New Hints That Mueller's Manafort Probe Is Going Beyond Ukraine Charges
By Tierney Sneed | May 31, 2018 6:00 am
While Paul Manafort has claimed, so far without much success, that special counsel Robert Mueller has overstepped his authority by focusing on Manafort’s Ukraine lobbying, Mueller has left hints in various filings that his ongoing investigation into the former Trump campaign chairman may also be looking into something else.
It’s not clear exactly what that something else is, when or even if it will yield additional charges against Manafort, or whether it will bring the Russian collusion case closer to President Donald Trump or his associates. But there has been a series of intimations floated publicly by Mueller that suggest more is going on beneath the surface.
The most obvious signal was an Aug. 2 internal Justice Department memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to Mueller, disclosed with heavy redactions by Mueller last month, in which Rosenstein confirmed the special counsel’s authority to investigate Manafort for both the Ukraine allegations, and accusations that the Trump campaign and Russian colluded to influence the 2016 election.
Manafort has not been charged with any crimes related to alleged Russian collusion, but there have been subtle clues along the way that suggest that Mueller is still digging into Manafort, and what he’s searching for goes beyond alleged financial and lobbying disclosure crimes laid out in the two federal indictments against Manafort, one in DC and the other in Virginia. Manafort has pleaded not guilty in both cases to charges that include money laundering, tax fraud, bank fraud and failure to disclose foreign lobbying — mostly stemming from Ukraine work that predated the 2016 campaign.
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