Here are key takeaways from Mueller’s Manafort filing tonight:
REMAINED IN CONTACT WITH SENIOR TRUMP OFFICIALS: Manafort lied about not having contact with anyone in the Trump administration, and actually remained in contact with at least one “senior” official into this year.
Mueller: “For instance, in a text exchange from May 26, 2018, Manafort authorized a person to speak with an Administration official on Manafort’s behalf. Separately, according to another Manafort colleague, Manafort said in February 2018 that Manafort had been in communication with a senior Administration official up through February 2018. A review of documents recovered from a search of Manafort’s electronic documents demonstrates additional contacts with Administration officials.”
SIGNIFICANT CONTACT WITH RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE: Manafort lied about a significant number of contacts with a former Russian intelligence officer who had ongoing ties to Russian intelligence.
Over two heavily redacted pages, Mueller detailed lies Manafort told him about numerous contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik.
We’ve previously learned that Manafort asked Kilimnik how he could use his role with the campaign to “get whole,” and Manafort met with Kilimnik in New York in August 2016.
LIED ABOUT COVER-UP ATTEMPTS WITH KILIMNIK: Separately from Manafort’s lies about his contacts with Kilimnik, he also lied about conspiring to obstruct justice with Kilimnik.
Mueller: “After signing the plea agreement, Manafort denied that Kilimnik was part of a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice by reaching out to two witnesses to tailor their testimony to a false narrative that would exculpate them of a Foreign Agents Registration Act violation. Yet on September 14, 2018, Manafort pleaded guilty to count two of the superseding information, charging him with conspiring with Kilimnik to obstruct justice between February and April 2018 by trying to influence the testimony of the two witnesses.”
MYSTERY $125,000 PAYMENT: Manafort lied about a $125,000 wire transfer made toward a debt Manafort incurred to a firm working for him.
Mueller: “After signing the plea agreement, Manafort lied about a $125,000 payment made toward a debt incurred by Manafort to a firm working for Manafort in 2017. Records establish that the payment came from another firm (Firm A), which performed work for an entity (Entity B). Manafort has a long relationship with the heads of Firm A and Entity B.”
MUELLER IS NOT DONE YET: Much of the filing is redacted, leaving us in the dark for now on what else Manafort lied about, and it is clear Mueller has more work to do.