Paul Manafort registers as foreign agent

The firm headed by Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, made more than $17 million working as a foreign agent of a pro-Russian Ukrainian political party, according to newly filed disclosure reports.

Trump forced Manafort to step down from his campaign last year after The Associated Press reported that Manafort and another Trump campaign official, Rick Gates, had secretly helped the Ukrainian Party of Regions steer money to two Washington lobbying firms through a nonprofit.

Neither Manafort nor the lobbying firms registered with the Justice Department as foreign agents working on behalf of the party at the time. The lobbying firms, Mercury and the Podesta Group, belatedly filed reports in April that detailed their lobbying on behalf of the nonprofit, the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, back in 2012. A Manafort spokesman said at the time that Manafort planned to file similar paperwork.

The filing makes Manafort the second Trump campaign official to retroactively disclose foreign lobbying. Michael Flynn, Trump’s ousted former national security adviser, filed paperwork earlier this year admitting that he had done lobbying that benefited the Turkish government while advising Trump’s campaign.

Jason Maloni, a Manafort spokesman, suggested that what Flynn did was worse. “Paul’s work ended well before he joined Candidate Trump’s campaign,” Maloni said in a statement. “Unlike Flynn, Paul was not simultaneously working as a foreign agent while he was working for Trump.”

Investigators are said to be looking at both Manafort and Flynn as part of the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, led by Robert Mueller.

Maloni did not say directly why Manafort didn’t disclose his activities at the time. Willfully failing to report under the Foreign Agent Registration Act is a felony, but the Justice Department rarely prosecutes violations.

Manafort “started this process in concert with FARA’s unit in September,” Maloni said, shortly after the AP revealed his role “and well before any formal investigation of election interference began.”

“Paul’s primary focus was always directed at domestic Ukrainian political campaign work, and that is reflected in today’s filing,” he added.

In the new documents, Manafort says he gave “strategic counsel and advice to members of the Party of Regions regarding their interaction with U.S. government officials and other Western influential persons to advance the goal of greater political and economic integration between the Ukraine and the West” while working for the party from 2012 to 2014. He also advised the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, the nonprofit that hired Mercury and the Podesta Group, “which was also working for the same purpose.”

While Manafort described the Party of Regions as seeking closer ties with the West, the party is widely viewed as pro-Russian. Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president while Manafort was working in Ukraine and the leader of that party, fled the country for Russia in 2014 amid protests against his government’s close ties to the country.

Manafort’s firm received a total of $17.1 million for his work on behalf of the party, including $12.1 million in 2012, $4.5 million in 2013 and $500,000 in early 2014 before Yanukovych fled the country.

Manafort help elect the party’s candidates in national and regional elections, according to the filing. He was also a “source of information for the U.S. Embassy in Kiev regarding developing events in Ukraine.” In 2012, Manafort’s firm emailed John Tefft, at the time the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, to advise him on the American statement on the Ukrainian elections.

The filing also reveals that Manafort or Gates met in 2013 with Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), who is considered Russia’s most reliable defender in Congress. Manafort or Gates also met with Paula Dobriansky, a former U.S. official who’s now a senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, and Nadia Diuk, a vice president at the National Endowment for Democracy.

Rohrabacher, Dobriansky and Diuk didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. The State Department didn’t respond to questions about Manafort’s role in advising Tefft and the U.S. embassy in Kiev. (Tefft is now the U.S. ambassador to Russia.)

Manafort also hired other firms and operatives to help with his work for the party, including Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian Army-trained linguist who had worked for Manafort since 2005. POLITICO reported in March that Kilimnik had come under scrutiny from the FBI and the State Department after traveling to the U.S. and meeting Manafort during the campaign. Manafort’s firm paid Kilimnik $458,000 over the course of 2013 and early 2014, according to the filing.

The filing leaves open the possibility that Manafort did more in Ukraine that he admits in the document.

“Please Note: The information contained in this filing, including but not limited to descriptions of activities giving rise to the Registrant’s present registration and/or contemporaneous financial receipts or disbursements, reflect only Registrant’s best recollection of relevant events and such records currently available, to the knowledge and belief of the Registrant, for review by the Registrant and his legal counsel,” the filing states. “The Registrant may amend and/or supplement such disclosures should additional, relevant information become available.”