No Immediate Connection to the Trump Campaign or the 2016 Presidential race 31-page Indictment
AGENDA 21 RADIO
The first indictment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “Russia Investigation” was unveiled Monday morning against Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s campaign manager from March to August of 2016, and his partner Richard Gates.
The charges, first teased Friday, bear no immediate connection to the Trump campaign or the 2016 presidential race more broadly. Instead, the charges stem from Manafort’s work as a consultant and lobbyist for Ukrainian President Victor Yanokovych and his “Party of Regions,” the country’s pro-Russia party that lost power in the 2014 Euromaidan Revolt.
The heart of the charges against Manafort and Gates, laid out in a 31-page indictment in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, are best described as money laundering. The two men, 68 and 45 respectively, are alleged to have used a bevy of entities to launder millions of dollars over a decade and failed to properly disclose the nature of their work for Yanokovych.
The pair are alleged to have maintained foreign accounts in at least three countries, into which millions of dollars of payments were made, and then failed to disclose these accounts to federal authorities in accordance with laws that regulate agents of foreign governments. Manafort in particular is alleged to have avoided paying taxes on much of these earnings.
In exchange for the payments, Manafort and Gates are alleged to have lobbied on behalf of Yanokovych and his government without registering a foreign agents, a federal felony.
The indictment lists twelve counts, first among which is “conspiracy against the United States.” This charge, despite its treasonous grandiose air, refers to the illegal agreement between the two men to commit criminal acts the defrauded the government, not collusion with a foreign power to attack the United States.
Among the other charges are making false statements to the Special Counsel’s Office over the course of Mueller’s investigation.
Manafort surrender the FBI at their Washington field office Monday morning. Gates is expected to do the same.
Much of the political left is cheering about the indictment of Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort. They think it will undermine President Trump. The problem, though, is that it appears increasingly likely that Manfort’s indictment has nothing to do with the Trump campaign.
It is true that Robert Mueller began investigating Paul Manafort based on Manafort’s dealings with the Trump campaign and Russia. But the special prosecutor, like most prosecutors, can go in the direction an investigation takes him. If the investigation goes off the trail of the campaign into a new direction, the special prosecutor can go in that new direction. That appears to be the case here.
