Paul Manafort cast the scrutiny of him as “a blatant attempt
to discredit me and the legitimacy of the election of
President Trump.” | Getty
American and Ukrainian officials are pushing to
question President Donald Trump’s former
campaign chairman Paul Manafort in separate
investigations related to his work for a pro-
Russian political party in Ukraine once headed
by that country’s disgraced former president
Viktor Yanukovych.
Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) told POLITICO that
Manafort “would certainly be at the top of my
list to testify” before the House Intelligence
Committee’s ongoing investigation of Russian
meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
The panel held its first public hearing Monday,
featuring hours of testimony from FBI Director
James Comey, who publicly acknowledged for
the first time that his agency is investigating the
possibility of Russian coordination with
members of Trump’s campaign team. “Of all of
the characters in and around the Trump
campaign and administration, Paul Manafort’s
relationships with Russians are by far the
longest-standing and the deepest,” said Himes,
who is a member of the committee. “And he has
some pretty unsavory contacts.”
At the same time, an investigative department
within a top Ukrainian law enforcement agency
intends to ask the U.S. Department of Justice for
help questioning Manafort about his possible
relationship to Yanukovych during the 2014
riots that drove Yanukovych from power,
according to Serhiy Gorbatyuk, the head of the
department for special investigations within the
General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine.
Gorbatyuk’s section of the office had previously
sought the DOJ's assistance with an ongoing
investigation into allegations of illegal
government spending during Yanukovych’s
time in office, including payments to a
Washington law firm that assisted Yanukovych
in a legal battle with an imprisoned political
foe.
But Gorbatyuk said the DOJ did not respond to
seven previous requests for assistance from the
prosecutor’s office — two formal requests
followed by five “reminders.”
One missive was sent directly to Comey, whose
agency is an arm of the DOJ, CNN reported on
Sunday.
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Gorbatyuk acknowledged that the office was at
least somewhat confused by the lack of
cooperation from the FBI, which has an
evidence-sharing agreement with the Ukrainian
prosecutor’s office. “I would call it a lack of
understanding why it's taking so long to fulfill
our requests,” he said.
The Ukrainian inquiries would be hampered
without the DOJ's cooperation, Gorbatyuk
added. “For our investigations, it is important
to receive the materials that fulfill our requests
and these include interviews with [the
Washington law firm] and Paul Manafort,” he
said.
Manafort said he had not been contacted by the
FBI or anyone in the Ukrainian general
prosecutor’s office, and he cast the scrutiny of
him as “a blatant attempt to discredit me and
the legitimacy of the election of President
Trump.”
In a statement distributed by a public relations
consultant he hired recently to deal with a
rising number of media inquiries, Manafort
declared that he had “no role or involvement”
in the theft and public dissemination of
embarrassing emails from the Democratic
National Committee and the personal email
account of John Podesta, the campaign
chairman for Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary
Clinton.
The U.S. intelligence community has attributed
the hacks to Russia.
Manafort said “I have never spoken with any
Russian government officials or anyone who
claimed to have been involved in the attack.”
He added that “despite the constant scrutiny
and innuendo, there are no facts or evidence
supporting these allegations, nor will there be.”
As the focus on Manafort intensified Monday,
the White House sought to distance Trump from
the veteran GOP operative. Manafort took
control of Trump’s campaign during a pivotal
stretch last spring, when the candidate was
working to clinch the GOP nomination and
unite the party, remaining at the helm until
mid-August, when he was forced to resign amid
scrutiny over his work in Ukraine.
Press secretary Sean Spicer declared from the
White House briefing room podium that
Manafort “ played a very limited role for a very
limited amount of time.”
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At Monday’s intelligence committee hearing,
Comey said his agency is investigating Russia’s
interference in the U.S. election to benefit
Trump, as well as “the nature of any links
between individuals associated with the Trump
campaign and the Russian government, and
whether there was any coordination between
the campaign and Russia’s efforts.”
But the handling of the inquiries as they relate
to Manafort could fuel questions about whether
investigators are putting their full weight into
investigations related to ties between Trump,
his team and Russia.
Democrats on the intelligence committee have
accused Comey of being less than forthcoming
with information about the investigation. And
some Democrats are grumbling that the FBI has
assigned fewer agents to the Trump-Russia case
than it had working on a case involving the
mishandling of classified information by
Clinton when she was secretary of state.
It’s not clear whether the committee’s
Republicans, whose control over the panel gives
them more sway over witness lists, will allow
Manafor or other witnesses connected to the
president to be called.
During Monday’s proceedings, Himes drew
attention to questions about the FBI’s
participation in the Ukraine investigation,
asking Comey why his agency hadn’t responded
to earlier requests for assistance from the
Ukrainian prosecutor general.
“That's not something I can comment on,”
Comey said. “I can say generally we have a very
strong relationship and cooperation in the
criminal and national security areas with our
Ukrainian partners. But I can't talk about the
particular matter.”
An FBI spokeswoman would not comment on
the requests or even confirm that they had been
received.
A different federal law enforcement official
urged caution in reading into a delayed
response from the DOJ to the requests from
Gorbatyuk, the Ukrainian prosecutor.
Requests under such so-called mutual legal
assistance treaties often precipitate prolonged
negotiations and usually involve government-
to-government assistance as opposed to help in
interviewing a private citizen. “This stuff just
takes time,” the official said.
Gorbatyuk’s office can only investigate
foreigners who are charged with committing
crimes on Ukrainian soil, and it can’t approach
foreigners outside the country for questioning
without assistance from their country of
citizenship.
Manafort is not a suspect in the investigation by
Gorbatyuk’s office, he stressed.
“This is part of an investigation into the former
president, Viktor Yanukovych, on suspicion of
creating a 'criminal organization,’” said
Gorbatyuk.
The office’s most recent line of inquiry — into
Manafort’s possible relationship with
Yanukovych during the months-long
Euromaidan protests that began in late 2013 —
stems from texts apparently hacked from the
cellphone of Manafort’s daughter Andrea.
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In one March 2015 exchange of text messages
that appears to be between Andrea Manafort
and her sister, Andrea Manafort seems to
suggest that their father bore some
responsibility for the deaths of protesters at the
hands of police loyal to Yanukovych during the
protests.
“Don't fool yourself,” Andrea Manafort wrote.
“That money we have is blood money.”
Manafort has acknowledged that Andrea
Manafort was hacked, and he corroborated the
authenticity of at least some of the text
messages, which were posted in a data file on a
so-called darknet website affiliated with a
hacktivist collective.
He has said he wasn’t in Ukraine during
Euromaidan, and he asserted that his work in
Ukraine was “open, transparent and focused on
doing all that I could to promote policies that
were pro-Western” and focused on “moving
Ukraine into the [European Union].”
Another revelation about Manafort’s work in
Ukraine surfaced Monday night, when The New
York Times reported on documents that it said
appeared to show that the Party of Regions tried
to hide a $750,000 payment to Manafort by
funneling it through an offshore account and
disguising it as a payment for 501 computers.
A Ukrainian parliamentarian named Serhiy
Leshchenko, who has alleged that Manafort was
paid millions of dollars illegally by the Party of
Regions, released the documents to the Times,
and announced a Tuesday news conference in
Kiev ostensibly to highlight them. Before the
Times story posted, Leshchenko wrote on
Twitter that the documents would reveal “how
Manafort legalized money paid by ousted
President Yanukovych.”
A spokesman for Manafort told POLITICO that
Leshchenko’s claims were “baseless.”
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