What
kind of threat does Paul Manafort now pose to Donald Trump? Robert
Mueller’s indictment of the fallen lobbyist is a masterful portrait of a
craven man and his methods. But the chronology contained in the
document filed this morning takes us right up to the eve of Manafort
joining the Trump campaign, and then leaves the reader bursting with
curiosity about what comes next. While Mueller has tied up all sorts of
narratives about Manafort’s strange career in Ukraine, so many strands
of the Manafort story remain maddeningly untidy.
Perhaps
not even Mueller fully knows what Manafort has to offer about his time
in the Trump campaign. But in the unresolved threads of the tale, there
are hints of the subjects that Manafort could clarify. When we look at
ellipses in the case that Mueller has laid out, all the chapters of the
Manafort story he hasn’t yet officially pursued, we can guess the lines
of questioning that might dominate Manafort’s meetings with the lawyers
in the special counsel’s office.
The Oleg Deripaska Connection
At the very beginning of his time working in Ukraine in 2003, Paul Manafort was in the employ of one Russia’s richest men, an aluminum magnate named Oleg Deripaska. We lazily describe many Russian oligarchs as residing in Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. But in the case of Deripaska, that closeness is a documented fact.
From
2003 to 2008, Manafort and his firm worked for Deripaska across
Europe—in Montenegro, Georgia, and Ukraine. Over that time, the
consultant and the client also became business partners. Deripaska
invested millions in a private-equity fund that Manafort established,
with the intent of buying assets across the former Soviet Union. Based
on various court filings and lawsuits, we know that the relationship
went very badly. In these documents, Deripaska suggests that Manafort
might have stolen his money. And based on the special counsel’s filings,
we also know that Manafort owed Deripaska even more money in the form
of unpaid loans. Instead of making an effort to settle these large
debts, Deripaska says that Manafort simply stopped returning his
messages.
Manafort finally reached out to Deripaska, just after he joined Donald Trump’s campaign. In emails obtained by The Atlantic
that Paul Manafort traded with an aide, Manafort proposed giving
Deripaska special access to the campaign, with the apparent hope of
making his debts disappear. We don’t know what became of Manafort’s
outreach to Deripaska. Perhaps it yielded nothing. Deripaska claims that
he never received messages from Manafort in 2016. But it’s also worth
watching hidden video
footage of Deripaska sitting on his yacht with a top Putin official,
procured by the Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny. The video
captured a meeting held in August 2016, two weeks before Manafort
resigned as campaign chair. According to Navalny, the video lends
credibility to the theory that Deripaska might have been a crucial
intermediary between Manafort and the Kremlin.
More Stories
The Curious Case of Konstantin Kilimnik
Robert Mueller has periodically suggested that Manafort’s top aide was an active agent of Russian intelligence in 2016. When I profiled
Konstantin Kilimnik earlier this year, an old colleague of his quoted
Manafort as describing him as “my Russian brain.” Is this connection to
Russian intelligence just a meaningless coincidence? Kilimnik was
Manafort’s primary interface with Deripaska.
Manafort’s Loans
Paul
Manafort’s recent career could be read as a rolling series of nadirs.
One of those low points was his departure from the Trump campaign on
August 19, 2016. He left after The New York Times
reported that Manafort was receiving off-the-books payments from his
Ukrainian clients. The very day that Manafort resigned, he created a new
LLC called Summerbreeze. In the months that followed, the LLC began
receiving millions in loans from financial institutions with ties to
Trump. Why would these lenders give cash to Manafort given the press
attention he was receiving and his clearly troubled finances? (In the
previous Manafort trial, the special counsel alleged that Manafort
promised to help the head of one of these banks obtain a job in the
Trump administration.)
Roger Stone
We know that the political consultant Roger Stone has proclaimed
that Mueller will possibly indict him soon. (Stone apparently conversed
with WikiLeaks about hacked material.) But that promise of an
indictment hasn’t actually arrived. Manafort might be able to fill in
whatever blanks exist in that case. Manafort’s friendship with Stone
traces back to the 1970s, when Manafort managed Stone’s campaign to run
the Young Republicans group. During the ’80s, they became business
partners and created a legendary consulting firm together. If Mueller
does intend to pursue a case against Stone, he suddenly has his oldest
confidant as a cooperating witness.
The Trump Tower Meeting
I
have never invested much significance in the Trump Tower meeting on
June 9, 2016, with the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. It doesn’t
seem to have been the prelude to anything meaningful, an apparent
disappointment to all those who attended. But Manafort was a presence in
the room, a careful note-taker, and a witness to whatever transpired.
And until we know more about the meeting, it’s impossible to know with
certainty whether it was as hapless as conventionally portrayed.
A Troubling Pattern
When
reading Mueller’s technicolor account of Manafort’s tactics in Ukraine,
it’s clear that Manafort had no scruples about his work. He prided
himself on smearing his client’s political opponents; he created sham
think tanks and generated phony pressure campaigns. He funded his work
using methods designed to evade detection and to skirt legal
constraints. This work merely repeats patterns that appear elsewhere in
Manafort’s body of work. Why would he suddenly have broken with
character in the course of the Trump campaign? Thanks to the cooperation
of Manafort’s deputy Rick Gates, Mueller probably has a very keen sense
of how to lead this line of questioning. For nearly two years, the
public has lived with the tension that comes with an unresolved
narrative, the outcome of which has potentially extraordinary
implications. Today represents a looping turn in the direction of
closure.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.
Franklin Foer is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He is the author of World Without Mind and How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization. He is the former editor of The New Republic
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