Special counsel Robert Mueller’s office on Monday accused Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman for Donald Trump, of tampering with witnesses ahead of his upcoming trial on charges involving illegal lobbying work.
In an 18-page motion filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, Mueller's prosecutors called for an immediate hearing to determine whether Manafort and another, unidentified person repeatedly contacted two other unnamed people by phone and encrypted text messages “in an effort to secure materially false testimony” concerning the activities at the center of February’s superseding indictment.
Backed by an affidavit from FBI special agent Brock Domin who has been working on the Manafort case, Mueller’s office said Manafort and one of his longtime associates — described as “Person A” — tried in the wake of the Trump official’s indictment to contact other members of the so-called Hapsburg Group, a collection of former senior European politicians who were working with Manafort and covertly promoting Ukrainian interests in Washington.
After the superseding indictment’s public disclosure on Feb. 23, one of the people whom Manafort tried to call “sought to avoid Manafort” and “ended the call,” according to the affidavit. Manafort tried again with an encrypted text message, stating, “This is paul.” Two days later came another text with a news article describing the allegations and another message: “We should talk. I have made clear that they worked in Europe.”
Phone records obtained by Mueller’s office show that Manafort spoke briefly with the person on Feb. 24 and he then tried again on Feb. 25 and Feb. 27.
Mueller’s office also said that Person A, who has been previously identified as Konstantin Kilimnik, a Kiev-based operative believed to have Russian intelligence ties, separately tried to contact another member of the Hapsburg Group, described as Person D1, via encrypted text messages in an attempt to explain that Manafort was trying to reach him. To reach Person D1, though, Person A went through another unidentified individual, Person D2, who has told Mueller‘s team he handled press strategy for the Hapsburg Group.
“Basically P wants to give him a quick summary that he says to everybody (which is true) that our friends never lobbied in the US, and the purpose of the program was EU,” Person A said in one of the text messages Person D2.
According to the FBI affidavit, Person A tried to reach Person D2 again with another encrypted application four hours later. And one month later, Person A tried to reach out directly to Person D1.
In an interview with federal prosecutors, Person D1 told the government that they “understood Manafort’s messages to be an effort to ‘suborn perjury’ by influencing Person D1’s potential statements,” the FBI affidavit said.
“Person D1 well knew and believed from frequent interactions with its members that the Hapsburg group in fact lobbied in the United States, and that Manafort and Person A knew that fact,” the affidavit added.
Mueller accused Manafort in February of secretly hiring the “SUPER VIP” group known as the Hapsburg Group as part of his lobbying campaign conducted on behalf of the Ukrainian president at the time, Viktor Yanukovych.
The politicians appear to have included former Alfred Gusenbauer, a former Austrian chancellor, and Romano Prodi, a former Italian prime minister, who both visited Washington and met with members of Congress in 2013 as part of the lobbying campaign, according to retroactively submitted disclosure filings. Both men have denied being paid by Manafort.
Domin's declaration says the FBI obtained many of the messages from Manafort's associates identified as D1 and D2 sometime last month. The encrypted messages were sent via WhatsApp and Telegram, a summary filed by the government said. Domin said the FBI confirmed some of the messages were from Manafort by using data obtained from his iCloud account "pursuant to a court-authorized search."
A Manafort spokesman declined immediate comment on Mueller’s latest move.
Manafort, a longtime GOP operative, has been under house arrest since his first court appearance last October as he prepares to defend himself against two criminal cases lodged by Mueller’s prosecutors. In Washington, he is scheduled to go on trial Sept. 17 in a case involving charges of money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent in connection with his Ukraine-related work.
Separately, Manafort faces charges of tax evasion and bank fraud in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia. That criminal trial is slated to begin July 24.
Theo Meyer contributed to this report.
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