While Donald Trump’s campaign chair Paul Manafort worked for Ukraine’s former government, he funnelled some $2.2 million in cash to two Washington lobbying firms, including the Clinton-connected Podesta Group, new revelations show.
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Of all the murky financial links to Russian Federation and Ukraine involving Paul Manafort, the just-demoted campaign chairman for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, the most disturbing so far was published Tuesday by the Associated Press.
On Wednesday, Donald Trump announced that his campaign chairman was being bumped in favor of new campaign chief executive, Breitbart News Chairman Stephen K. Bannon.
According to sources, Manafort and Gates were also coordinating with a pro-Yanukovych nonprofit, the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, which had members of the Party of Regions on its board of directors.
Manafort and Gates had allegedly helped the nonprofit establish a relationship with two lobbying firms based in Washington D.C., the Podesta Group Inc. and Mercury LLC.
The article also shows that current and former Podesta Group employees questioned the arrangement with the European Centre. Not doing so can land you five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
According to various news reports, Manafort allegedly received an undeclared $12.7 million from Yanukovych’s Party of Regions and helped a Yanukovych-linked non-profit organization to secretly route $2.2 million to USA lobbyists. Manafort issued a statement earlier this week denying that he had received any such payments.
“The one area overseas where the challenger is vulnerable in this campaign is Russian Federation because of the lovey-dovey relationship between Putin and Trump, absent that it’s all risk for Hillary”, he added.
The payments intended for Manafort were among $2 billion in secret payments allegedly made by the Party of Regions to bribe officials and politicians from 2007 to 2012.
The chairman of the Trump campaign faced fresh allegations yesterday that he helped to further Russian political interests in the US.
This corroborates previous reporting that Manafort had been on the payroll of pro-Russian Ukrainian politician Viktor Yanukovych.
The AP report cites a legal opinion drafted for Mercury that said that while the Centre could be considered a “foreign principal” under the law, disclosing the work to DOJ was not necessary.
The chairman of the Podesta Group, Tony Podesta the brother of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said his firm believed Gates was working for the nonprofit.
The Justice Department, for example, requires those who register as lobbyists on behalf of foreign governments or parties to detail the home addresses of lobbyists and descriptions of all receipts, payments, political contributions and details about any lectures, emails, pamphlets or press releases they create.
In a statement the Podesta Group, which has registered its work for clients from numerous other countries, said: “If counsel had determined FARA was the way to go, we would have gladly registered”. But disclosure was not required under the federal law because the European Centre provided assurances that its work was not directed, controlled or financed by Ukraine’s government or Yanukovych’s party, Mercury asserted.
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Gates confirmed to AP previously that he was working for Ukraine’s ruling party, the Party of Regions, at the time.
