Russia probe: Mueller heaps new charges on Manafort

Bloomberg

US Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s latest indictment is significant beyond the new charges, in that it links senior officials on President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to Russian intelligence in a criminal matter.
Mueller’s indictment released against Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, adds charges to allegations that Manafort did illegal lobbying work for Ukraine and laundered millions of dollars in proceeds.
It also included an allegation that a fixer described by the FBI as a former Russian spy, Konstantin Kilimnik, helped Manafort obstruct justice.
“This is the first indictment we have where an American and a Russian are charged together,” said Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor who is now a partner at the Thompson Coburn LLP law firm in Chicago.
“This is an alleged Russian spy committing crimes with the former campaign chairman for Trump,” Mariotti said. “When people first thought of the Mueller investigation, this is what people thought would result from it.”
To be sure, the indictment doesn’t relate to actions taken during the 2016 presidential election, or prove that Trump or his associates helped Russia interfere in the US vote to his advantage. Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s lead lawyers, declined to comment.
But Kilimnik directly communicated with another Trump campaign aide, Rick Gates, a month before the election in 2016, according to a legal filing by Mueller in March.
The FBI assessed Kilimnik had active ties to Russia’s military intelligence service in 2016, according to the filing.
Kilimnik wasn’t identified by name in the March filing but Bloomberg has confirmed it referred to him.
Mueller’s new indictment comes as Trump and his allies, including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, increase their public attacks on Mueller’s investigation and pressure the special counsel to bring his work to a close.
The indictment serves a strategic purpose in raising public awareness about the connections that those who worked on Trump’s campaign had with Russians, and it serves a legal purpose by putting more pressure on Manafort to become a cooperating witness, said Katie Phang, a former prosecutor and partner at the Berger Singerman LLP law firm in Miami.
“This is a very provocative move by Mueller,” Phang said. “Maybe the value of this indictment is what the American public thinks it is.”
Manafort is currently on bail and awaiting trial. Mueller’s team is asking a judge to review his house arrest and to consider jailing him.
Manafort’s lawyers responded to the new allegations in a sharply worded filing, accusing Mueller of contriving “dubious allegations” of witness tampering and, in so doing, poisoning the jury pool ahead of his trials.