The Wall Street Journal reports that Donald Trump’s former campaign chair and senior strategic adviser, Paul Manafort, worked for Russia for much longer, and much more widely than previously acknowledged.
Paul Manafort’s political-consulting firm was active for more than a decade doing work that often dovetailed with Russian political interests not only in Ukraine, but also in Georgia and Montenegro, other countries the Kremlin considered to be in its sphere of influence.
And it appears that for most of these tasks, Manafort had a single handler.
They often involved one principal figure, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a politically connected international operator whose ventures have sometimes aligned with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign-policy objectives. “I don’t separate myself from the state,” he told the Financial Times in 2007. “I have no other interests.”
Piled on all the other information about Manafort, it’s no wonder that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has decided to form a strategic partnership with someone else who has an interest in the the political consultant once described as the head of “the torturer’s lobby.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is working with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on its investigation into Paul Manafort and his financial transactions, according to several people familiar with the matter.
Manafort has been at the center of many stories on the investigation into Trump’s association with Russia. The reasons seem obvious. Not only did Manafort work to put pro-Russian forces in charge of Ukraine—a job that included staging anti-US and anti-NATO protests—he took millions of dollars in under the table funding. In fact, it’s not clear just how much money from Moscow Manafort did pocket. There’s the $13 million that Ukrainian investigators say Manafort was paid off the books, which doesn’t seem to be the same as the $19 million in Russian oligarch funds that Manafort says he “lost,” and certainly isn’t the same as the millions in mysterious real estate loans that Manafort received in violation of banking rules. Meanwhile, for all his work in Ukraine, Manafort reported receiving just $63,750.
It’s a lot to investigate. It’s little wonder that Muller select Manafort as his investigation’s first recipient of a no-knock pre-dawn raid, or that the Special Counsel wanted a few words with Manafort’s son-in-law.
Or that Mueller and Schneiderman are working together on this one.
The two teams have shared evidence and talked frequently in recent weeks about a potential case, these people said. One of the people familiar with progress on the case said both Mueller’s and Schneiderman’s teams have collected evidence on financial crimes, including potential money laundering.
Manafort has an office in Cyprus, along with bank accounts in the bank favored by Russian oligarchs, making it easier for him to move money out of Eastern Europe. It was from that Cyprus account that Manafort let some petty cash go missing.
In the 2014 case, Manafort used Cypriot shell companies as part of a nearly $19 million deal with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska to purchase Ukrainian cable television provider Black Sea Cable. Deripaska said that after taking the money, Manafort and his associates stopped responding to Deripaska's queries about how the funds had been used.
But based on the details of the WSJ article, Manafort may simply have been collecting payment for the broad range of tasks he performed for Deripaska.
In one early project, which wasn’t previously publicly known, Mr. Manafort’s firm worked with Mr. Deripaska to try returning an exiled pro-Russian politician to Georgia, which had elected a Western-leaning president in 2004 after the so-called Rose Revolution in 2003.
Pairing up with the New York attorney general doesn’t just offer the special counsel’s office the chance to share information, it could make sure that Paul Manafort is indicted for something unpardonable—literally unpardonable, when it comes to Donald Trump’s ability to dismiss federal charges. In fact, Trump’s recent pardon of ex-sheriff Joe Arpaio, which many took as a signal to other Trump associates that a pardon awaited anyone willing to “take one for the team,” may have encouraged the Mueller-Schneiderman mash-up.
If Paul Manafort is charged under New York state law, Donald Trump can’t pardon him. And if Mueller is looking to get Manafort to testify against his boss, that may be just the leverage he needs.