Paul Manafort’s plea deal Friday with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team raised questions about what information President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman offered prosecutors in exchange for reduced federal charges.
Yet the government’s 24-page summary of his offenses also offered an extraordinary portrait of Manafort as a bare-knuckled political operative who pulled out all the stops for his clients – no matter what it took.
Much of Manafort’s admitted criminal activity centered on a lucrative, decade-long campaign in support of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. That work earned Manafort tens of millions of dollars, much of which he hid from U.S. tax authorities.
But in outlining Manafort’s extensive criminal conduct, which also included efforts to obstruct Mueller’s inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, prosecutors also exposed Manafort’s tactics.
Among those was his effort to portray former Ukraine prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko as a murderer and an anti-Semite.
Manafort wanted the effort to spread dirt on Tymoshenko – a political rival to his client Yanunkovych – “pushed with no fingerprints,” according to court documents.
“It is very important that we have no connection,” Manafort wrote in one of a raft of documents uncovered by federal investigators.
“My goal is to plant some stink on Tymo.”
Citing instructions authored by Manafort in 2013, prosecutors said Manafort directed his associates to plant information with U.S. journalists, alleging that Tymoshenko had financed the murder of a Ukrainian official.