Mueller adds charge on Manafort, indicts associate
WASHINGTON — Special counsel Robert Mueller brought new obstruction charges Friday against President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and added allegations against a close associate, who prosecutors suspect has ties to Russian intelligence.
Prosecutors said the obstruction charge relates to Manafort’s efforts to coach the stories of witnesses against him. He remains charged with money laundering, illegal foreign lobbying and lying to federal officials.
Manafort’s longtime associate Konstantin Kilimnik was added to the case and charged with obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice. The charges are related to an effort by him, Manafort and other associates to have prominent European politicians vouch publicly for Viktor Yanukovych, the proRussia former president of Ukraine, who was Manafort’s client.
Kilimnik and Manafort tried to persuade two associates who worked on the campaign involving the Europeans, whom they referred to as the “Hapsburg group,” to lie about its scope, prosecutors said.
The men placed op-eds from the politicians and arranged meetings for them in the United States and around the world, according to court papers. Manafort, who coordinated the effort, provided $2.4 million from overseas bank accounts to fund the Hapsburg group’s activities, according to court papers.
But prosecutors allege Manafort and Kilimnik contacted the associates starting in February to urge them to tell investigators that the Hapsburg group’s efforts consisted only of outreach in Europe and not in the United States. That is significant because any lobbying or public relations in the United States on behalf of foreign politicians, governments or companies would trigger an obligation under the Foreign Agents Registration Act to disclose those activities to the Department of Justice.
In a filing this week, the special counsel alleged that the outreach by Manafort and Kilimnik was an attempt to tamper with witnesses. Kilimnik was not named in the filing, which instead referred to him as “Person A,” a description used in several previous filings by Mueller’s team.
In those filings, the special counsel had indicated that Kilimnik, who began working with Manafort in 2005 for Yanukovych’s political party and its supporters, had ties to Russian intelligence.