Charges against Trump’s election campaign chief may be a bargaining chip
DONALD TRUMP’S election campaign chairman was yesterday charged with secretly lobbying for a pro-russian party in Ukraine in exchange for millions of dollars.
Paul Manafort, who held the campaign role for three months, was accused of working for the Party of Regions group for around a decade without telling US authorities.
During that time his firm is alleged to have met with congressmen about sanctions against Ukraine and to have defended the controversial arrest of a political rival.
Mr Manafort also faces charges of laundering money through foreign companies and bank accounts and misleading the authorities about the true scale of his lobbying.
In a dramatic day in Washington DC, both Mr Manafort and his colleague Richard Gates handed themselves in to the FBI after being told they would be indicted. Together they face 12 charges including “conspiracy against the United States”, “conspiracy to launder money”, and being an “unregistered agent of a foreign principal”.
Money laundering, the most serious charge, carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Mr Manafort and Mr Gates deny the charges.
Government lawyers requested that Mr Manafort’s bail be set at $10million and Mr Gates’s at $5million. Both are under house arrest. Mr Manafort’s attorney said there was “no evidence” his client or the Trump campaign colluded with Russia and called the allegations “ridiculous”.
The charges are the first to be brought by an official investigation into the Trump campaign’s links with Russia, led by special prosecutor Robert Mueller. Mr Trump and the White House last night said the charges were not directly linked to Mr Manafort’s time with the campaign and dismissed any suggestion of “collusion” with Russia. Mr Trump tweeted: “Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren’t Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?”
Commentators suggest the arrests may be used to encourage Mr Manafort to share information with investigators in return for leniency. The developments marked another twist in the story of Mr Trump’s ties to Russia that has continued to dog his first year in the White House, to the fury of the president himself.
Mr Manafort is an experienced operative who once advised previous Republican presidential candidates, including Ronald Reagan and George H W Bush.
He was taken on by the Trump campaign in March 2016 to secure the del- egate votes needed to wrap up the Republican presidential nomination.
In May, Mr Manafort was promoted to campaign chairman and chief strategist – a position he held until August, when he resigned, as reports about his links to Ukraine began to surface.
In a 31-page document published by the Department of Justice yesterday, Mr Manafort and Mr Gates were accused of overseeing a “multi-milliondollar lobbying campaign” that was never declared between 2006 and 2015.
The work was said to have been on behalf of Party of Regions, the Ukrainian political group known for its prorussian sentiments.
The party’s leader, Viktor Yanukovych, became Ukrainian president in 2010 before fleeing in 2014 after an uprising that resulted in fighting in the east of the country.
Mr Manafort and Mr Gates, his “right-hand man”, were accused of using two Washington DC companies to lobby American politicians on behalf of the Ukrainian party.
“Among other things, they lobbied multiple members of Congress and their staffs about Ukraine sanctions, the validity of Ukraine elections, and the propriety of Yanukovych’s imprisoning his presidential rival,” the indictment reads.
They also fed back the information to their Ukranian paymasters, according to the charges, with Mr Manafort telling Mr Yanukovych in 2012 that he would provide a “weekly update” on progress.
The pair never told the US authorities of the work. It is illegal to act as a foreign “agent” seeking “United States influence” – one of the charges both men now face. Furthermore, the pair are alleged to have set up a web of foreign companies and bank accounts to move around, without detection, the money they earned.
A total of $75 million (£57 million) flowed through offshore accounts, ac- cording to the indictment, with Mr Manafort laundering $18 million to buy property and other items in America. Many of the charges relate to the failure to declare foreign bank accounts to the taxman and “conspiracy to launder money”.
The men are also accused of “knowingly and wilfully” allowing “false statements” about the extent of their work with the Ukrainian party to be made after Mr Trump became president. The extent to which the charges will damage Mr Trump remains to be seen. They do not directly relate to Mr Manafort’s time on the Trump campaign in mid-2016.
A White House spokesman said the indictment provided “no evidence” that there had been collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. But Mr Manafort’s central role in the election campaign – however brief – means his testimony will be of great interest in Mr Mueller’s official investigation.
Mr Manafort attended a now notorious meeting with a Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer last June who told Donald Trump Jr that she had damaging information on Hillary Clinton. He
was also at the helm as the campaign moved from sewing up the Republican presidential nomination to focusing its efforts on how to defeat Mrs Clinton.
There has been speculation that investigators have gone so robustly for Mr Manafort – whose home was raided earlier this year – in the hope he may volunteer important information.
Ric Simmons, professor of law at Ohio State University, said: “Money laundering, tax evasion – all those things were probably the easiest charges for Mueller to start with. That’s why this came first.
“Then at that point, the goal is to see if he has more information he is willing to share with prosecutors about other people who might have been involved in the campaign.”