Mueller Might Not Be Done With Manafort Yet
Source: The Atlantic
The disgraced operative still needs to answer for his ties to a suspected Russian spy.
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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The first clue that Mueller’s interest in Manafort goes beyond his financial crimes came early last month, when one of the top prosecutors on Mueller’s team, Andrew Weissmann, said in a closed-door hearing that a meeting Manafort had in August 2016 goes “very much to the heart of what the special counsel’s office is investigating.” (Manafort’s deputy Rick Gates was also at the meeting, The Washington Post said, citing court records. A status update for Gates, who has been cooperating with Mueller, is due on Friday.) During that meeting Manafort provided internal Trump-campaign polling data to Kilimnik and discussed a “Ukraine peace plan” favorable to Russia. Mueller was appointed in May 2017 to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with” Trump’s campaign, as his appointment memo described it; Jackson agreed that the topic of Manafort’s meeting was at “the undisputed core of the Office of Special Counsel’s investigation.”
Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/mueller-might-not-be-done-manafort-over-kilimnik-ties/584995/
= new reply since forum marked as read
the investigation is supposed to be "wrapped" up and report due shortly. 
The drama -
In March, Trump hired Paul Manafort, a Republican lobbyist who was a partner in the firm Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly. His job was to make sure that Republican delegates would not be able to stage a coup against Trump at the Convention. The end for Lewandowski came when Manafort and Kushner allied against him. “When Manafort was brought on, Corey and Manafort basically went head to head,” the Trump campaign official said. “Jared, the son-in-law, who is a snaky little motherfucker, a horrible human being, hated Corey, so Jared sided with Paul to get rid of Corey.”
Manafort became the campaign chairman in May, and took full control when, a month later, Lewandowski was fired. But Manafort turned out to be too blunt to get Trump to do his bidding. “You have to know how to influence Trump’s thinking, and that takes a mix of diplomacy and psychiatry,” the Trump adviser told me. Manafort, he claimed, had “no chemistry with Donald.” Manafort wanted Trump to pay for polling and focus groups to test TV advertisements. “Donald went berserk,” a Republican close to Manafort said. Trump is known to disdain the traditional tools of politics. He thinks “this is all just a public-relations exercise,” the Trump adviser said, “and he’s a master of public relations, and the rest is all bullshit.” Kushner sided with Trump.
By early August, Manafort was further weakened, by scandals related to political work that he had done in Ukraine. After the Times reported that he might have received millions of dollars in cash payments from a party aligned with Vladimir Putin, there was open speculation about how long he could keep his job. “When the Ukraine stuff comes to pass, Jared now is holding the axe over Paul’s head,” the campaign official said. The Trump adviser added, “The real campaign manager, in fact, the entire time, has been Jared Kushner, who is still the real campaign manager, even today.”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/17/kellyanne-conways-political-machinations
