Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, lobbyists must declare publicly if they represent foreign leaders or foreign political parties and file detailed reports to the Justice Department. Violating the act is a felony and carries penalties of up to five years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines.
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Donald Trump’s campaign chief Paul Manafort has a history of working with global rogues and dictators. His work in Ukraine over the past decade has been well-known, especially how he helped Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian politician, engineer a turnabout in his fortunes to become Ukraine’s president, until he fled office in the face of mass demonstrations in 2014, triggering Russian President Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Crimea and instigation of a violent insurrection in the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. John has not been with the firm for several years but Tony is its chairman.The AP report comes less than three months before the November 8 election and as polls show Trump slipping behind Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.Trump’s campaign today announced a shake-up replacing Manafort as campaign manager after just two months.
“The revelation was described to the AP by people directly knowledgeable about the effort”, the Post reported.
The money came from the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, a nonprofit “governed by a board that initially included parliament members” from the ruling Party of Regions, according to AP.
At the same time they introduced the non-profit group to two Washington lobbying firms, and the firms were then paid $2.2 million for their work.
The lobbying firms continued the work until shortly after Yanukovych fled the country in February 2014, during a popular revolt prompted in part by his government’s crackdown on protesters and close ties to Russian Federation.
In its report today, The Times of London describes a memo written by a Ukrainian prosecutor who investigated Manafort as determining that “he sabotaged U.S. interests in Ukraine and encouraged Russian nationalism in Crimea”.
The heads of both firms – Podesta Group Inc and Mercury LLC – told the AP they had concluded their work did not merit disclosure to the department, according to the report.
“We’ve obviously seen that Trump’s own views and the Republican platform itself has notably backed Russian views and Russian policies, so it paints a very disturbing picture and I think the voters need to pay a lot of attention to that”, Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, said.
While it’s unclear if Manafort’s firm ever did work necessitating a registration with the Justice Department, he could have avoided disclosure if he operated exclusively in the Ukraine.
“To further ensure legal compliance, our agreement with the Centre included a signed attestation that ‘none of the activities of the Centre are directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed or subsidized in whole or in part by a government of a foreign country or a foreign political party, ‘” she added.
The Podesta Group’s CEO, Kimberley Fritts, said the two lobbying firms had coordinated on the legal conclusion that disclosure was not necessary to the Justice Department.
“If counsel had determined FARA was the way to go, we would have gladly registered under FARA”, she said in a statement to the AP.
The now defunct consulting outfit Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly Public Affairs Co. was paid $950,000 in November 1985 to “lobby, represent, advise and assist in the promotion” of certain “political and economic objectives”, USA government records showed.
“I was never given any reason to believe Rick [Gates] was a Party of Regions consultant”, said John Ward Anderson, a current Podesta employee, in a statement provided by the firm.
In April, Mr Manafort told Fox News Mr Savimbi was America’s man working against a “Soviet dictatorship that was put up in Angola”.
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Pointing to Manafort’s involvement, Weber told AP that Manafort discussed the project before it began in a conference call with Podesta and himself. “It is well known that I do work in the U.S. and have done work on overseas campaigns as well”.
