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| Former Trump 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort. (Photo: James Lawler Duggan/Reuters) |
VietPress USA (Dec. 7, 2018): Three documents filed in court Friday revealed new details in
special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential
election.
The documents pertained to the government’s cooperation agreement
with Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer,
as well as Mueller’s assessment of why former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort breached his plea
deal with investigators.
The special counsel said in a memo to a federal judge that
Manafort lied to investigators in the
special counsel’s office about his contacts with administration
officials, among other things.
Paul John Manafort
Jr. born on April 1, 1949, is an American lobbyist, political consultant,
lawyer, and convicted felon. A Republican,
he joined Donald Trump's presidential
campaign team in March 2016, and was campaign chairman from
June to August 2016.
On August 21, 2018, Manafort was convicted of
five counts of tax fraud, two counts
of bank fraud, and one count of failure to report
foreign bank accounts. On September 14, 2018, he pleaded guilty to an
additional two counts of conspiracy,
per a plea deal in which he also agreed to cooperate with the Special
Counsel investigation. On November 26, 2018, Robert Mueller reported that Manafort
violated his plea deal by repeatedly lying to investigators.
Manafort was an adviser to the U.S.
presidential campaigns of Republicans Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bob Dole. In 1980, he 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.
Manafort often lobbied on behalf of foreign
leaders such as former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych, former dictator of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos, former dictator of Zaire 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 has been under investigation by
multiple federal agencies. The Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI) has had an active criminal investigation
on him since 2014 regarding business dealings while he was lobbying for
Yanukovych. He is also a person of interest in the FBI counterintelligence probe
looking into the Russian government's interference in the 2016 United States presidential election.
On October 27, 2017, Manafort and his business
associate Rick Gates were
indicted by a District of Columbia grand
jury on multiple charges arising from his consulting work for the pro-Russian
government of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine before Yanukovych's overthrow in 2014.
The indictment had been requested by Robert Mueller's special investigation
unit. Manafort surrendered and was released on bail confined to house
arrest.
On June 8, 2018, Manafort was indicted for
obstruction of justice and witness tampering along with longtime
associate Konstantin Kilimnik.
The charges involved allegations that Manafort had attempted to convince others
to lie about an undisclosed lobbying effort on behalf of Ukraine's former
pro-Russian government. Since this allegedly occurred while Manafort was under
house arrest, Judge Jackson revoked Manafort's bail on June 15 and ordered him
held in jail until his trial. Manafort was booked into
the Northern Neck
Regional Jail in Warsaw, Virginia, at 8:22 PM on June 15, 2018,
where he was housed in the VIP section and kept in solitary confinement for
his own safety. On June 22, Manafort's efforts to have the money
laundering charges against him dismissed were rejected by the
court. Citing Alexandria's D.C. suburbia status, abundant and
significantly negative press coverage, and the margin by which Hillary Clinton won the Alexandria Division
in the 2016
presidential election, Manafort moved the court for a change of venue to Roanoke, Virginia
In June 2018, additional charges were filed
against Manafort for obstruction of justice and witness tampering that are
alleged to have occurred while he was under house arrest, and he was ordered to
jail. In February 2018, a new set of indictments were filed in the Eastern
District of Virginia, alleging tax evasion and bank fraud. Manafort was
brought to trial on those charges in August 2018, and on August 21 he was
convicted on eight out of eighteen charges of tax and bank fraud. A mistrial was declared on the other ten, with
one juror stating there had been a single holdout on those charges. A
separate trial on the District of Columbia charges was scheduled for September
2018, though his plea deal with Mueller has negated the need for another
trial.
On July 17, 2018, the Mueller investigation
asked Judge Ellis to compel five witnesses, who had not previously been
publicly associated with the Manafort case, to testify in exchange for immunity,
and Ellis denied Manafort's motion to move the trial to Roanoke, Virginia.
Mueller's office stated in a November 26, 2018,
court filing that Manafort had repeatedly lied about a variety of matters,
breaching the terms of his plea agreement. Manafort's attorneys disputed the
assertion. Both sides agreed they were at an impasse and asked Judge Amy Berman
Jackson to set a sentencing date for Manafort's trial convictions and guilty
pleas. (Wikipedia)
The plea deal signed with Special Counsel
Robert Mueller strictly forbid Paul Manafort to direct or indirect contact with
Trump's Administration. According to prosecutors, Manafort initially attempted
to claim he was not in touch with Trump’s officials.
“After signing the plea agreement,” they wrote,
“Manafort stated he had no direct or indirect communications with anyone in the
Administration while they were in the Administration and that he never asked
anyone to try to communicate a message to anyone in the Administration on any
subject matter. Manafort stated that he spoke with certain individuals before
they worked for the Administration or after they left the Administration.”
However, the investigators’ surveillance and a
cooperating witness contradicted those claims, according to Mueller’s team.
Their filing revealed evidence of administration contacts in May 2018 derived
from Manafort’s text messages. It also said the testimony of “another Manafort
colleague” included claims Manafort talked about being in touch with the
administration through February 2018. Other evidence about Manafort’s contacts
with the administration was gathered from “a review of documents recovered from
a search of Manafort’s electronic documents.”
Read the full report form Yahoo News at: https://news.yahoo.com/mueller-accuses-paul-manafort-lying-contact-trump-administration-officials-020400458.html
VietPress USA News
Mueller accuses Paul Manafort of lying about his contact with Trump administration officials
WASHINGTON — Prosecutors with Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation revealed in a court filing on Friday evening that Paul Manafort lied to them about several contacts he had with senior Trump administration officials while he was under indictment.
“The evidence demonstrates that Manafort lied about his contacts,” the prosecutors wrote. “The evidence demonstrates that Manafort had contacts with Administration officials.”
In September, Manafort, the former chairman of President Trump’s campaign, pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including making false statements about lobbying work he did for the government of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and filing false reports to conceal money he made from those efforts. Manafort also admitted to obstructing justice by attempting to influence witness testimony in his case.
As part of his plea deal, Manafort agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s probe into whether Trump’s campaign cooperated with Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. However, late last month, Mueller announced that Manafort had violated the terms of that deal. Friday’s filing was submitted to back up prosecutors’ assertion Manafort breached the plea agreement.
The revelation of contacts between Manafort and serving administration officials appears to undercut past statements by the president and his administration that sought to put distance between the White House and the prosecution of Manafort and Gates.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with us,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said at a press briefing after Manafort’s first indictment.
Sanders made a similar argument in a statement responding to the court filings on Friday evening.
“The government’s filing in Mr. Manafort’s case says absolutely nothing about the president. It says even less about collusion, and is devoted almost entirely to lobbying-related issues. Once again, the media is trying to create a story where there isn’t one,” Sanders said.
Despite Sanders’s statements, the documents included a section extensively detailing Manafort’s contacts with the Trump administration.
According to prosecutors, Manafort initially attempted to claim he was not in touch with Trump’s officials.
“After signing the plea agreement,” they wrote, “Manafort stated he had no direct or indirect communications with anyone in the Administration while they were in the Administration and that he never asked anyone to try to communicate a message to anyone in the Administration on any subject matter. Manafort stated that he spoke with certain individuals before they worked for the Administration or after they left the Administration.”
However, the investigators’ surveillance and a cooperating witness contradicted those claims, according to Mueller’s team. Their filing revealed evidence of administration contacts in May 2018 derived from Manafort’s text messages. It also said the testimony of “another Manafort colleague” included claims Manafort talked about being in touch with the administration through February 2018. Other evidence about Manafort’s contacts with the administration was gathered from “a review of documents recovered from a search of Manafort’s electronic documents.”
Rick Gates, Manafort’s long-time business partner who also worked on Trump’s campaign, pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in February 2018.
This section of the filing revealed Mueller is examining a back channel between people working for the president and Trump’s indicted campaign chairman, a new area of inquiry that was not previously known.
The filing, which was heavily redacted, also listed additional lies that prosecutors say Manafort told them. In its most-blacked-out section, prosecutors detail a series of misrepresentations by Manafort regarding “the fact and frequency” of his interactions with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Manafort associate who now lives in Russia. Mueller’s team has previously described Kilimnik as having links to the Kremlin’s military intelligence agency.
In the unredacted excerpts, prosecutors described lies Manafort told about Kilimnik’s efforts to interfere with witnesses who might testify against Manafort, a $125,000 payment and matters pertinent to a mysterious investigation being conducted by other Justice Department personnel.
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