The truth about Deripaska, Veselnitskaya and the Trump deal with the Kremlin: that Manafort can tell the special prosecutor Müller

On Friday, August 14, the former head of the campaign headquarters Donald Trump Paul Manafort agreed to a deal with the US special prosecutor Robert Muller. Under the terms of the transaction, Manafort is obliged to fully cooperate with the investigation, which implies not only frank testimonies at interrogations, but also the transfer of all the documents of interest to prosecutors and even participation in the operations under the cover. This means that the special prosecutor has a chance to receive the testimony of one of the key figures of the investigation about the possible intervention of Russia in the US election, which has previously evaded cooperation, writes Bloomberg. What can Müller Manafort, familiar with the president since the 1980s? The special prosecutor may have a wide range of issues for Manafort: from the famous meeting with Russian Natalya Veselnitskaya in Trump Tower to his relationship with Russian billionaires. The investigation also has something to ask about the ex-head of Trump’s election headquarters already existing in the case of emails and banking documents.

Meeting in Trump Tower

One of the main questions for Manafort is the question of what happened in Trump Tower on June 9, 2016. It is known that on this day a meeting of the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. , Manafort, son-in-law of President Jared Kushner and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya took place. The meeting was to discuss a certain compromising information for the presidential candidate from the Democrats Hillary Clinton. However, as Trump Jr. and Kushner said at the hearing in Congress, the meeting was little informative and could not harm the US election system, and the Magnitsky law was discussed most of the time. This document is also mentioned in the notes that Manafort made in his iPhone during the meeting and which are at the disposal of the investigation. However, manfort records give a definite answer not to all the questions that the prosecutors have, and now they can fill in white spots.

Müller may also be interested in the meeting between Manafort, Kushner and Trump Jr., held two days before. The lawyer Trump Rudolf Juliani talked about this meeting. According to him, the meeting on June 7 was dedicated to the topic unrelated with the election in the USA.

Changing the position of Republicans in Ukraine

The interrogation of Manafort may also shed light on the reasons for changing the position of the Republicans in Ukraine. We are talking about the Congress of the Republican Party in July 2016. During it, the position of Republicans in Ukraine softened - if it was initially assumed that the party’s platform will record the need for the supply of lethal weapons to Kyiv, then after the congress it was already about the “adequate support” of Ukraine.

The interest of Müller is also caused by $ 60 million earned by Manafort in Ukraine - the investigation believes that the lobbyist could get them working for pro -Russian Ukrainian politicians. After the flight of Viktor Yanukovych and the events in the east of Ukraine, Manafort lost contracts and returned to the United States, where he began to work with Trump.

Russian billionaires

Manafort also appeared in the scandalous dossier of the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steel . In it, Style claims that Manafort coordinated the secret agreements between the headquarters of Trump and Russia and used the adviser on the foreign policy of Carter Page as an intermediary for communicating with the Russians. Trump and Republicans say that the dossier, which was funded mainly by Clinton’s headquarters and democrats, was a pretext for starting the Russian investigation by Müller.

Manafort can tell the special prosecutor about his work with Russian oligarchs. Especially interested in the consequence of the connection of lawyer and Oleg Deripaska , who in the United States is considered a businessman from the environment of Vladimir Putin. According to the Associated Press, the structures of the Russian businessman were paid to Manafort structures from 2006 to 2009 to $ 40 million. Because of this publication, Deripaska sued the agency, but lost the court, appealed, but then withdrew the complaint. From the court documents on the Kaiman Islands, it is known that Deripaska handed over to Manafort and his business partner Richard Gates $ 19 million. Together they created the Perields Emerging Markets investment fund, wrote The New York Times. The Fund bought communication assets in Eastern Europe, including those interested in the Ukrainian operator of the Black Sea Cable cable television.

In 2016, Manafort proposed advising Deripaska’s private order and tried to transfer this proposal through the intermediary of Konstantin Kilimnik , the Russian-Ukrainian politician who is believed to have ties with Russian intelligence. The edition of Washington Post wrote that the lobbyist proposed private consultations on the Trump election campaign. In June, Müller added a kilimnik to the indictment against Manafort.

Deripaska denies receiving a proposal, as well as participation in briefings with Manafort.

Obstacle of justice

Another question that Müller can ask is the question of Trump's possible attempts to prevent the work of the US Ministry of Justice as part of the Russian Investigation. The special prosecutor may be interested in whether the president or his environment was connected with Manafort and whether the presidential pardon or mitigation of punishment in exchange for silence promised.

However, Trump’s lawyer Rudolph Juliani rejects the significance of Manafort’s transaction with the special prosecutor. “The investigation once again came to conclusions not related to Trump or his campaign. Reason: the president did nothing illegal, ”he told the press. Juliani also noted that Trump's opinion about Manafort has not changed - he still considers him a good person with whom he was unfairly treated.

Anton Baev