Donald Trump’s former 2016 presidential campaign manager, Paul Manafort, is in a well of legal trouble that just keeps getting deeper and deeper. He is wearing two ankle bracelets to monitor his location and make certain he remains at home. Now, he may be thrown in jail for breaking the law once again, but it gets worse – far worse.
Special counsel Robert Muller’s investigation into Russia’s attack on our presidential election and the Trump campaign’s alleged conspiracy is burying Manafort. New evidence was just unveiled in two memos that became public in the special counsel’s latest court order.
The memos showed that the former Trump manager also had a major campaign to lobby both Congress and the media for the former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. The memos revealed that his public relations effort was to deflect attention away from Yanukovych’s former political opponent, Yulia Tymoshenko.
The former Ukrainian president prosecuted and threw his opponent in jail. Yanukovych has been linked to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.
Manafort wrote a memo in 2013 and now in Muller’s court order, and in it he said that he wanted to:
‘Heavily engage with the (U.S. Government) and US Congress, using a strategy I built called ‘Engage Ukraine’ which focused the dialogue on positive key issues, and away from (Tymoshenko).”
The memos also gave details about how Manafort worked with a couple of members of a former European group of leaders, the Hapsburg group, to lobby for Ukraine:
‘(He) organized and leveraged the visits of two members of the Hapsburg group to make critical in-roads in how policymakers view Ukraine (in the U.S.)’
In the memos, Manafort bragged about successfully publishing op-eds in “publications including The Hill.” He was also pitching:
‘Our narrative and messaging to key reporters and editors at The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.’
Thus far, the special counsel has indicted the former Trump campaign manager on charges of failing to register his lobbying firm as a foreign agent with the Department of Justice (DOJ) for Ukraine and Yanukovych.
Last week Mueller’s legal team also charged Manafort with witness tampering. That is the charge that will likely end him in jail instead of on house arrest.
Thus far, the former lobbyist has not flipped on Trump’s potential conspiracy with Russia to throw the presidential election to 45. Time in jail may change that.
The court has set Manafort’s trial for September.
Check out the entire court order in this link.
Featured Image via Getty Images/Alex Wong.
