On Monday, special counsel Robert Mueller filed with the District Court asking for a revocation of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s bail.
The evidence set forth below and in the attached declaration of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agent Brock W. Domin establishes probable cause to believe that Manafort has violated 18 U.S.C. § 1512(b)(1) by attempting to tamper with potential witnesses while on pretrial release and, accordingly, has violated the conditions of his release.
The specifics of the charges are that Manafort and a “long-time associate” repeatedly contacted two witnesses “in an effort to secure materially false testimony” concerning a scheme to illegally conduct foreign lobbying inside the United States. NBC News is now reporting that the federal judge in charge of the case has ordered a hearing for June 15 to consider modifying or revoking Manafort’s bail.
The idea that Manafort would attempt something so blatant while on bail and facing trial might seem unimaginable, but for two things: Paul Manafort has spent his life getting away with things, and Donald Trump is sending every signal that he’ll get out of this one, as well. On Sunday, Trump produced a tweet once again stating that Manafort “came into the campaign very late and was with us for a short period of time.” It’s a statement that Trump has made before, and it may seem like one in which he is distancing himself from the man who was actually his campaign chair through five critical months of the campaign. But that same tweet justifies Trump’s selection of Manafort, noting that he had worked for Reagan, Bob Dole “and others.” Which is true. The RNC that Paul Manafort managed for Donald Trump wasn’t his first rodeo.
In fact, it was the third time that Paul Manafort was selected to organize and stage-manage the Republican convention. Manafort worked for Ford in 1976, for Reagan in 1980, for George H. W. Bush in 1988, and for Bob Dole in 1996. His joining the Trump campaign may seem like the fairly standard story of a long time operative coming in to provided needed experience and connections to an upstart campaign.
Except that Manafort had other clients. Together with Roger Stone, he formed a political consulting group, so the pair of them could do for overseas leaders leaders what they had done for Reagan. In 1985, Manafort worked for Jonas Savimbi, the leader of the Angolan rebel group UNITA. Also in 1985, Manafort signed on with Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. In 1989, Manafort worked for military dictator Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire. In 1995, while working for French politician Édouard Balladur, Manafort took under the table money from a Lebanese arms dealers for his part in the Karachi Affair, a scheme to sell French submarines to Pakistan.
And Republicans still called Manafort back, not just to manage the campaign for Bob Dole, but to run their whole convention in 1996.
Here’s that timeline of Paul Manafort’s clients one more time:
- Gerald Ford, 1976
- Ronald Reagan, 1980
- Jonas Savimbi, 1985
- Ferdinand Marcos, 1985
- Mobutu Sese Seko. 1988
- George H. W. Bush, 1988
- Édouard Balladur, 1995
- Bob Dole, 1996
- Viktor Yanukovych, 2004-2013
- Oleg Deripaska 2007-2008
- Serhiy Lyovochkin, 2014
- Oleg Deripaska, 2015
- Donald Trump, 2016
Why does Manafort think he can get away with anything? Because he always has. Because no matter how many times he has supported torturers and tyrants, Republicans have welcomed him back with open arms. Even when his work earned his firm the nickname “the torturer’s lobby,” Republicans immediately hired him again. Even when he was caught in international arms smuggling, he was put in charge of the whole convention. Even after a decade of money laundering and influence peddling for Russian oligarchs, Trump was happy to turn over his whole campaign.
Paul Manafort has swindled, lied, promoted torture, political imprisonment, media suppression, and the overthrow of legitimate governments across four decades and at least four continents. Why should anything be different now?
Add to that Donald Trump’s stated, and demonstrated, willingness to engage his pardon authority for partisan purposes and the odds that Manafort will actually have to pay for his actions at this late date seem small. After all …
So many beautiful lives ruined. The sooner that Trump steps in, the sooner Manafort can find his next client.
In the meantime, Manafort has until Friday, Friday, June 8 to respond to Mueller’s motion to revoke his bail.