Mueller Might Not Be Done With Manafort Yet
Mueller Might Not Be Done With Manafort Yet
The disgraced operative still needs to answer for his ties to a suspected Russian spy.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/mueller-might-not-be-done-manafort-over-kilimnik-ties/584995/
Seventeen months, two trials, and one voided plea deal later, the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has finally learned his fate: He’ll spend about seven years in federal prison for crimes he committed over more than a decade, marking one of the biggest prosecutorial victories for Special Counsel Robert Mueller since he launched his investigation nearly two years ago.
Nevertheless, Mueller might not be quite done with Manafort yet, former prosecutors tell me. Court documents and pre-sentence hearings that dealt with the breach of Manafort’s plea deal suggest that prosecutors might have more ammunition to go after the 69-year-old on matters that go directly to the question of a conspiracy with Russia, rather than the financial crimes and violations of foreign-agent laws that he’s been charged with to date.
Manafort pleaded guilty to tax and bank fraud and failing to register as a foreign agent for Ukraine. But he “intentionally made multiple false statements” to the FBI, the special counsel’s office, and the grand jury “concerning matters that were material to the investigation: his interactions and communications” with the suspected Russian intelligence officer Konstantin Kilimnik, D.C. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled last month. As such, questions remain about Manafort’s interactions with Russians during the campaign—questions that go to the main focus of the Mueller investigation into a potential election conspiracy.
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Whatever path Mueller decides to take, there is no shortage of lingering questions about Manafort’s role in a potential conspiracy. “This hasn’t been resolved at all,” Representative Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told me on Thursday. “What Manafort chose to do was to conceal evidence of collusion from the special counsel’s office and from the court, and then have his lawyer go out on the courthouse steps and say there was no collusion.”
Schiff suggested, moreover, that Mueller knows a lot more about Manafort than his office has so far let on. “We have not had access to Manafort and I don’t know whether we ever will,” he said. “But the special counsel’s office does have information about this.” Schiff added that the lingering questions about Manafort’s role underscore how important it is that Mueller’s final report be provided to Congress—and that the report include all of the underlying evidence Mueller collected, regardless of whether it results in a conspiracy charge. “Our standard is not whether there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” Schiff said, “but whether there is a risk to national security.”