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| Paul Manafort and Richard Gates arrive at the Prettyman Federal Courthouse for a bail hearing November 6, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo: CNBC) |
VietPress USA (Feb. 22, 2018): Special
Counsel Robert Mueller just indicted two main Donald Trump 2016 presidential
campaign leaders Paul Manafort and Rick
Gates with new charges of Tax and Bank fraud counts.
According to Wikipedia, Paul John Manafort Jr. (born
April 1, 1949) is an American lobbyist, political consultant and lawyer.
He joined Donald Trump's
presidential campaign team in March 2016 and served as campaign manager from
June to August 2016. He was previously an adviser to the U.S. presidential
campaigns of Republicans Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bob Dole. In 1980 Manafort co-founded
the Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm Black,
Manafort & Stone, along with principals Charles R.
Black Jr., and Roger J. Stone, joined
by Peter G. Kelly in
1984.
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| Paul John Manafort Jr. |
Manafort often lobbied on behalf of controversial foreign leaders
such as former President of
Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych,
former dictator of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos, dictator of the former Democratic
Republic of the Congo Mobutu Sese Seko, and Angolan guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi. Lobbying to serve
the interests of foreign governments requires registration with the Justice
Department under the Foreign
Agents Registration Act (FARA); however, as of June 2, 2017, Manafort had
not registered. On June 27 he retroactively registered as a foreign agent.
Manafort is under investigation by multiple federal agencies. The Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has reportedly had an active criminal
investigation on him since 2014 regarding business dealings while he was
lobbying for former President Yanukovich of Ukraine. He is also a person of
interest in the FBI counterintelligence probe
looking into the Russian
government's interference in the 2016
presidential election. Manafort was told, after his house was raided, that
he would be indicted by Robert Mueller's prosecutors.
On October 30, 2017, Manafort surrendered to the FBI after news
broke that a federal grand jury had indicted him and his business associate Rick
Gates. The charges arise from his consulting work for a pro-Russian
government of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine. The
indictment had been requested by Robert
Mueller's special investigation unit. The indictment charged Manafort with
conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, failure to file reports
of foreign bank and financial accounts, being an unregistered agent of foreign
principal, false and misleading FARA statements, and false
statements. Manafort has pleaded not guilty, and is free on bail.
In February 2016 Manafort approached Donald Trump, whom he did not know well,
through a mutual friend, Thomas J.
Barrack Jr. He pointed out his experience advising presidential
campaigns in the United States and around the world, described himself as an
outsider not connected to the Washington establishment, and offered to work
without salary. In March 2016 he joined Trump's presidential
campaign to take the lead in getting commitments from convention
delegates. In June 2016, Trump fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and promoted
Manafort to the position. Manafort gained control of the daily operations of
the campaign as well as an expanded $20 million budget, hiring decisions,
advertising, and media strategy.
On June 9, 2016, Manafort, Donald Trump Jr.(Elder son of Trump),
and Jared Kushner (Trump's
son-in-law) were participants in a
meeting with Russian attorney Natalia
Veselnitskaya and several others at Trump Tower. A British music agent,
saying he was acting on behalf of Emin Agalarov and the Russian government,
had told Trump Jr. that he could obtain damaging information on Hillary Clinton if he met with a
lawyer connected to the Kremlin. At first Trump Jr. said the meeting had
been about the Magnitsky Act;
later he said the offer of information about Clinton had been a pretext to
conceal Veselnitskaya's real agenda.
In August 2016, Manafort's connections to former Ukrainian
President Viktor Yanukovych and
his pro-Russian Party of Regions drew
national attention in the US, where it was reported that Manafort may have
illegally received $12.7 million in off-the-books funds from the Party of
Regions.
On August 17, 2016, Donald Trump received his first security
briefing. The same day, August 17, Trump shook up his campaign
organization in a way that appeared to minimize Manafort's role. It was
reported that members of Trump's family, particularly Jared Kushner who had
originally been a strong backer of Manafort, had become uneasy about his
Russian connections and suspected that he had not been forthright about
them. Manafort stated in an internal staff memorandum that he would
"remain the campaign chairman and chief strategist, providing the
big-picture, long-range campaign vision". However, two days later,
Trump announced his acceptance of Manafort's resignation from the campaign
after Stephen Bannon and Kellyanne Conway took on senior
leadership roles within that campaign."
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| Rick Gates (Richard W. Gates III). |
The other important leader at
Trump's 2016 Campaign is Rick Gates. His full name is Richard W. Gates
III (born April 27, 1972), is an American political consultant and
lobbyist. He is a longtime business associate of Paul Manafort and served as deputy to
Manafort when the latter was campaign manager of the Donald
Trump presidential campaign in 2016. He and Manafort were indicted in
October 2017 on charges related to their consulting work with political figures
in Ukraine. He graduated from Prince George High
School in 1990 and is a 1994 graduate of the College
of William & Mary with a degree in government. Later he
earned a master's degree in
public policy from George
Washington University.
Gates was an intern at the
Washington, D.C. consulting firm Black,
Manafort, Stone and Kelly. There he worked with Republican lobbyist Rick Davis,
eventually going to work for him and Manafort in 2006 at their new consulting firm
Davis Manafort, with an office in Kiev,
Ukraine.[Among the clients Gates worked
with were Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, taking over this work when Davis
left the firm in 2008 to work on the presidential
campaign of John McCain.
In June 2016, Donald Trump hired
Manafort to manage his
campaign for president, and Gates went to work for Manafort. Gates handled
the day-to-day activities of the campaign. He took responsibility for apparent
plagiarism during Melania Trump's speech at the Republican
National Convention. Gates stayed with the campaign after Manafort was
forced out, and then went to work as a fundraiser for the Republican
National Committee and the Donald
Trump Inaugural Committee. He then helped to form a pro-Trump nonprofit
group called America First
Policies, but was removed from the organization due to his involvement with
Manafort's overseas ventures.
On October 27, 2017, Gates and Manafort were indicted by a federal grand
jury as part of the Special
Counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United
States elections and related matters. The twelve-count indictment
charges the two men with conspiracy
against the United States, making false
statements, money laundering,
and failing to register as foreign agents for Ukraine as
required by the Foreign
Agents Registration Act. The charges arise from his consulting work
for a pro-Russian government in Ukraine and
are unrelated to the Trump campaign.
Manafort and Gates surrendered to the FBI on
October 30, 2017, and at a court hearing both plead not guilty. While awaiting trial,
Manafort was released on $10 million bond and Gates was released on $5 million
bond. Prosecutors described them as flight risks, and as a condition of
pretrial release, both men surrendered their passports and
were placed under house arrest. Now both of them have been charged more counts
on Tax and Bank fraud, money laundry.
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