Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
3 former Trump aides indicted; one pleads guilty
WASHINGTON — The special counsel investigating Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential race announced criminal charges Monday against three former campaign aides to Donald Trump, including his former campaign manager, marking a new phase in the FBI probe of the president’s inner circle.
One of the three repeatedly sought to arrange a meeting between then-candidate Trump and senior Russian officials in London or Moscow, according to court documents.
The meeting did not take place, but court documents describe an extensive effort by Russian officials to gain access to the campaign.
Court papers disclosed that George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, is cooperating with prosecutors led by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is pursuing allegations that Trump’s aides cooperated with Russian officials seeking to influence the U.S. election.
Paul Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign manager, and Richard Gates III, who was Manafort’s top deputy and helped run Trump’s inauguration, were separately accused of a total
of 12 counts of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering in a financial scheme that ran from 2006 to 2017.
In a court hearing Monday afternoon, Manafort and Gates both pleaded not guilty to the charges. Manafort was released on $10 million bail and Gates was released on $5 million bail.
Both surrendered their passports and were ordered under house arrest.
While the case against Manafort and Gates carries the potential of long jail time, the case against Papadopoulos may be more significant. It is the first guilty plea related to dealings with Russia by someone connected with the Trump campaign.
Court papers revealed that Papadopoulos had pleaded guilty Oct. 5 in a closed-door court hearing to lying to the FBI about his contacts with people who claimed direct connections with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior Russian officials.
The approach to the investigation signaled that Mueller, a former FBI director, and his team of veteran organized-crime and white-collar prosecutors are willing to use a classic hardball approach: trying to pressure lowerlevel figures into cooperating and providing information.
“I think it definitely shows that Mueller is following a strategy of working on the perimeter and then moving to the center by finding people he can indict, and then seeking their cooperation,” said Jens David Ohlin, a Cornell Law School professor and expert in international criminal law.
Mueller was named in May as special counsel to investigate the Trump campaign’s possible dealings with Russian officials — as well as any other crimes the team uncovers.
On Monday, the special counsel’s team showed its reach would extend to prominent Democrats as well as Republicans.
Tony Podesta, a powerful Democratic lobbyist, announced he would step down from his firm, the Podesta Group, after it came under scrutiny in the Mueller probe. The Podesta Group was one of two firms solicited by Manafort to work on a Ukraine lobbying campaign; Podesta’s brother, John Podesta, was Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager.
Papadopoulos admitted that he had met with an unnamed professor in London who told him that high-level Russian officials had damaging information on Clinton, including thousands of emails.
“They (the Russians) have dirt on her,” Papadopoulos said he was told during a meeting in London in April 2016, as Trump was gaining steam in the GOP primaries.
After that, Papadopoulos communicated with someone who claimed to be Putin’s niece and an official who claimed to work at Russia’s foreign ministry, according to court documents. The woman, according to court documents, was not Putin’s niece.
The meeting in London is the second documented instance of someone with claimed connections to the Russian government offering damaging information about Clinton to the Trump campaign.
Manafort and Gates used offshore accounts and shell companies in Cyprus, the Seychelles and the Caribbean to hide $75 million, including payments for representing a pro-Kremlin political faction in Ukraine, to avoid paying U.S. taxes, the indictment says.
“Manafort used his hidden overseas wealth to enjoy a lavish lifestyle in the United States, without paying taxes on that income,” the charges said.
The indictment says he laundered more than $18 million to pay for his expenses, including $5.4 million for renovations at his home on Long Island, N.Y.
Manafort did not report the income to the government and denied to his tax preparer than he held any offshore accounts.
Manafort also was charged with filing false reports to conceal the fact that he was acting as an unregistered foreign agent.
The indictment alleges that Gates moved $3 million from the offshore accounts to pay his mortgage, children’s tuition and interior decorating.
The indictment against Manafort and Gates doesn’t reference their work for the Trump campaign, a point Trump noted on Twitter.
“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 ????? ” Trump wrote.
“… Also, there is NO COLLUSION!” he said in another tweet.
In a statement, Manafort’s lawyer, Kevin Downing, called the indictment “ridiculous” and said there is “no evidence” that the Trump campaign colluded with Russian government.
None of the charges released Monday make that claim.
Papadopoulos, a former researcher at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, joined the Trump campaign in March after working for Ben Carson’s presidential bid. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders described him as a campaign “volunteer” whose role was “extremely limited.”