Former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort already knew he was under close observation from the special counsel’s office. Politico is reporting that investigators have targeted his son-in-law as a potential cooperative witness.
Investigators approached Jeffrey Yohai, who has partnered in business deals with Manafort, earlier this summer, setting off “real waves” in Manafort’s orbit, one of these people said. Another of these people said investigators are trying to get “into Manafort’s head.”
This type of action, in which associates of the person under investigation are sought out as cooperating witnesses, is a common approach when building a case. In the case of Yohai, enough of his finances are entangled with those of Manafort that it’s possible the FBI could have offered a relief from possible charges in return for information detailing Manafort’s activities.
Manafort’s finances are filled with potential bombs. He maintained a shell company and bank account in Cyprus, mimicking the structure used by many oligarchs for international money laundering. He owed millions to pro-Russian sources at the time he worked for Trump. Ukranian officials have accused him of taking millions under the table to support anti-NATO work in their country. Immediately after leaving the Trump campaign, he got a series of mystery loans from unnamed sources that allowed him to buy a beach home and other properties. And he was involved in undisclosed foreign lobbying and only belatedly registered as a foreign agent in June.
It’s not clear how many of these deals also involved Yohai, but Manafort’s bank account clearly offers numerous lines of study.
Mueller would clearly have jurisdiction over any real estate dealings between Yohai, Manafort and Russians, Jeffress said. In addition, he could press Yohai for details on what he knows about Manafort’s role in the campaign.
Manafort himself has reportedly refused all offers to cooperate. That’s not true of another Trump associate who was featured prominently in the early days of the investigation, but who has recently been extremely quiet.
There’s every reason to believe [former Trump National Security Advisor Michael] Flynn continues to be a key figure—and perhaps the key figure—in Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia’s election meddling, the Trump campaign’s potential collusion in such, and other crimes that may have stemmed from those affairs. On Monday, two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee posited that Flynn was already cooperating with Mueller, potentially offering testimony that could incriminate Trump.
In one exchange, daughter Jessica Manafort writes “Im not a trump supporter but i am still proud of dad tho. He is the best at what he does.”
However, her sister Andrea is much less sanguine with their father’s jobbing for Trump … and for Moscow.
Her sister Andrea Manafort responded by referring to their father’s relationship with Trump as “The most dangerous friendship in America,” while in another exchange she called them “a perfect pair” of “power-hungry egomaniacs,” and asserted “the only reason my dad is doing this campaign is for sport. He likes the challenge. It's like an egomaniac's chess game. There's no money motivation.” …
“Don't fool yourself,” Andrea Manafort wrote. “That money we have is blood money.”
The pre-dawn FBI raid at one of Paul Manafort’s homes made it abundantly clear that Manafort is an early focus of the investigation into links between the Trump campaign and Russia. And with good reason.
It’s only a shame that the investigation can’t go beyond Manafort’s bringing Viktor Yanukovich to power in Ukraine, to look at his work for Ferdinand Marcos, and Mobutu Sese Seko, and Jonas Savimbi. Or for his involvement with a scheme that nearly destroyed the French government.
Manafort’s fee was a small piece of a larger kickback scheme. At least $200,000 came to Manafort, some of it via accounts in Madrid. It was part of a deal brokered by Assir. He arranged for France to sell Pakistan three Agosta submarines—with tens of millions of euros in “commissions” returning to the coffers of the Balladur campaign. The scandal, known in France as the “Karachi Affair,” has hovered over the country’s politics ever since it broke in 2010. (The English ex-wife of another Franco-Lebanese arms dealer involved in l’affair revealed the Manafort payments to a French judge.)
Manafort is the best at what he does. And what he does is this …
When the Center for Public Integrity detailed the firm’s work, it titled the report “The Torturers’ Lobby.”