Mueller says Manafort LIED about contacts with Trump administration
Paul Manafort LIED to Robert Mueller about talking to top Trump officials THIS YEAR and covered up links to Russian ‘spy’, special counsel says in highly-redacted memo
- Special counsel Robert Mueller reveals memo spelling out what sentence he wants for ex-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort
- It blasts him for ‘lies’ about administration contacts that continued until 2018
- Says he told lies about ‘interactions with Konstantin Kilimnik, who has alleged ties to Russian military intelligence
- Told ‘multiple discernible lies’
- Gave information to the government about information in another Justice Department investigation, then later gave ‘exculpatory’ version
- Trump went on pre-emptive angry rant against Mueller calling him ‘best friend’ of ‘lyin’ James Comey’ and accusing his investigators of backing Hillary Clinton
- Manafort, 69, was found guilty of tax fraud and bank fraud then pleaded guilty to conspiracy and witness tampering to avoid a second trial
- He has already been stripped of millions of dollars of possessions including homes in New York and the Hamptons and a lavish wardrobe
- His wife Kathleen stood by him despite revelations he cheated on her but his filmmaker daughter has changed her name from Manafort to Bond
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Jail time: Paul Manafort has been behind bars awaiting sentence since August. He is guilty of tax fraud, bank fraud, conspiracy and witness tampering
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s office spelled out in detail the ‘lies’ former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort committed – including concealing contacts with the Trump administration.
A government filing argues Manafort is in breach of his cooperation agreement with prosecutors, which followed his sentencing on corruption charges. The deal required him to provide truthful information to the government.
The document lays out a redacted ‘factual basis’ for the breach, which underscores that he ‘lied about his contacts’ with the administration, notwithstanding his pledge to tell all in a deal that could reduce his prison time.
The contacts extended all the way to 2018, even as Manafort fended off an indictment.
On May 26, 2018, texts reveal he authorized a person to contact the administration on his behalf.
That was long after Manafort turned himself into the FBI, which happened in October 2017.
According to another Manafort colleague, he was in contact with a senior administration official through February 2018, prosecutors write.
But according to the plea deal he signed, Manafort had ‘no direct or indirect contact with anyone in the Administration while they were in the Administration.’
‘The evidence demonstrates that Manafort lied about his contacts,’ according to the memo from Mueller’s office.
THANK YOU! President Trump cheered the news after prosecutors accused his former campaign chair of ‘lies’ and recommended his former longtime lawyer Michael Cohen spend five years in jail
Manafort told ‘multiple discernible lies’ when meeting with special counsel investigators, the government said.
Manafort also lied about his contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik, who is alleged to have ties to Russian military intelligence, during the course of the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Many of these alleged ‘lies’ are blacked out. For example, the government says Manafort lied about the ‘fact and frequency of …’ which is succeeded by five lines of redacted text
Mueller time: Special counsel Robert Mueller’s memo on Paul Manafort is one of the biggest interventions he has made yet – and revealed hours after an angry tweet storm by Trump
At his side: Paul Manafort was Donald Trump’s campaign manager at a critical stage in his journey to the White House – the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July 2016
Wealth gone: Multi-millionaire Manafort’s spending was exposed during his trial, with (from left) a $18,500 python jacket, a $15,000 ostrich jacket – and a Hamptons estate where he moved the pool and installed a lavish sound system
He also ‘lied repeatedly’ about a ‘[blank] meeting with Kilimnik,’ although the first part of the subject heading is blacked out.
He ‘provided different explanations for’ and ‘first denied that he had …’ claiming that he (Manafort),’ the government wrote – without allowing the public to see what he lied about during its ongoing investigation.
The document also referenced material that came up in Manafort’s trial in Virginia, that he engaged in a conspiracy to obstruct justice by trying to get his story straight with Kilimnik, who was the key figure in a Manafort’s business office in Ukraine.
According to Mueller’s investigators, Manafort wouldn’t even acknowledge things he had pleaded guilty to.
In September of this year, he pleated guilty to a count of conspiring with Kilimnik to obstruct justice by trying to influence the testimony of two witnesses. But Manafort ‘denied that Kilimnik was part of a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice,’ prosecutors wrote.
Kilimnik also has been indicted.
Manfort also ‘lied about a $125,000 payment made toward a debt incurred by Manafort to a firm working for Manafort in 2017.’ He made ‘several inconsistent statements’ to the government when asked about it.
The heavily redacted document referenced Manafort’s contacts with a person with alleged ties to Russian military intelligence
It spells out his contacts with the Trump administration through 2018
The government argues Manafrot is in breach of his cooperation agreement
The government is already forcing Manafort to relinquish millions that were run through a complex money laundering scheme.
He also appears to have held out about another unidentified investigation.
Manafort ‘provided information about [blank] during his plea negotiations. But then after the plea, he told the feds a ‘different and exculpatory version of the events,’ according to the filing.
Mueller’s investigators issued an extraordinary court filing last week where they accused Manafort of breaching his cooperation agreement and committing ‘lies’ during his interviews, only to lay them out on Friday.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement: ‘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.’
The president was brief in a tweet after the twin filings in the cases of Manafort and former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.
‘Totally clears the President. Thank you!’ Trump wrote.
At his side: Paul Manafort’s wife Kathleen was present throughout his trial despite an earlier revelation that he had cheated on her then gone into rehab
Lives ruined: Paul Manafort’s daughter Jessica’s marriage to property developer Jeffrey Yohai is over, he is a convicted felon and she has changed her family name to Bond in the wake of her father’s disgrace. The fate of her mother’s Virginia condo, which was raided by Mueller’s investigators, is in the balance
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Pre-emptive twitter storm: Trump went on the offensive on Twitter Friday morning ahead of the sentencing memo. There is no evidence that Mueller plans to write a report
Toxic client: Manafort received millions from Viktor Yanokovych but the Ukrainian president was run out of office and the lobbyist’s world spiraled into crime
The latest maneuvering comes days after the special counsel’s office submitted a sentencing memo in the case of former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn.
Prosecutors vouched for his extensive cooperation, and recommended of a sentence of as little as no jail time, due to the utility information and the example he set by cooperating early. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russia contacts during the presidential transition.
Manafort was convicted in Virginia of financial and tax fraud. During his Virginia trial, prosecutors made a show of his lavish spending with some of his moneys he funneled into off-shore corporations from Ukraine and then brought into the U.S. without paying required taxes.
Among the items was a $15,000 ostrich vest.
ROBERT MUELLER’S PROBE SO FAR: EIGHT CONVICTIONS – INCLUDING THREE TOP TRUMP AIDES, A JAILED ATTORNEY AND 25 RUSSIANS ACCUSED
GUILTY: MICHAEL FLYNN
Pleaded guilty to making false statements in December 2017. Awaiting sentence
Flynn was President Trump’s former National Security Advisor and Robert Mueller’s most senior scalp to date. He previously served when he was a three star general as President Obama’s director of the Defense Intelligence Agency but was fired.
He admitted to lying to special counsel investigators about his conversations with a Russian ambassador in December 2016. He has agreed to cooperate with the special counsel investigation.
GUILTY: MICHAEL COHEN
Pleaded guilty to eight counts including fraud and two campaign finance violations in August 2018. Pleaded guilty to further count of lying to Congress in November 2018. Awaiting sentence
Cohen was Trump’s longtime personal attorney, starting working for him and the Trump Organization in 2007. He is the longest-serving member of Trump’s inner circle to be implicated by Mueller. Cohen professed unswerving devotion to Trump – and organized payments to silence two women who alleged they had sex with the-then candidate: porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal.He admitted that payments to both women were felony campaign finance violations – and admitted that he acted at the ‘direction’ of ‘Candidate-1’: Donald Trump.
He also admitted tax fraud by lying about his income from loans he made, money from taxi medallions he owned, and other sources of income, at a cost to the Treasury of $1.3 million.
GUILTY: PAUL MANAFORT
Found guilty of eight charges of bank and tax fraud in August 2018. Pleaded guilty to two further charges. Awaiting sentence
Manafort worked for Trump’s campaign from March 2016 and chaired it from June to August 2016, overseeing Trump being adopted as Republican candidate at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. He is the most senior campaign official to be implicated by Mueller. Manafort was one of Washington D.C.’s longest-term and most influential lobbyists but in 2015, his money dried up and the next year he turned to Trump for help, offering to be his campaign chairman for free – in the hope of making more money afterwards. But Mueller unwound his previous finances and discovered years of tax and bank fraud as he coined in cash from pro-Russia political parties and oligarchs in Ukraine.
Manafort pleaded not guilty to 18 charges of tax and bank fraud but was convicted of eight counts. The jury was deadlocked on the other 10 charges. A second trial on charges of failing to register as a foreign agent is due in September.
GUILTY: RICK GATES
Pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States and making false statements in February 2018. Awaiting sentence
Gates was Manafort’s former deputy at political consulting firm DMP International. He admitted to conspiring to defraud the U.S. government on financial activity, and to lying to investigators about a meeting Manafort had with a member of congress in 2013. As a result of his guilty plea and promise of cooperation, prosecutors vacated charges against Gates on bank fraud, bank fraud conspiracy, failure to disclose foreign bank accounts, filing false tax returns, helping prepare false tax filings, and falsely amending tax returns.
GUILTY AND WILL BE JAILED: GEORGE PAPADOPOLOUS
Pleaded guilty to making false statements in October 2017. Sentenced to 14 days in September 2018, to be served at a later date
Papadopoulos was a member of Donald Trump’s campaign foreign policy advisory committee. He admitted to lying to special counsel investigators about his contacts with London professor Josef Mifsud and Ivan Timofeev, the director of a Russian government-funded think tank.
He has agreed to cooperate with the special counsel investigation.
GUILTY AND JAILED: RICHARD PINEDO
Pleaded guilty to identity fraud in February 2018. Sentenced to a year in prison
Pinedo is a 28-year-old computer specialist from Santa Paula, California. He admitted to selling bank account numbers to Russian nationals over the internet that he had obtained using stolen identities.
He has agreed to cooperate with the special counsel investigation.
GUILTY AND JAILED: ALEX VAN DER ZWAAN
Pleaded guilty to making false statements in February 2018. He served a 30-day prison sentence earlier this year and was deported to the Netherlands upon his release.
Van der Zwaan is a Dutch attorney for Skadden Arps who worked on a Ukrainian political analysis report for Paul Manafort in 2012.
He admitted to lying to special counsel investigators about when he last spoke with Rick Gates and Konstantin Kilimnik.
GUILTY: W. SAMUEL PATTEN
Pleaded guilty in August 2018 to failing to register as a lobbyist while doing work for a Ukrainian political party. Awaiting sentence.
Patten, a long-time D.C. lobbyist was a business partner of Paul Manafort. He pleaded guilty to admitting to arranging an illegal $50,000 donation to Trump’s inauguration.
He arranged for an American ‘straw donor’ to pay $50,000 to the inaugural committee, knowing that it was actually for a Ukrainian businessman.
Neither the American or the Ukrainian have been named.
CHARGED: KONSTANTIN KILIMNIK
Indicted for obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Kilimnik is a former employee of Manafort’s political consulting firm and helped him with lobbying work in Ukraine. He is accused of witness tampering, after he allegedly contacted individuals who had worked with Manafort to remind them that Manafort only performed lobbying work for them outside of the U.S.
He has been linked to Russian intelligence and is currently thought to be in Russia – effectively beyond the reach of extradition by Mueller’s team.
INDICTED: THE RUSSIANS
Twenty-five Russian nationals and three Russian entities have been indicted for conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Two of these Russian nationals were also indicted for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and 11 were indicted for conspiracy to launder money. Fifteen of them were also indicted for identity fraud.
Vladimir Putin has ridiculed the charges. Russia effectively bars extradition of its nationals. The only prospect Mueller has of bringing any in front of a U.S. jury is if Interpol has their names on an international stop list – which is not made public – and they set foot in a territory which extradites to the U.S.
POLITICS, SEX, AND LIES: THE RISE AND FALL OF PAUL MANAFORT
In the span of just two years, Paul Manafort has gone from one of Washington’s most sought-after Republican lobbyists to a political pariah – and his sentencing will seal that status forever.
It has been a long and spectacular fall from grace for the 69-year-old former Trump campaign manager, the son of a small-town mayor who went on to work for four U.S. presidents and made his fortune as the Washington mouthpiece for some of the world’s most notorious dictators.
Today Manafort has few defenders in the nation’s capital, after being convicted of tax fraud and money laundering by special counsel Robert Mueller – who first secured a guilty verdict from a jury then a plea deal on the eve of a second trial.
Even Manafort’s former boss, President Trump, claimed he never would have hired the former lobbyist if he had known about the allegations.
‘Paul Manafort came into the campaign very late and was with us for a short period of time (he represented Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole & many others over the years), but we should have been told that Comey and the boys were doing a number on him, and he wouldn’t have been hired!’ wrote Trump in a Twitter post in June.
Now the president faces Manafort co-operating with Robert Mueller ‘fully and truthfully’.
The power brokers: Paul Manafort, his future business partners Roger Stone and Lee Atwater, were photographed as young Republican operatives. Stone, a Trump confidante and notorious political dirty trickster is now fighting off the Mueller probe himself; Atwater died in 1991, a former RNC chairman with a reputation for dirty campaigns. All three cashed in on their political work by lobbying those they got elected
Manafort, the grandson of an Italian immigrant, was raised in a staunch Republican home in New Britain, Connecticut.
When he was 16, his father Paul John Manafort Sr. was elected mayor of New Britain and served for three terms.
In 1981, Manafort Sr. was indicted – but later acquitted – on perjury charges in a sweeping city corruption and bribery scandal that also ensnared the police and fire chiefs.
After Catholic parochial schools and graduating from Georgetown University Law School, Manafort went on to work as an advisor for Republican Presidents Gerald Ford.
He served as an advisor to Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole’s presidential campaign.
But he – and his business partners – worked out how to turn political advising into a gusher of cash: by lobbying the very politicians they had helped elect.
He co-founded a prominent lobbying firm with ex-Nixon aide Roger Stone, and other partners, which shopped their access to top Republicans to U.S. businesses, state and city governments, and anyone who would pay.
That came to embrace the wider world too; the Manafort lobbying roster included brutal regimes willing to pay high fees for his services – including Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos and Zaire military leader Mobutu Sese Seko.
Betrayed: Kathleen Manafort stood by her husband despite his family finding proof of his mistress on Instagram; she attended every minute of his trial and was there when he said he was flipping
Manafort went on to found his own political consulting firm in 2005, bringing on his former intern Rick Gates as his trusted deputy.
He also continued to take on controversial clients. In 2010, Manafort helped elect Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, head of Ukraine’s Putin-allied Party of Regions.
The victory paid off – between 2010 and 2014, federal investigators said Manafort’s firm earned ‘a cash spigot’: $60 million in fees from the Party of Regions’ political patrons.
According to prosecutors, Manafort stashed the funds away in a series of offshore bank accounts and shell companies, and failed to disclose the income in his tax returns. In total, they claim he dodged taxes on $15 million.
But after Yanukovych was voted out of power by Ukraine’s parliament in 2014, Manafort’s fortunes suddenly changed. He stopped getting payments from Yanukovych’s wealthy oligarch supporters, and started to have trouble paying his bills.
This is when prosecutors claim Manafort started applying for loans using phony financial information. In total, they said he scammed banks out of $20 million.
Manafort’s alleged crimes were uncovered during the course of a special counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller, who has been investigating potential Russian interference in the 2016 election and collusion with the Trump campaign.
In addition to the tax and bank fraud trial in Alexandria, Virginia, Manafort also faces additional counts of failing to register as a foreign agent for his Ukraine work. That trial is set to take place in Washington, D.C.
Even before the charges were filed against him, Manafort’s personal life had been unravelling, according to years of hacked text messages between his daughters Andrea, 32, and Jessica, 36, that were posted online.
According to the messages, Manafort’s family had caught him having an affair with a woman who was around the same age as his daughters, renting a pricy house for her in the Hamptons and paying her credit card bill.
They discovered the affair after seeing the woman’s posts boasting about her expensive travel and dinners on Instagram.
Manafort, who was undergoing an emotional breakdown according to the messages, committed himself to a psychiatric clinic in Arizona in 2015.
Texts: Manafort’s daughters Jessica (left, with now ex-husband Jeff Yohai, who flipped) and Andrea (right with husband Christopher Shand) exchanged text messages which were hacked revealing his affairs and calling him a psychopath. Jessica has changed her name to Bond, her mother’s maiden name
Fruits of lobbying: This is the condo overlooking the Potomac where the FBI raided Manafort on orders from Mueller. He bought it for $2.75 million, part of a property empire worth conservatively $15 million
After he was released in 2016 – claiming he had ‘new insight’ into himself – he linked up with the Trump campaign and became the candidate’s campaign manager during the crucial months surrounding the Republican National Convention.
His daughter Andrea took a different view of that. She wrote in a leaked text to a friend, who was not named in the leak: ‘Trump probably has more morals than my dad. Which is really just saying something about my dad. My dad is a psycho!!! At least trump let his wives leave him. Plus, Trump has been a good father.’
And she also texted: ‘Trump waited a little too long in my opinion, but I can attest to the fact that he has now hired one of the world’s greatest manipulators. I hope my dad pulls it off. Then I can sell my memoir with all his dirty secrets for a pretty penny.’
His other daughter, Jessica Manafort filed to change her name to Jessica Bond in August, after his conviction, telling the Los Angeles Times: ‘I am a passionate liberal and a registered Democrat and this has been difficult for me.’
Despite the clearly unhappy family, Manafort’s wife Kathleen stood by him in the face of his infidelity.
She loyally attended each day of his tax fraud trial, always sitting in the row directly behind his defense table.
Since June, Manafort has been incarcerated for alleged witness tampering related to his foreign agent case. He has been serving that time in a county jail in Alexandria which is close to the federal court where his tax and bank fraud trial was held.
After his conviction on eight of the 18 charges, he was kept inside because the outcome did not affect the allegation of witness tampering.
In a recent mug shot, the fashion-conscious Manafort sported a jailhouse jumpsuit and shadowy stubble. His brown hair, which he previously dyed, is now tinged with grey.
The former lobbyist, who once spent $18,000 on a python skin jacket, has also been forced to attend his trial without socks – because he reportedly balked at the white ones he is required to wear as an inmate.
Manafort’s conviction even impacted the legacy of his father, a popular three-term mayor in New Britain, Connecticut, from 1965 to 1971 – who was himself investigated for corruption, but unlike his son, never charged.
In August the city changed a street named after the former mayor from ‘Paul Manafort Drive’ to ‘Paul Manafort Sr. Drive’ in order to distance it from the controversy surrounding Manafort’s trial.
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