Manafort edited Ukraine op-ed

Court documents show he changed some sections of the essay

In this June 21, 2017, file photo, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, the special counsel probing Russian interference in the 2016 election, departs Capitol Hill following a closed door meeting in Washington.
In this June 21, 2017, file photo, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, the special counsel probing Russian interference in the 2016 election, departs Capitol Hill following a closed door meeting in Washington.

WASHINGTON -- Paul Manafort, the former chairman of Donald Trump's campaign, was heavily involved in the drafting of an opinion piece on Ukrainian politics even while under house arrest, according to documents released Friday by special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutors.

Prosecutors said earlier this week that Manafort had ghost-written an op-ed with a colleague who they said was assessed to have ties to Russian intelligence. The disclosure was aimed at showing that Manafort had violated a judge's order to refrain from trying his case in public.

The government on Friday revealed new details that showed that Manafort had made a line-by-line edit of the essay in late November. The op-ed was published this week in an English-language newspaper in Ukraine under the byline of Oleg Voloshyn, a former Ukrainian official.

Writing in Microsoft Word, Manafort changed several sections of the essay, making edits to it for over 30 minutes on the night of Nov. 29, court papers show.

Each change was tracked in the document, which prosecutors later compared with talking points Manafort drafted last year to respond to news reports about his consulting work in Ukraine. They found they mirrored his edits, and appeared to show he had a "public relations campaign" in mind to help his case, court papers show.

Voloshyn said this week that he wrote the op-ed in Manafort's defense and insisted Manafort did not help him draft it.

"I wrote it on my own initiative," said Voloshyn, who headed the press office at the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry under President Viktor Yanukovych, Manafort's former client in Ukraine.

Also Friday, Mueller detailed hundreds of thousands of documents, including copies of data from 36 electronic devices, and the existence of 15 search warrants in the government's case against Manafort and Rick Gates, his business associate and co-defendant.

The scope of the documents is outlined in a separate filing, which details what evidence the government collected in building its case against Manafort and Gates.

The government's first batch of documents provided to Manafort and Gates, on Nov. 17, focused on financial records from Cyprus and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, as well as a hard drive with 89,000 items on it. Mueller's team also provided some of the 2,000 "hot" documents -- items considered critical to the government's case.

On Nov. 22, the government turned over two more hard drives with roughly 120,000 items on them. On Dec. 1, prosecutors turned over additional search warrants, deposition from Manafort and Gates from another case, and a fourth hard drive with roughly 80,000 items on it. The government also gave Gates copies of data on nine electronic devices seized in the raid on Manafort's Virginia home this past summer.

Manafort and Gates were charged by Mueller's team with multiple counts of conspiring to launder money, conspiring against the U.S. and giving false statements to federal agents. Both men pleaded innocent.

Separately, The New York Times reported Friday that FBI officials warned one of Trump's top advisers, Hope Hicks, earlier this year about repeated attempts by Russian operatives to make contact with her during the presidential transition, according to people familiar with the events.

The Russian outreach efforts show that, even after U.S. intelligence agencies publicly accused Moscow of trying to influence the outcome of last year's presidential election, Russian operatives were undaunted in their efforts to establish contacts with Trump's advisers.

There is no evidence that Hicks did anything improper. According to former officials, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies became alarmed by introductory emails that Hicks received from Russian government addresses in the weeks after Trump's election.

The contents of the emails to Hicks are unclear, as are the identities of the Russians who sent them.

In regard to another top Trump adviser, a group of Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Jared Kushner, who is also Trump's son-in-law, asking if since Trump's election he has discussed with foreigners the financing of a Manhattan office tower owned by his family.

The letter says the legislators are concerned Kushner has held a senior government post "while possibly seeking massive cash bailouts for 666 Fifth Avenue from foreign nationals or foreign entities." It was signed by 13 Democratic lawmakers, including Ted Lieu of California, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, and Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania.

The building is losing money and has a $1.2 billion mortgage due in February 2019. Kushner Cos. is responsible for half the loan, and representatives for the company have approached investors in Saudi Arabia, China, South Korea, Qatar, France and Israel, Bloomberg reported in an article cited by the lawmakers.

As chief executive officer of Kushner Cos., Jared Kushner participated in some of those talks prior to joining the White House in January. He quit the role and divested his stake in the building to close family members in connection with his joining the administration.

"We are concerned that you may be leveraging your White House position to seek financial assistance for 666 Fifth Avenue," the lawmakers wrote in the Dec. 6 letter first reported by Reuters.

Information for this article was contributed by Chad Day, Eric Tucker and Tom LoBianco of The Associated Press; by Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo of The New York Times; and by Caleb Melby of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 12/09/2017

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