Special counsel Robert Mueller has issued a new charging document against Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort. Announcements yesterday indicating that Manafort was going to accept a plea deal led to some speculation that he had decided to cooperate with the special counsel’s office, or that he was being given a significant reduction in charges in exchange for a guilty plea. However, the new document shows little sign that Manafort has been excused from his crimes.
Included are statement is information that that Manafort
- “Conspired with Richard W. Gates (Gates),Konstantin Kilimnik (Kilimnik), and others” in acting as an unregistered foreign agent between 2006 and 20015.
- “Funneled millions of dollars” from foreign banks and hid the nature of these transactions.
- ”Directed a campaign to lobby United States officials” for his pro-Russian forces in Ukraine.
- ”Borrowed millions of dollars” using money from illegal foreign accounts as collateral.
- “Laundered more than $30 million” from illegal foreign accounts.
The result are a pair of counts including considerable information and supporting statements
- Conspiracy against the United States in which Manafort “together with others, including Gates and Kilimnik, knowingly and intentionally conspired to defraud the United States by impeding, impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful governmental functions of a government agency, namely the Department of Justice and the Department of the Treasury”
- Conspiracy to obstruct Justice in which Manafort “together with others, including Konstantin Kilimnik, knowingly and intentionally conspired to corruptly persuade another person… to influence, delay and prevent the testimony”
It does not appear from this document that Manafort has reached any deal other than to simply plead guilty and accept a sentence. It’s not immediately obvious that these charges are directly related to the Trump campaign, however the conspiracy charges do have unspecified “others” on both counts and the Manafort’s deception and witness tampering extends into both 2016 and 2017.
Friday, Sep 14, 2018 · 2:41:29 PM +00:00
·
Mark Sumner
There were seven counts on the original charging document for the Washington D.C. trial, but Manafort is pleading guilty to two counts. It does appear that at least some of those not on this deal are counts which might also be prosecuted at the state level.