.

Manafort and Gates scrambled to cover their tracks, the indictments alleged, eventually sending letters with “false and misleading” claims to the Justice Department in November 2016 and again in February 2017, which included talking points similar to those sent to the lobbying firm. In those letters, they claimed that they did not conduct outreach or meetings in the United States for the Party of Regions and did not reach out to U.S. officials or media outlets for the work, according to Mueller’s initial indictment.

Gates also created a fake email retention policy for Manafort’s firm, claiming that the firm did not retain emails past 30 days, in order to “create the misleading appearance” that they did not have documents that the Justice Department was looking for, Gates’ guilty plea revealed late last month. Gates provided the fake policy to his lawyer, who in turn sent it to the DOJ, per Gates’ guilty plea.

The two former Trump aides also grew concerned about facing criminal charges in Ukraine in September, according to the guilty plea from Alex van der Zwaan, a lawyer who worked for the firm Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLC at the time. The firm had previously been recruited by Manafort to craft a report about the Ukrainian government’s prosecution of Yulia Tymoshenko, a political rival to Yanukovych.

Gates called van der Zwaan in early September 2016 and asked him to get in touch with an unnamed individual called “Person A” and followed up by sending van der Zwaan a copy of a draft criminal complaint in Ukraine through an encrypted app, according to van der Zwaan’s plea agreement. Van der Zwaan then called “Person A” and made a separate call to a senior partner at Skadden, before later calling Gates back. Van der Zwaan also received an email from “Person A” on Sept. 12, 2016, asking van der Zwaan to contact “Person A” through an encrypted app, and van der Zwaan initially failed to disclose that email to Mueller’s team.

Despite Trump’s insistence that Manafort and Gates’ wrongdoing took place well before they were campaign staffers, both engaged in criminal activity to either further or cover up their scheme while they worked for Trump. The coverup appears to only overlap with Manafort’s time on the campaign for a few days, but Gates remained as a Trump staffer while trying to cover his tracks through the Inauguration. Gates also pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about his conduct as late as February 2018, when he gave an inaccurate description of a meeting Manafort attended with a congressman in 2013.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Mar 13, 2018 4:51 pm

Manafort has now gotta stay IN HIS HOUSE 24 HOURS A DAY

THIS IS HOUSE ARREST


Paul Manafort could live out his days in prison
By Bob Fredericks March 13, 2018 | 3:04pm
Modal Trigger
Paul Manafort could live out his days in prison

The evidence against President Trump’s ex-campaign manager Paul Manafort is so strong it could land him behind bars for the rest of his life, according to a federal judge’s order made public Tuesday.

US District Judge T.S. Ellis III, who sits in Alexandria, Virginia, and who is handling the second indictment charging Manafort with bank fraud and tax evasion, said the former Trump ally posed “a substantial risk of flight” because of his heaps of cash and the seriousness of his legal woes, Politico reported.

“The defendant is a person of great wealth who has the financial means and international connections to flee and remain at large, as well as every incentive to do so,” Ellis wrote in an order that spelled out the terms of his “home incarceration.

Manafort, 68, lives in Alexandria but also has homes in Florida and on Long Island.

“Given the nature of the charges against the defendant and the apparent weight of the evidence against him, defendant faces the very real possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison,” wrote Ellis, a Reagan appointee.

The order puts Manafort in a “24-hour-a-day lockdown” at his Alexandria home, except for medical appointments or emergencies, court appearances and sitdowns with his defense attorneys, the site reported.

Special counsel Robert Mueller obtained a grand jury indictment of Manafort in October, charging him with money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent for work he did for a pro-Vladimir Putin party in Ukraine.

In February, Mueller got a second indictment of Manafort on 18 tax, bank fraud and bank fraud conspiracy charges.

If convicted, Manafort faces up to nearly 20 years in prison in the Washington case and up to 10 years on the tax charges in the Virginia case.

Mueller’s team is investigating Russia’s meddling in the US election on behalf of the Trump campaign, and whether there was collusion with the president’s campaign.

The president has repeatedly denied that there was any collusion with Russia.
https://nypost.com/2018/03/13/paul-mana ... in-prison/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 28, 2018 8:32 am

The time to ask, "Why the hell is a GRU guy in the middle of Team trump" was AUG 2016: 3 months before the election.

Ari Melber

This new Mueller filing says Trump’s campaign chair *and* deputy campaign manager *knew* their associate was a former Russian intelligence officer. As they say in court, Um.
Image

NEW: The Special Counsel's Office says that Manafort was heavily involved in the editing of a recent op-ed and worked on it with Konstantin Kilimnik who they suggest is associated with Russian intelligence.
https://twitter.com/Tom_Winter/status/9 ... 5717210113


Mueller reportedly connected ex-Trump staffer to Russian operative ahead of election
https://nypost.com/2018/03/28/mueller-r ... -election/


Trump campaign aide Rick Gates was knowingly talking with a Russian spy in fall 2016, Mueller filing suggests
4:25 a.m. ET

A court document filed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's prosecutors Tuesday night has an interesting footnote about Rick Gates, President Trump's former deputy campaign manager and cooperating witness in Mueller's investigation. Gates was "directly communicating in September and October 2016" with an unidentified person who "has ties to a Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016," and Gates knew about this person's ties to Russian intelligence, the filing says, calling the 2016 conversations "pertinent to the investigation."


The court filing was mostly about the upcoming sentencing hearing of Dutch lawyer Alex van der Zwaan, who admitted to lying to Mueller's investigators and is seeking to avoid jail time. Van der Zwaan is seeking leniency at his April 3 sentencing because his wife, Eva Khan, is giving birth to their first child in August. Khan's father is Russian billionaire German Khan, who cofounded the Alfa banking group; computer scientists noticed mysterious communications between Alfa Bank servers and a Trump Organization server in 2016, and an investigation into the communications was apparently inconclusive.

Lawyers for Van der Zwaan, who does not have a cooperation deal with Mueller's team, said in their filing Tuesday night that Gates and the unidentified Eastern European ("Person A") warned van der Zwaan in 2016 about a possible criminal case in Ukraine against him and his firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, for work he had done with Gates. Van der Zwaan secretly recorded the "unusual and unnerving" conversations, his lawyers said, and he initially lied about the communications because he didn't want to be fired. He was fired anyway. Mueller's office describe the calls as "memorable." Peter Weber
http://theweek.com/speedreads/763750/tr ... g-suggests


Robert Mueller's Office Wants A Judge To Consider Jail Time For A Lawyer Who Pleaded Guilty To Lying

Alex van der Zwaan, who pleaded guilty to lying to special counsel prosecutors and the FBI, is asking for no jail time.

Zoe TillmanMarch 27, 2018, at 9:10 p.m.
Alex van der Zwaan
Yuri Gripas / Reuters
In court papers filed late Tuesday, special counsel Robert Mueller's office argued that a judge shouldn't rule out jail time for Alex van der Zwaan, a lawyer who pleaded guilty to lying to prosecutors and the FBI in the Russia investigation.

The special counsel's office did not take a position on what sentence they thought van der Zwaan should get — according to earlier filings, he faces an estimated sentencing guidelines range between zero to six months. But prosecutors pushed back on van der Zwaan's arguments in favor of no jail time, such as the fact that his wife, who lives in London, is pregnant and is due in August.

"To the extent the Court seeks to take into account the circumstances of van der Zwaan’s wife’s pregnancy, consideration of that circumstance would not preclude a term of incarceration," the special counsel's office wrote. "In any event, a sentence that ensured van der Zwaan’s return to the United Kingdom for the birth of his child in August 2018 would be within the recommended Guidelines’ range."

Prosecutors wrote that van der Zwaan "presents a scarcity of mitigating factors, and several aggravating circumstances," including the extent of his false statements to investigators.

"The defendant was expressly warned by the government that it is a crime to lie to the Special Counsel’s Office, that lying could constitute a federal crime, and that such conduct would carry with it the possibility of going to jail if he were convicted. van der Zwaan stated that he understood. He thereafter deliberately and repeatedly lied," they wrote.

Van der Zwaan's sentencing hearing is scheduled for April 3. He is set to become the first person sentenced in the special counsel investigation. Four other people have publicly pleaded guilty so far to charges brought by Mueller's office — including former Trump campaign deputy chair Rick Gates, Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos — but their sentencings are on hold as they cooperate with prosecutors.

Van der Zwaan's lawyer filed papers Tuesday night asking the judge for a sentence that doesn't include any jail time.

"His career has been destroyed, he has been separated from his friends and family, and he faces the possibility of missing the birth of his first child. Although Alex committed a serious offense, just punishment does not require incarceration," his lawyers wrote.

Van der Zwaan's plea deal did not include a cooperation requirement, though, and his lawyer asked for a sentencing date as soon as possible so that he can return to London to join his wife, who is pregnant. Van der Zwaan is the son-in-law of German Khan, a Russian bank owner who is suing BuzzFeed News over the publication of an unverified dossier of information concerning President Donald Trump.

Van der Zwaan, a Dutch citizen, admitted making false statements about his interactions with Gates and an unidentified individual referred to in charging papers as "Person A." Prosecutors and van der Zwaan's lawyers had estimated that he faced a sentencing range between zero to six months in jail, as well as a fine ranging from $500 to $9,500, according to court papers.

In exchange for the guilty plea, Mueller's office agreed not to pursue charges against van der Zwaan in connection with any other false statements he made in November or December 2017, destruction of documents or evidence, or violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act — which requires individuals who lobby on behalf of foreign entities to register with the US government — in connection with his work for the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice.

Van der Zwaan was part of a team that worked in 2012 on behalf of the Ukrainian government on a report about the trial of Yulia Tymoshenko, the former Ukrainian prime minister. His work brought him into contact with Gates, who, along with former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, did work for the Ukrainian government during the same time period. Special counsel prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum that van der Zwaan had helped Gates with public relations related to the Tymoshenko report, against the wishes of his law firm.

In charging documents against Manafort and Gates — Gates later took a plea deal, Manafort is still fighting charges in Washington, DC, and Virginia — special counsel prosecutors said that their work for former Ukrainian president Viktor Yaunkonych included lobbying Congress concerning the report on the Tymoshenko trial commissioned by the Ukrainian government.

Van der Zwaan has been free since his first court appearance on Feb. 20. The judge required him to stay in the Washington metropolitan area until his next court date, although he's been allowed to travel to Manhattan to meet with his lawyers if he gives advance notice to the Pretrial Services Agency. He's been in the United States since November, according to his lawyer.

According to his sentencing memorandum, van der Zwaan first met with the special counsel's office on Nov. 3. At the time he was a lawyer with the firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; Skadden later fired him. His lawyers wrote that he lied to investigators that first meeting about his communications with Gates and Person A in 2016, and about an email that hadn't been produced to the special counsel's office. Person A hasn't been identified in court papers, but the special counsel's office wrote in its sentencing memorandum that Gates told van der Zwaan that Person A was a former Russian intelligence officer.

Person A had told van der Zwaan that the Ukrainian government might pursue charges against him related to his work on the Tymoshenko report, and he had also discussed the Ukrainian investigation with Gates and a partner at his law firm, according to the filing. Given the "unusual and unnerving" conversations, van der Zwaan secretly recorded them, his lawyers wrote, and he feared that revealing the communications to the special counsel's office could lead to the discovery of the recordings. He didn't produce an email that referred to the 2016 communications, as well as emails that would have revealed he was exploring options for leaving Skadden to work with Manafort and Gates.

The special counsel's office described the calls in its court papers as "memorable."

"In van der Zwaan’s recorded conversation with Person A, in Russian, Person A suggested that 'there were additional payments,' that '[t]he official contract was only a part of the iceberg,' and that the story may become a blow for 'you and me personally,'" prosecutors wrote. It wasn't immediately clear what Person A was referring to, but prosecutors wrote in a footnote that Skadden was paid millions of dollars for its work for Ukraine, and that the possible criminal matter in Ukraine related to whether Ukraine had said several years ago that the firm was paid a much smaller amount.

Van der Zwaan then decided to "correct the record," and went back for another meeting with the special counsel's office on Dec. 1. He produced the emails.

"The conduct that brings Alex before this court was inexcusable," his lawyers wrote. "And while his actions following his initial meeting with the [special counsel's office] cannot absolve him from culpability, they are compelling mitigating factors in considering punishment."

The special counsel's office countered that van der Zwaan's decision to come clean to Skadden about recordings he made using firm equipment were not "mitigating factors."

"He does not deserve credit for adhering to the law," prosecutors wrote.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/zoetillman/rob ... bkoknXnlLE


Mueller has filed new documents in his case against Trump-Russia figure Alex Van Der Zwaan, which reveal that Van Der Zwaan has turned over a phone call he recorded between himself and Rick Gates. In that call, Gates admitted that he and Paul Manafort were knowingly conspiring with a former Russian government intel officer who still has active ties to the Russian government. Gates has cut a plea deal and agreed to tell Mueller everything, which means that Gates will testify to this in Manafort’s trial. So not only does Mueller have a recording of Gates confessing on Manafort’s behalf, he’ll also have the live testimony of Gates, confirming that the taped confession is real.

Van der Zwaan's father-in-law, the Russian billionaire German Khan, who co-founded Alfa Group, a large financial conglomerate, was recently named in the Treasury Department's list of Russian oligarchs.

Mueller’s earlier court filings against Alex van der Zwaan that a mysterious “Person A” had been in communication with Gates and Manafort. Mueller’s new filing against van der Zwaan still doesn’t reveal the mystery person’s identity, but it does confirm that Person A is an ex Russian intel agent, and that Gates and Manafort knew as much when they were communicating with him during the general election, lasting through October of 2016 – just before Election Day.

Manafort was the Trump campaign chairman for part of this stretch, and Gates was a Trump campaign deputy chairman for all of this stretch, meaning that they were acting on Donald Trump’s behalf. Person A is said to still be unofficially working for the Russian intel community, which means that the Trump campaign conspired with Russian spooks with regard to the election.
http://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/ad ... rump/9058/


That’s treason.


New Gates tie alleged in special counsel filing on van der Zwaan sentencing


(CNN)The special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election revealed Tuesday night that prosecutors say they have connected former Trump deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates to a person with ties to a Russian intelligence service while Gates worked on the campaign.

That Gates and the unnamed person, who had lived in Kiev and Moscow and worked for one of Paul Manafort's companies, were in touch in September and October 2016 was "pertinent to the investigation," a court filing from prosecutors said Tuesday night.

The acknowledgment that Gates knew the person had Russian intelligence ties is alleged in a report prosecutors filed about the coming sentencing of a Dutch attorney. That attorney, Alex van der Zwaan, who worked with Gates and Manafort previously, pleaded guilty last month to lying to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators about his interactions with Gates and the unnamed person.

In an opposing 30-page memorandum also filed Tuesday evening, van der Zwaan begged for leniency and asked the judge to avoid sending him to jail next week. Instead, van der Zwaan asks to pay an "appropriate fine," according to the filing.

He will be the first defendant in Mueller's probe to face sentencing, on April 3.

"(H)is world has collapsed as a result of his decision to lie to law enforcement," the court filing from the Dutch lawyer begins.

Van der Zwaan's career as a lawyer may be over, and he risks missing the birth of his first child in London, it continues.

"Although he has had occasional visitors and took a car trip with his wife over the Christmas holiday, his existence has largely been solitary. He lives alone in a hotel in a city where he has no close friends. His days are empty and lonely," van der Zwaan's filing later states.

Van der Zwaan's charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, though he qualifies for a recommended sentence of zero to six months. He also faces a fine of up to $250,000.

The prosecutors, in their own memo to federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson Tuesday night, do not ask for any particular sentence, but note how van der Zwaan was an experienced lawyer and lied to them after Manafort and Gates were indicted.

Lying to investigators


Van der Zwaan's memo Tuesday describes the work he did at the law firm Skadden Arps, which eventually led to his guilty plea. After years of working with Gates on a report meant to aid a political group in Ukraine, Gates contacted him in 2016 about a foreign criminal case they feared could be filed against van der Zwaan's law firm. Afraid of the situation, the young attorney recorded a phone call with Gates and the unnamed Eastern European associate, and a call with his firm.

Later, when Mueller's office asked about his interactions with Gates and the other person, he lied because he feared his firm might fire him for recording the call, according to the memo.

"Alex was keenly aware that he was not speaking only to" Mueller's office, his filing says. "In his mind, his boss was listening to every word."

The firm ultimately fired him. Before his charges, van der Zwaan confessed to both Mueller's office and Skadden and turned over the notes, recordings, cell phones and laptops he had.

In late 2017, he gave two hours-long, voluntary interviews to Mueller's investigators and answered questions including about the recorded conversations and "several other subjects," the court memo says.

He pleaded guilty in open court on February 20.

"This widely publicized prosecution, as well as its collateral consequences, sends a strong message to anyone who considers lying to federal investigators," the sentencing memorandum from van der Zwaan says.

Van Der Zwaan admitted to one charge of lying to investigators about his interaction with Gates. He said he also lied to investigators about his failure to turn over email communications, including ones where he considered working for the men who later became Trump campaign leaders, to the special counsel's office and to his law firm as it cooperated with Mueller on its investigation into Manafort and Gates' foreign lobbying.

Van der Zwaan's criminal charge has no apparent connection to the Trump campaign aside from his contact with then-campaign aide Gates in 2016. However, the legal hot water he faces highlights how Mueller's prosecutors have used laws against lying to federal investigators as a way to gain cooperators and gather information during their probe.

Family requests


Van der Zwaan has not been allowed to travel outside of Washington and Manhattan as he awaits sentencing. His wife, Eva Khan, lives in London and is due to give birth in August.

Eva Khan as well as his mother, his father and a former colleague from Skadden who chose van der Zwaan as his son's godfather wrote letters to the judge about the burden van der Zwaan now bears.

His wife recounts how she burst into tears at the 12-week ultrasound of her unborn baby. "(T)he ultrasound specialist asked me if my husband came with me for the revealing of the gender of the baby," Eva Khan wrote. "People constantly ask me where Alex is, and I can feel their judgment."

As for his personal situation, the prosecutors counter that van der Zwaan "is a person to whom every advantage in life has been given, and from whom the government and the professional bar rightly expected candor and uprightness."

Still, they acknowledge that the judge could sentence him in a way that could allow him to return to London for the birth of his child. Van der Zwaan's father-in-law, the Russian billionaire German Khan, who co-founded Alfa Group, a large financial conglomerate, was recently named in the Treasury Department's list of Russian oligarchs.

CNN reported last year that the FBI examined whether there was a computer server connection during the 2016 presidential campaign between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization, though there isn't any indication that van der Zwaan is connected to that matter. At the time, Alfa Bank said in a statement that US-based hackers had launched cyberattacks to try to frame the bank, and "to manufacture the illusion of contact" between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.
Unlike four other defendants in the Mueller probe who have pleaded guilty to criminal charges, van der Zwaan did not enter into an ongoing cooperation agreement with the special counsel's office.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/27/politics ... index.html



emptywheel

This filing Mueller filed last night is just the first of two. The other one may have even more interesting details (and/or be accompanied by other actions).
2:17 AM - 28 Mar 2018

Sorry: Let me correct (X2). Mueller has two filings in Manafort's challenge to his authority coming, one Monday, one Wednesday. This lays groundwork for that. What he has basically shown is that Manafort was EMPLOYING a GRU officer while working for Trump campaign.

Note Mueller got an extension on those two filings bc (in part) he had to coordinate a lot w/Rosenstein and do *other things* in this investigation. They bought one more day at GJ w/extension that would allow them to incorporate Gates' cooperation.

Here's the part that says that Kilimnik (Person A, who allegedly was still a GRU officer in 2016) worked AT Manafort's company.

Image

This why the limited hangout Manafort sold WaPo on Kilimnik is a very stupid idea. Manafort kept in touch w/Trump, and kept in touch with Kilimnik at least through November. Manafort masterminded (or passed on) anti-Steele effort to challenge Mueller.

What the WaPo story DOES seem to make clear is Mueller is moving closer to going after Manafort's wife, who was involved in the money laundering/business. This has been predictably coming for a very long time.

My guess is Manafort is making a last ditch bid for a pardon.

Q: If Kilimnik is a long time GRU officer, did Skripal know that? Did he cooperate w/Mueller on that?

If someone gets a presidential pardon but then his wife gets charged in all the crimes he just got pardoned on, does he lose spousal privilege (on top of 5A protection against POTUS)?

Of course this filing also suggests Greg Craig was talking with former or current GRU officer Konstantin Kilimnik in fall 2016. But I imagine he was pretty fucking cooperative by that point.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents ... andum.html
Image
https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/9 ... 4840620037



Mueller prosecutors allege that ex-Trump chair Paul Manafort deputy Rick Gates acknowledged to London attorney Alex van der Zwaan that Konstantin Kilimnik, the longtime head of their Ukraine office was a Russian intelligence officer with the GRU. https://wapo.st/2E0iUyK
Image
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Mar 30, 2018 8:51 am

Source: Mueller pushed for Gates' help on collusion

Mueller pushed for Gates' help on collusion
(CNN)Special counsel Robert Mueller's team last year made clear it wanted former Trump campaign deputy Rick Gates' help, not so much against his former business partner Paul Manafort, but with its central mission: investigating the Trump campaign's contact with the Russians. New information disclosed in court filings and to CNN this week begin to show how they're getting it.

In a court filing earlier this week, the public saw the first signs of how the Mueller team plans to use information from Gates to tie Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, directly to a Russian intelligence agency. Mueller's team alleges that Gates was in contact with a close colleague of Manafort's who worked for a Russian intelligence agency -- and that Gates knew of the spy service ties in September and October 2016, while he worked on the Trump campaign. Gates would have to talk about the communication with the man if prosecutors wanted, according to his plea deal.

Why Trump pardoning Manafort or Flynn would look at lot like quid pro quo
That's in line with what prosecutors told Gates months ago during high-stakes negotiations, CNN has learned. They told him they didn't need his cooperation against Manafort, according to a person familiar with the investigation, and instead wanted to hear what he knew about contact between the Trump campaign and Russians.

The extent of Gates' knowledge about any such contact or what he told prosecutors hasn't been made public.

As part of Gates' agreement to cooperate with the special counsel a month ago, he earned a vastly reduced potential sentence and had several charges dropped in two criminal cases against him.

Trump's three-front legal war turns on sex, money and Russia
Gates' plea also adds to mounting pressure on his co-defendant Manafort -- who so far the government is making a central player in the investigation -- to change his plea and potentially help investigators. Under his plea agreement, Gates still could be called to testify against Manafort.

Mueller's court filing Tuesday night, in a separate case for a lawyer whose firm did legal work for Gates and Manafort, made public the most direct effort yet by Mueller's team to draw a line between Manafort and the Trump campaign to Russian operatives. Prosecutors called the details of Gates' contact with the Russian intelligence officer during the campaign "pertinent to the investigation."

Russian contact


The alleged Russian intelligence agent, referred to as "Person A" in the court filing, appears to be Konstantin Kilimnik, a former employee who worked with Manafort's firm and lived in Kiev and Moscow, according to sources familiar with the investigation. In December, the Mueller prosecutors made a similar unnamed reference to Kilimnik, saying he is "assessed to have ties to a Russian intelligence service." That was related to a Kiev newspaper op-ed that Kilimnik helped edit in consultation with Manafort late last year, which prosecutors said could violate a court-imposed gag order on Manafort.

The criminal allegations facing Gates and Manafort encompass work they did in the years prior to the 2016 election. Manafort has pleaded not guilty in two federal criminal cases stemming from Mueller's prosecution, one in Washington, DC, and another one in Virginia.

All the President's lawsuits
A chief criticism from President Donald Trump and his defenders has been that the charges brought so far by the special counsel don't relate directly to Mueller's central mission investigating possible illegal coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, which the President and others often shorthand using the term collusion. The accusation related to Kilimnik and ties to Russian intelligence, made in Mueller's Tuesday filing, begins to answer that criticism, but so far without actually making the charge in Manafort's case.

A lawyer for Manafort declined to comment. Kilimnik didn't comment. Last year, Kilimnik told The Washington Post he has "no relation to the Russian or any other intelligence service."

Gates' current lawyer also declined to comment for this story.

What Gates knows


Gates may have information of value to prosecutors beyond his business dealings with Manafort, according to sources familiar with his role. He never grew close to Trump, but he had ties with other members of Trump's inner circle, including Manafort and Tom Barrack, a fundraiser and close friend of Trump's. He also developed a reputation for keeping tabs on what others were up to, one source said.

Gates worked alongside Manafort during the critical summer of 2016 when senior campaign officials, including Manafort, met at Trump Tower in New York with a group of Russians who had promised damaging information on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

NYT: Trump lawyer floated idea of presidential pardons for Manafort and Flynn
"Was he in the strategy meetings? No. But he was an implementer," one person said of Gates. So while he may not have participated in the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians, he may still have knowledge of the meeting or whether those Russians were ever introduced to Trump himself.

"He would be the kind of person who would probably know that," this person said.

Even after Manafort was fired from the campaign, Gates stuck around. He then went on to work with Barrack, while Barrack ran the presidential inaugural committee following the election.

Legal team troubles


Before the indictment, prosecutors had told Gates he faced the risk of criminal charges -- the beginning of a strategy to pressure him, according to two sources.

Gates' various legal teams -- and there have been many -- kept in touch with Mueller's office throughout the investigation.

Once prosecutors made a plea offer following Gates' indictment, that offer never changed: He could plead guilty to a conspiracy count if he helped the investigation.

In all, Gates held out for almost four months. He initially pleaded not guilty with the help of a public defender after he split with his previous attorney.

An unheard-of problem: The President can't find a lawyer
He then hired three lawyers, who each worked in their own small firms, to take him to trial.

But the financial stress on Gates mounted. He failed to pay some of his legal bills.

"The reality of how long this legal process will likely take, the cost, and the circus-like atmosphere of an anticipated trial are too much," Gates told friends and family in an email the morning he pleaded guilty.

Despite the risk for Manafort and the cost, Gates engaged a third set of private attorneys, led by Thomas Green of the large law firm Sidley Austin, to negotiate his plea deal with Mueller in January and February.

Even as Green finalized Gates' plea throughout February, Gates wavered on his willingness to cooperate with the prosecutors. For months, he held on-and-off conversations with a fourth option for a private defense attorney to take him to trial: Barry Pollack. Pollack had previously worked closely with Manafort's attorneys.

New Gates tie alleged in special counsel filing on van der Zwaan sentencing
At least three other well-known criminal defense law firms tried to help Gates over the past several months, according to multiple sources. One law partner made calls to find him lawyers, another two lawyers reviewed the financial allegations, and a third firm offered to get involved. Manafort's attorneys were engaged in some of the efforts but not all.

More recently, outside lawyers created a legal defense fund to help defendants in the Mueller investigation fight their charges.
Yet it wasn't enough. Gates never hired Pollack nor any other attorney to take him to trial after he was released from house arrest in early January.

Prosecutors revealed after one of his interviews with the Mueller team, on February 1, that they believed he had lied to them about a detail of Manafort's lobbying efforts. The lie resulted in a second charge added to his possible plea. Gates chose to cooperate and plead guilty eight days later.

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correctly state that a legal defense fund to help defendants in the Mueller investigation was created by outside lawyers, not the Republican National Committee.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/29/politics ... index.html


Paul Manafort, a mysterious Russian jet, and a secret meeting

In August 2016, a private jet linked to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska traveled from Moscow to Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey. The Gulfstream G550 (registration M-ALAY) landed shortly after midnight and, according to publicly available flight records, flew back to Moscow that same afternoon. Deripaska, 50, is the founder of Basic Element, a Russian industrial conglomerate with massive holdings in aluminum, energy, and construction. With an estimated net worth of $6 billion, he can afford to send a private jet across the globe whenever he wants.

Still, according to a source familiar with the matter, that August flight has caught the attention of congressional investigators, in part because of its timing.

The jet arrived within hours of a meeting in nearby Manhattan between Paul Manafort, then chairman of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, and Konstantin Kilimnik. Kilimnik spent over a decade as Manafort’s translator and fixer in Ukraine. Weeks earlier, Manafort had emailed his old associate and told him to extend an offer of "private briefings" to Deripaska, according to The Washington Post.

Congressional investigators looking into Russian meddling in the 2016 election are now probing the relationship between Manafort, Kilimnik, and Deripaska, according to two people familiar with the matter. The jet’s brief trip to New Jersey raises fresh questions about the relationship between the three men during the 2016 presidential campaign. Deripaska is believed to have close ties with the Kremlin. Kilimnik has been widely reported to be the unnamed person identified in court filings by special counsel Robert Mueller's office this week as having ties to Russian intelligence — a relationship Kilimnik has long denied.

Manafort has since been named in a 32-count indictment by Mueller’s team on charges including bank fraud and filing false tax returns related to his work for the former government of Ukraine.
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/pax ... harebutton
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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