This is insane – it turns out that Paul Manafort violated his court order and wrote an editorial secretly with a guy known to have connections with Russian intelligence!!!
NEW: The Government says that Paul Manafort, in a potential violation of a court order, was ghost-writing an op-ed about his work in the Ukraine. They say the co-writer is a person with ties to Russian intelligence.
— Tom Winter (@Tom_Winter) December 4, 2017
Seriously what was he thinking?!
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was ghostwriting an op-ed while out on bail last month with a Russian who has ties to the Russian intelligence service, Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Muller’s team said Monday.
In a new filing Monday afternoon, Mueller’s investigators said Manafort was working on an editorial in English as late as last Thursday and that it related to his political work for Ukraine, which factored into his money-laundering and foreign lobbying criminal charges.
The filing asks for the court to revisit a bail agreement Mueller’s office and Manafort’s lawyers made jointly last week. The court had not yet approved a change to his $10 million unsecured bail and house arrest.
“Even if the ghostwritten op-ed were entirely accurate, fair, and balanced, it would be a violation of this Court’s November 8 Order if it had been published,” prosecutors wrote. “The editorial clearly was undertaken to influence the public’s opinion of defendant Manafort, or else there would be no reason to seek its publication (much less for Manafort and his long-time associate to ghostwrite it in another’s name).”
What an idiot.
And Mueller is withdrawing support for his bail agreement:
#BREAKING Special Counsel's office withdraws support from joint bail agreement with Paul Manafort, says it became aware of his ghostwriting Ukrainian editorial pic.twitter.com/8cyxaWIUq2
— Spencer Hsu (@hsu_spencer) December 4, 2017
Wow. Some are saying this is a sign that Manafort is more afraid of Putin and the Russians than he is of prosecution in the U.S….