Paul Manafort Just Accidentally Filed A Doc In Court That He Didn’t Want Anyone To See

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Maybe Donald Trump’s first campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, should fire his attorneys. It seems that they accidentally filed a document in court that indicated something big was going on inside of Manafort’s business.

The attorneys filed a one-page memo in with a normal scheduling motion. That document was apparently prepared by an investigator or one of the defense attorneys. The document was called “DOJ, OSC and the  Press. It seemed, that its purpose was to build support for the defense. POLITICO reported that there was:

‘Improper contacts between the prosecution team — now headed by special counsel Robert Mueller — and the media.’

Manafort started his firm, Davis Manafort Partners International. The document indicated that somehow a journalist received copies of the company’s internal documents.

Manafort’s firm worked with Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs. Mueller has been particularly interested in those dealings due to potential collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential election. Manafort traveled to the Ukraine 138 times, according to Business Insider.

According to the memo, one of the firm’s staffers let a reporter look at the company’s computerized records on the same date that prosecutors got their affidavit for a seizure warrant last October.

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The document used the standard FBI acronym for a confidential source, POLITICO reported:

‘In the Winter of 2017 (sic 2016) employee of DMI—CS-1 permitted the reporter to view material on a hard drive copy of DMI’s electronic files. Government obtained warrant for the hard drive.’

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The memo that was included along with the intended documents does not list any specific journalist. However, it does include The Associated Press and a mention of one of its articles on April 12, 2017.

That story wrote that the DMI’s records included some sort of alleged payments to Manafort that Ukrainians recorded in the “black ledger.” Ukrainian anti-corruption investigators retrieved this ledger.

The Associated Press article was bylined by Jack Gillum, Chad Day, and Jeff Horwitz. It read:

‘Financial records newly obtained by The Associated Press confirm that at least $1.2 million in payments listed in the ledger next to Manafort’s name were actually received by his U.S. consulting firm.’

According to POLITICO:

‘Citing the same seizure warrant affidavit, the notes filed by Manafort’s defense team also relates that The Associated Press gave Maloni copies of two memos Manafort wrote to a Ukranian oligarch in 2005 about work for Ukraine’s Party of Regions. The defense filing suggests the memos came from the one of the reporters who wrote the April 12 AP story.’

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A spokesperson for Manafort, Jason Maloni, had no comment about the apparent leak, and Manafort’s lead defense attorney, Kevin Downing, refused to reply to a message from POLITICO asking for a comment. Typically, the spokesperson for the Mueller team’s office did not give a comment either.

Manafort and his business partner at DMI, Rick Gates, were both indicted by Mueller on October 27, 2017. The charges included failing to register as foreign lobbyists and money laundering. After the men entered not guilty pleas, the judge assigned them to house arrest.

At this time, no trial date has been indicated.

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Featured Image via Getty Images/Alex Wong.