Manafort’s capitulation leaves a wide-open field for Mueller’s team
Paul Manafort surrendered in his long battle with the special counsel’s office yesterday, pleading guilty in a Washington, D.C., courtroom to two counts of “conspiracy against the United States,” admitting his culpability to charges on which a jury in Virginia had not been able to reach a verdict, forfeiting tens of millions of dollars in real estate and other assets, and, crucially, agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors. The collapse of Manafort’s defensive line appears to leave exposed flanks in elite lobbying circles, in the boardrooms of Manafort’s lenders, at one of the world’s largest law firms, and, perhaps most importantly, at the White House.
Manafort’s guilty plea ended the prospect of the second trial and a potential retrial on the remaining counts in Virginia, on which the jury deadlocked 11-1 for conviction, and to which Manafort has now admitted his guilt. By pleading guilty, Manafort avoided the ordeal of additional trials, obtained a commitment that the rest of the charges against him would be dismissed after he completes his “successful cooperation,” and an agreement not to prosecute him for any other criminal activity he might have disclosed up until now. In return for those benefits, Manafort has agreed to pay a heavy price.
Manafort also admitted to conspiring with his long-time associate Konstantin Kilimnik to tamper with witnesses against him in the Washington, D.C., case. Kilimnik is under indictment for the alleged witness tampering, but has not come to the U.S. to face charges. Manafort’s admissions also provide evidence against the lobbyists and politicians he hired to work secretly on Ukraine’s behalf and the bankers who assisted him in fraudulently obtaining loans.
However, for all the investigative avenues that the statement of the offense illuminates, it does not shed any light on any cooperation that Manafort may provide in connection with Mueller’s central investigative mission — links and coordination between Trump, his associates and the Russian government related to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The charges Manafort has faced thus far have generally avoided addressing his work on the Trump campaign, and the statement of the offense reflects that same approach. It doesn’t mention the one known overlap between the public charges and Manafort’s work on the campaign, concerning an executive at the Federal Savings Bank in Chicago named Steve Calk. At the trial in Virginia, prosecutors introduced evidence that Manafort arranged a place for Calk on a Trump campaign advisory board and floated his name for a top administration job during the presidential transition, while Calk was shepherding Manafort’s fraudulent loan applications through his bank to approval. While Manafort admits guilt in the bank fraud charges related to those loans, the statement of the offense does not revisit the allegations there was a quid pro quo of an offer of a government job — which, if true, could constitute a felony.
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