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Paul Manafort, Ex-Chairman of Trump Campaign, and Associate Plead Not Guilty to Money Laundering Former Trump Aides Charged as Prosecutors Reveal New Campaign Ties With Russia
(about 4 hours later)
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was indicted Monday on charges that he funneled millions of dollars through overseas shell companies and used the money to buy luxury cars, real estate, antiques and expensive suits. WASHINGTON — The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, announced charges on Monday against three advisers to President Trump’s campaign and laid out the most explicit evidence to date that his campaign was eager to coordinate with the Russian government to damage his rival, Hillary Clinton.
The charges against Mr. Manafort and his longtime associate Rick Gates represent a significant escalation in a special counsel investigation that has cast a shadow over Mr. Trump’s first year in office. The former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, surrendered to the F.B.I. and pleaded not guilty on charges that he laundered millions of dollars through overseas shell companies — using the money to buy luxury cars, real estate, antique rugs and expensive clothes. Rick Gates, Mr. Manafort’s longtime associate as well as a campaign adviser, was also charged and turned himself in.
The two men appeared in the Federal District Court in Washington on Monday afternoon and pleaded not guilty to all charges. But information that could prove most politically damaging to Mr. Trump came an hour later, when Mr. Mueller announced that George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, had pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. and was cooperating with investigators. In court documents released on Monday, federal investigators said they suspected that Russian intelligence services had used intermediaries to contact Mr. Papadopoulos to gain influence with the campaign, offering “dirt” on Mrs. Clinton in April 2016 in the form of “thousands of emails.”
Separately, one of the early foreign policy advisers to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about a contact with a professor with ties to Kremlin officials, prosecutors said on Monday. Mr. Papadopoulos secretly pleaded guilty weeks ago to lying to the F.B.I. about those contacts and has been cooperating with Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors for months.
The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, was assigned in May to investigate whether anyone close to Mr. Trump participated in a Russian government effort to influence last year’s presidential election. Monday’s indictments indicate that Mr. Mueller has taken an expansive view of his mandate. Monday’s dramatic announcements capped months of speculation about which of Mr. Trump’s campaign advisers might be first to be charged by Mr. Mueller, and they seemed to be a sign that the special counsel’s investigation is nowhere close to complete.
The indictment of Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates makes no mention of Mr. Trump or election meddling. Instead, it describes in granular detail Mr. Manafort’s lobbying work in Ukraine and what prosecutors said was a scheme to hide that money from tax collectors and the public. The authorities said Mr. Manafort laundered more than $18 million. “There’s a large-scale, ongoing investigation of which this case is a small part,” Aaron S.J. Zelinsky, a prosecutor on Mr. Mueller’s team, said at Mr. Papadopoulos’s plea hearing this month. The transcript of the hearing was released on Monday.
“Manafort used his hidden overseas wealth to enjoy a lavish lifestyle in the United States without paying taxes on that income,” the indictment reads. It is now clear, from Mr. Papadopoulos’s admission and emails related to a meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016, that the Russian government offered help to Mr. Trump’s candidacy and campaign officials were willing to take it.
Mr. Gates is accused of transferring more than $3 million from offshore accounts. The two are also charged with making false statements. The United States has concluded that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia tried to tip the outcome of the 2016 election in favor of Mr. Trump. As part of that effort, Russian operatives hacked Democratic accounts and released a trove of embarrassing emails related to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. Mr. Mueller and his team are investigating whether anyone close to Mr. Trump participated in that effort.
“As part of the scheme, Manafort and Gates repeatedly provided false information to financial bookkeepers, tax accountants and legal counsel, among others,” the indictment read. The announcements rippled across Washington, affecting both political parties. The powerful Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta quit his lobbying firm Monday. The firm, the Podesta Group, was hired to do lobbying work on behalf of Ukraine, work that is at the heart of Mr. Manafort’s indictment.
Mr. Papadopoulos admitted that in a January interview with the F.B.I., he lied about his contacts with a Russian professor, whom he knew to have “substantial connections to Russian government officials,” according to court documents. Mr. Papadopoulos told the authorities that the conversation occurred before he became an adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaign. In fact, he met the professor days after joining the campaign. The tax and money laundering case against Mr. Manafort describes a complicated scheme in which he lobbied for a pro-Russia party in Ukraine and its leader, Viktor F. Yanukovych, and hid proceeds in bank accounts in Cyprus, the Grenadines and elsewhere. Prosecutors say he laundered more than $18 million, and spent the money extravagantly. A home improvement company in the Hamptons was paid nearly $5.5 million, according to the indictment. More than $1.3 million more went to clothing stores in New York and Beverly Hills, Calif.
The professor took interest in Mr. Papadopoulos “because of his status with the campaign,” the court documents said. Mr. Manafort bought a $3 million brownstone in Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn and a $2.8 million condominium in SoHo, prosecutors said. “Manafort used his hidden overseas wealth to enjoy a lavish lifestyle in the United States without paying taxes on that income,” the indictment reads. He was also charged with failing to register as a foreign lobbyist.
Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates surrendered to the F.B.I. early on Monday and, through their lawyers, pleaded not guilty to all charges on Monday. The two men, wearing dark blue suits, entered the courtroom with their hands held behind their backs. Money laundering, the most serious of the charges, carries a potential prison sentence of up to 20 years. The charges carry the potential for roughly 20 years in prison, putting pressure on Mr. Manafort to provide information on others in exchange for leniency. Among other things, Mr. Manafort could shed light on how widely in the campaign it was known that Russia had damaging information on Mrs. Clinton. A senior White House lawyer, Ty Cobb, said last week that the president was confident that Mr. Manafort had no damaging information about him.
Mr. Manafort has expected charges since this summer, when F.B.I. agents raided his home and prosecutors warned him that they planned to indict him. That warning raised speculation that Mr. Manafort might try to cut a deal to avoid prosecution. A senior White House lawyer, Ty Cobb, said last week that the president was confident that Mr. Manafort had no damaging information about him. In a court appearance on Monday, Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates pleaded not guilty and were placed under house arrest on multimillion-dollar bonds. Mr. Papadopoulos is awaiting sentencing.
People close to Mr. Manafort, including his former business partner Roger J. Stone Jr., have said he had nothing to offer that would help prosecutors build a case against Mr. Trump. Mr. Manafort’s lawyer, Kevin Downing, called the money laundering charges “ridiculous” and noted that in the past half-century, prosecutors have only charged a handful of people with flouting foreign lobbying rules. Such violations are normally handled as an administrative matter. Mr. Manafort’s Ukraine lobbying “ended in 2014, two years before Mr. Manafort served in the Trump campaign,” Mr. Downing said.
“He’s not going to lie,” Mr. Stone said in September. Lawyers for Mr. Papadopoulos declined to comment.
Mr. Gates is a longtime protégé and junior partner of Mr. Manafort. His name appears on documents linked to companies that Mr. Manafort’s firm set up in Cyprus to receive payments from politicians and businesspeople in Eastern Europe, records reviewed by The New York Times show. While the indictment paints an unflattering picture of the man Mr. Trump tapped to run his campaign, the allegations long predate his involvement in the presidential race. Mr. Trump seized on that fact, declaring on Twitter that “there is NO COLLUSION!”
Attempts to reach Mr. Gates on Monday were not successful. A spokesman for Mr. Manafort did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But as Mr. Trump typed out that message, Mr. Mueller’s team was unsealing documents related to Mr. Papadopoulos that directly undermined the president’s claim.
Mr. Manafort, a veteran Republican strategist, joined the Trump campaign in March 2016 to help keep delegates from breaking with Mr. Trump in favor of establishment Republican candidates. Mr. Trump soon promoted him to chairman and chief strategist, a job that gave him control over day-to-day operations of the campaign. Mr. Trump called Mr. Papadopoulos​ an “excellent guy” when he announced his foreign policy team in March 2016. On Monday, however, White House officials described him as someone who played an insignificant role in the campaign.
But Mr. Trump fired Mr. Manafort just months later, after reports that he received more than $12 million in undisclosed payments from Viktor F. Yanukovych, the former Ukrainian president and a pro-Russia politician. Mr. Manafort spent years as a political consultant for Mr. Yanukovych. “Look, this individual was a member of a volunteer advisory council that met one time over the course of a year,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary. “I’m not here to speak on behalf of the thousands of people that may have volunteered on the campaign.”
American intelligence agencies have concluded that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia launched a stealth campaign of hacking and propaganda to try to damage Hillary Clinton and help Mr. Trump win the election. The Justice Department appointed Mr. Mueller III as special counsel in May to lead the investigation into the Russian operations and to determine whether anyone around Mr. Trump was involved. In March 2016, while traveling in Italy, Mr. Papadopoulos met a London-based professor of diplomacy who has deep ties to the Russian government. The professor took interest in Mr. Papadopoulos “because of his status with the campaign,” court documents said. The professor is Joseph Mifsud, according to a Senate aide familiar with emails in which Mr. Mifsud is mentioned. Two Senate committees are conducting Russia inquiries of their own, and investigators have been poring over thousands of emails produced by the Trump campaign.
Mr. Trump has denied any such collusion, and no evidence has surfaced publicly to contradict him. At the same time, Mr. Trump and his advisers this year repeatedly denied any contacts with Russians during the campaign, only to have journalists uncover one undisclosed meeting after another. Mr. Mifsud introduced Mr. Papadopoulos to others, including someone with ties to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a woman who he believed was a relative of Mr. Putin. Mr. Papadopoulos repeatedly tried to arrange a meeting between the Trump campaign and Russian government officials, court records show.
The New York Times revealed in July that Mr. Manafort and others close to Mr. Trump met with Russians last year, on the promise of receiving damaging political information about Mrs. Clinton. “We are all very excited by the possibility of a good relationship with Mr. Trump,” the woman, who was not identified, told Mr. Papadopoulos in an email. She was not actually a relative of Mr. Putin, according to court documents.
Campaign officials knew that Mr. Papadopoulos was developing contacts in Russia, court documents show.
He repeatedly tried to arrange a formal meeting for Mr. Trump in Russia. Among those in the campaign who knew about the contacts was Sam Clovis, who helped supervise the foreign-policy team, according to a former campaign aide. Mr. Clovis could not be reached for comment.
Ultimately, senior campaign officials said that Mr. Trump should not make the trip and leave it to “someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal,” according to an email cited in court papers. No campaign official made a formal trip to Russia.
When F.B.I. agents approached Mr. Papadopoulos on Jan. 27, he lied about his Russian contacts, according to court documents. That day, Mr. Trump invited the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to dinner at the White House and asked him to pledge loyalty, according to notes Mr. Comey took at the time.
As the F.B.I. scrutiny continued, Mr. Papadopoulos changed his phone number and deleted his Facebook account, which he had used to communicate with the Russians. The F.B.I. has obtained emails, text messages, and the transcript of chats on Facebook and Skype records as part of its investigation.
F.B.I. agents quietly arrested Mr. Papadopoulos at Dulles International Airport outside Washington on July 27, a day after agents raided Mr. Manafort’s Virginia home. The Justice Department disclosed on Monday that Mr. Manafort had withheld evidence from Mr. Mueller that was discovered during that raid.
With the charges against Mr. Manafort, Mr. Mueller has taken a broad view of his mandate. He was tapped to investigate Russian election meddling, whether anyone around Mr. Trump was involved and other crimes that followed from that investigation. The charges against Mr. Manafort do not directly relate to Mr. Trump or the campaign. Mr. Manafort had been under investigation in New York and Virginia until Mr. Mueller was appointed and assumed control.
The special counsel has struck an aggressive posture in the case, and Monday’s charges were no exception. The Justice Department often invites lawyers to meet and discuss potential indictments. It is both an opportunity for lawyers to argue for leniency, and for prosecutors to spot potential weaknesses in their case.
But on Friday night, people close to Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates and lawyers involved in the investigation said they had received no indication that an indictment against them was imminent.