It is probably significant that the period of time covered in the Manafort indictment includes the entire period when he was campaign chairman. Here’s why.
(THREAD) There’s a sleeper in the indictment against Manafort & Gates that was unsealed Monday.
1/ Note that Manafort & Gates are indicted for money laundering THROUGH AT LEAST 2016, i.e., including the entire time that Manafort was
2/ involved in the Trump campaign (for most of it as the campaign chair).
3/ #16 and #17 of the indictment give details about numerous wire transfers involved in the prosecution’s allegations about money laundering
4/ & tax evasion, including the payees in the US and the numerous foreign accounts that Manafort & Gates used for the money transfers.
5/ But nothing in the indictment tells us how the money GOT INTO those accounts or WHEN. In fact, a close reading
6/ of the indictment actually raises more questions than it answers — but that is exactly what one would expect from an indictment.
7/ All an indictment does is tell us (& the defendants themselves for that matter) what the charges are. Indictments, at a bare minimum,
8/ are simply charging documents that recite the defendant’s alleged actions that are going to be prosecuted.
9/ For a very useful presentation of federal charging documents (aka federal indictments) see
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8/ are simply charging documents that recite the defendant’s alleged actions that are going to be prosecuted.
9/ For a very useful presentation of federal charging documents (aka federal indictments) see
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10/ especially the sections on “What are the parts to a federal indictment?”, “Can the indictment be amended to
11/ charge different or new crimes?,” and “What information must a federal indictment contain?”
12/ Defendants in due course are obviously entitled to all the evidence that have been presented to the judge and jury,
13/ but that information is not provided in the charging document itself.
14/ Arraignment & the indictment prepare the way for the next stage of a criminal proceeding, which is discovery. tinyurl.com/y7t6bpg9
15/ Manafort & Gates pleaded not guilty; if they continue to do so, and do not enter into a plea bargain, then the prosecution will
16/ in the discovery phase be able to interrogate the two of them to get any details they do not already know about the SOURCES
17/ for the millions of dollars that found its way into Manafort’s numerous accounts —
18/ a matter of the first importance that is nowhere addressed in any detail in the indictment itself.
19/ All that we know at this point is that enough evidence was provided to the judge and jury to give probable cause that
20/ illegal money laundering and tax evasion had occurred
21/ involving money that Manafort had received for work for the Party of Regions and the Opposition Bloc.
22/ But nothing in the wording of the document asserts or implies that ALL of that money came from those sources,
23/ or what the nature of the work for the Party of Regions or the Opposition Bloc was for which Manafort was compensated.
24/ In particular, it is important to note is that there is nothing in the charging document that bars the prosecution from
25/ amending the charges or adding to them (or even dropping some of them for that matter).
26/ This is a recognized and widely practiced prosecutorial procedure known as “superseding indictments,”
27/ as described here, from the above-mentioned very useful online document:
28/ Everyone (including Trump, of course) seems to be assuming that Monday’s indictment against Manafort-Gates must mean
29/ that the prosecution’s investigation of Manafort’s money laundering will be limited to his activities before he was ever
30/ involved in the campaign — in some cases, many years before that.
31/ But that is an unwarranted reading of the indictment. It is better read as a document that has launched the discovery procedure
32/ — one that provided only enough evidence to the judge and jury to provide probable cause for an arraignment
33/ leading to either plea bargaining or discovery.
34/ Of course, it is the judge’s responsibility to make sure that the indictment the prosecution is seeking isn’t frivolous;
35/ the prosecution can’t hope to get an indictment just by throwing a lot of mud at a wall and hoping that some will stick.
36/ But that doesn’t mean that the indictment or charging document is a limiting document that circumscribes
37/ what the prosecution can present in its case against defendant(s) pending future developments and discoveries in the litigation.
38/ The only real difference between the Manafort-Gates indictment & Papadopoulos document in this regard is that the Papadopoulos document
39/ mentions the campaign period explicitly. The indictment does not, but it certainly allows the prosecution to go there,
40/ should further probing (including discovery) justify it.
41/ Those who are familiar w my threads will not be surprised to see me broaching here one of my favorite hobby horses:
42/ that the Mueller Team’s “theory of the case” merges collusion & money laundering from Russian sources into integrated charge(s),
43/ possibly including a number of guilty parties but almost certainly including Manafort.
44/ As I pointed out in a thread on the eve of the arraignment and unsealing of the indictments: (
45/ As early as April 2016 then-CIA Director John Brennan launched the first counterintelligence probe (a multinational one)
46/ on learning from a Baltic nation’s intelligence service that money was being channeled into the Trump campaign.
47/ and that this money was entering the campaign via “Trump associates.”
48/ Obviously, Paul Manafort is the principal person of interest in this regard —
49/ and I said: “look especially carefully for any charges about money laundering (w its origins in Russian sources)
50/ around April 2016 and thereafter, bc if Manafort cannot give an explanation where that money came from that DOESN’T
51/ involve collusion w Russia, he will be in BIG trouble.”
52/ Nothing in the indictment indicates we are there yet, but the claim that Manafort engaged in money laundering through AT LEAST 2016
53/ certainly raises red flags, b/c, while it is possible that the money involved in the wire transfers came from assets that had previously
54/ been accumulated by Manafort from working for the Party of Regions and the Opposition Bloc,
55/ there is no reason to ASSUME that this is the case.
56/ It is also worth noting that, while the indictment mentions only Manfort-Gates’ work for the Party of Regions & Opposition Bloc,
57/ the court document released yesterday tinyurl.com/y8ao5y4j mentions the millions of dollars paid to Manafort
58/ by Russian oligarchs, and also clearly refers to Konstantin Kilimnik for the first time (though he remains unnamed in the document).
59/ You know, Kilimnik: “It was like ‘Kostya, the guy from the GRU’ — that’s how we talked about him,”
60/ said a political operative who worked in Moscow.
61/ The last two days have been good days. We will have a lot of them before this is over.
