Not Yanukovych: why the ex-head of the Trump campaign does not want to talk about his work in Ukraine

Lawyers for Paul Manafort, the former head of Donald Trump's campaign headquarters, are asking the court to exclude from the case evidence related to Manafort's work for Viktor Yanukovych and his Party of Regions. Agents of Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the US elections, have collected 474 pages of documents and photographs to prove that Manafort received hundreds of millions of dollars from Ukrainian politicians and oligarchs, but did not pay US taxes on them.

Details

• Paul Manafort is the only high-ranking member of the Trump campaign so far to be in the dock. He was charged immediately under 12 articles. In addition to tax evasion, Manafort is accused of fraud in obtaining bank loans for $ 20 million, money laundering, working in the United States as an unregistered foreign agent of Ukraine and obstruction of justice.
• Mueller's team is going to present fifty documents to the jury, which, according to the investigation, prove Manafort's guilt in hiding income and tax evasion while working for Yanukovych. This dossier contains joint photographs, political strategy materials, plans for PR campaigns and much more.
• One of the documents is a letter to Manafort from Ted Devine, the Democrat who ran the campaign for U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Devine's firm helped Manafort advise Yanukovych. In the letter, Devine wrote that Manafort deserves the highest praise for the way he ran Yanukovych's 2010 presidential campaign. Manafort replied that in 35 years of his career, this was the best thing he did.
• Prosecutor Greg Andres, who spoke in court during the preliminary hearing on the side of the Mueller team, said that all these documents directly indicate how Manafort made his money. The materials mention the names of many Ukrainian oligarchs and Cypriot companies controlled by them, which paid Manafort's bills for work in Ukraine, he said. Also, these materials testify to the constant interaction between Manafort and Ukrainian officials.
• But Manafort's lawyers ask not to bring them to the jury: calling the materials collected irrelevant and full of prejudice, they insist that the court will only waste time studying all these documents.

Context

Manafort could become one of the main witnesses in the case of Russian interference in the American elections, for which Russia is now facing new sanctions . But so far, no charges have been brought against Manafort that would directly relate to this story. However, this is not the end - according to CNN, is preparing to his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen testify against Trump. He can tell the investigation that Trump was aware of and approved the meeting of his representatives with lawyer Natalya Veselnitskaya, which was being prepared in the summer of 2016. She promised to pass on to Trump's associates, including Manafort, compromising information on Hillary Clinton. If this can be proven, the President of the United States may face prosecution, writes Bloomberg.

Liana Faizova