Manafort’s financial troubles raise questions about why he offered to work as an unpaid volunteer to the Trump campaign

Thomson Reuters

• Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s lobbying activities were more recent than previously known.
• Manafort’s last pro-Russia lobbying assignment was in October 2015, less than six months before he joined the campaign.
• Manafort’s financial troubles were also more extensive than have been reported, and the revelation raises new questions about why Manafort’s offer to work as an unpaid volunteer on the Trump campaign while mired in debt.

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Paul Manafort was in deeper financial trouble than previously known when he joined then-Republican candidate Donald Trump’s campaign as an unpaid volunteer in early 2016.

Manafort approached the Trump campaign in February 2016, touting himself to the billionaire and political neophyte as an outsider with few connections to the Washington establishment. He also offered to work without pay.

In March, the campaign tapped Manafort to be the point person in charge of securing delegate support for Trump at the upcoming Republican National Convention. Two months later, he was promoted to campaign chairman and chief strategist. His influence grew when Corey Lewandowski was booted out as campaign manager that June following a string of public controversies.

But as his role expanded, Manafort was buckling under increased financial strain. A new report from Bloomberg on Wednesday highlighted the extent of Manafort’s previous lobbying work and financial troubles when he was helming the Trump campaign, some of which was previously unreported.

In particular, the report said, Manafort made 17 trips to Ukraine in 2014 and 2015 to do lobbying work for the Opposition Bloc, the successor to Ukraine’s pro-Russia Party of Regions.

Manafort’s ties to the Party of Regions stretch back over a decade. When Trump first hired him in March 2016, Manafort was known for having worked as a top consultant to Viktor Yanukovych, the former Ukrainian president and strongman who was a prominent figure in the party. Manafort is widely credited with helping Yanukovych win the election in 2010.

Yanukovych was ousted from the presidency in 2014 amid widespread protests against his Russia-friendly positions, such as his decision to back out of a deal that would have promoted closer ties between Ukraine and the West, and distanced it from Russia. Yanukovych fled to Russia at the peak of the protests, and he is now living under the protection of the Kremlin.

Deeper into debt

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Following Yanukovych’s ouster, Manafort’s cash flow began to stutter.

In one project, the Opposition Bloc paid Manafort $1 million in October 2014 for his consulting work prior to Ukraine’s parliamentary election.

His last lobbying assignment for the group ended in October 2015 — less than six months before he joined the Trump campaign, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

He received only part of the money he was supposed to, and the group still owed him over $2 million, according to an allegedly fraudulent document he submitted as part of an effort to secure a bank loan in 2016.

When he joined the Trump campaign, Manafort’s financial records showed he was $17 million in debt to pro-Russian interests, The New York Times reported. Shell companies connected to Manafort during his time working for the Party of Regions bought the debt.

At the time, he also owed the wealthy Russian-Ukrainian oligarch Oleg Deripaska close to $20 million, per legal complaints Deripaska’s representatives filed in the Cayman Islands in 2014 and in New York in January.

The alleged dispute drew additional scrutiny last year, after The Atlantic published several emails appearing to show Manafort using his elevated role in the Trump campaign to resolve the situation with Deripaska.

Manafort reportedly wrote an email to his associate, Russian-Ukrainian operative Konstantin Kilimnik, offering to give Deripaska “private briefings” about the campaign.

“I assume you have shown our friends my media coverage, right?” Manafort reportedly wrote to Kilimnik, who has suspected ties to Russian intelligence.

“Absolutely,” replied Kilimnik. “Every article.”

“How do we use to get whole,” Manafort responded. “Has OVD operation seen?”

Former intelligence officials told Business Insider that Manafort was likely offering the briefings in an effort to repay his debt to Deripaska, who is closely allied with the Kremlin. Investigators have concluded that “OVD” was a reference to his full name: Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska.

Kilimnik reportedly told Manafort in a later email that he had been “sending everything to Victor, who has been forwarding the coverage directly to OVD.” Victor was a senior aide to Deripaska, according to The Atlantic.

Under the special counsel’s scrutiny

REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Manafort’s spokesperson declined to comment on-the-record when asked why Manafort offered to work for the Trump campaign for free when he was under mounting financial strain, and whether Manafort asked to become a paid employee at any point during his transition from delegate wrangler to campaign chairman.

Manafort resigned from the campaign in August 2016, three days after The Times reported that the Party of Regions had earmarked $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments for his work consulting for the party between 2007 and 2012.

Manafort and his longtime associate, Rick Gates, were charged last October with a dozen counts related to money laundering, failure to register as foreign agents when they were working for the Ukrainian government, and conspiracy against the US.

Last week, special counsel Robert Mueller’s office filed a 32-count superseding indictment against Manafort and Gates in Virginia, charging them with tax and bank fraud stemming from their lobbying work. Mueller is leading the Justice Department’s investigation into Russia’s election interference, and the Trump campaign’s possible involvement.

Gates pleaded guilty to two counts related to conspiracy against the US and making a false statement to investigators shortly after Mueller’s team lodged the superseding indictment. He’s now a key cooperating witness in the Russia investigation.

Manafort maintained his innocence and pleaded not guilty to the latest charges during a court appearance in Washington, DC on Wednesday.

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Guns and religion mix as Pa. church blesses couples toting AR-15s

NEWFOUNDLAND, Pa. — Guns and religion are bone-deep in America, and no one seems to have figured that out better than the Moon brothers.

Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon is pastor of the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary in this small town in rural Wayne County, 120 miles north of Philadelphia. His brother, Moon Kook-jin, also known as Justin Moon, owns Kahr Arms, a firearms manufacturing company 30 minutes away in Pike County.

Both are sons of the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a self-proclaimed messiah who founded the controversial Unification Church, often described as a cult by its detractors. But the father, who died in 2012, never called on his followers to arm themselves with semi-automatic rifles.

On Wednesday morning, Sean Moon’s Sanctuary held a marriage blessing that brought in hundreds of followers, from as far away as Japan, South Korea, and Europe. All were asked to bring their “rods of iron,” a Bible reference from the fiery Book of Revelation that he has interpreted to mean firearms — specifically the AR-15.

Anyone without an AR-15 could buy one at Kahr Arms.

“I actually purchased my weapon there yesterday because, although I have several rifles, I didn’t have an AR-15,” said David Konn, a follower who had driven from Florida earlier in the week. “I think it retails for $689.”

The ceremony’s official name was the Cosmic True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humanity Cheon Il Guk Book of Life Registration Blessing. It was part of the church’s weeklong “Festival of Grace,” which included a “President Trump Thank You Dinner” on Saturday. Wednesday’s church ceremony garnered international attention because of the call for couples to bring AR-15s, a popular semi-automatic rifle that has been used in many of the nation’s worst mass shootings, including the Valentine’s Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.

“The country is nervous,” said church follower Carolyn Burkholder, 70.

Burkholder was adjusting a trigger lock on her AR-15 in the trunk of her car, near a child’s car seat. She wore a crown.

“Some people see this gun, and they get scared,” she said. “I used to be scared a little.”

Indeed, the Wallenpaupack Area School District relocated students from a nearby elementary school to other locations for the day.

Inside the church, nearly everyone wore a crown. One was made of bullets. Several dozen people carried AR-15s, with their magazines and ammunition removed; others held small pistols. One man, who declined to give his name, placed a carnation in his rifle’s muzzle.

Tim Elder, a church official, emphasized that the morning’s event was a marriage blessing and not a “a blessing of inanimate firearms.” He also instructed armed attendees to point their muzzles down when Moon and his wife, Yeon-Ah Lee, came in with the “royal procession.”

“No, wait. I mean muzzles up,” Elder said.

 

A large part of the service was in Korean, though everyone stood for the singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Moon, who grew up in Tarrytown, N.Y., and attended Harvard University,  spoke in English about the “last days” and combating the evils of socialism and communism. His wife held an AR-15.

“We are so grateful that we are receiving these accouterments of royalty, of kings and queens, of sovereignty, of kingdom, of protection and self-defense,” Moon said of the guns.

On Monday, Justin Moon told the Inquirer and Daily News that his firearms company, which has sold weapons to police departments across the country, was merely a sponsor of the Festival of Grace. He attends the church.

“We sell a few guns,” he said. “That’s no secret. That’s my profession. I’m a gun manufacturer, so I support the Second and First Amendment.”

Outside, along Main Street, a small group of protesters gathered, jawing with followers who held a large banner with Trump’s face emblazoned on it. One woman from Scranton carried a sign calling the followers “Stunads”— mentally confused. Another said Moon’s Bible interpretation made as much sense as, say, “Rod of Pickles.” So some carried signs with pickles on them.

One protester, Teddy Hose, said he grew up with Sean Moon and the Unification Church in Tarrytown but left the church with his entire family.

“Sean was a bully,” Hose, 39, said.

Hose said the inclusion of semi-automatic weapons “makes it seem even more like bull—.”

The original Unification Church considers Sean Moon’s church a “breakaway” group, and issued a news release saying guns play no part in its services or doctrine. The son, the Unification Church says, rebelled against his mother to found the Sanctuary.

A strange mashing-together of cultures Wednesday meant some men wore tuxedos, while others simply drove in from Northeast Pennsylvania in jeans and NRA hats — men who use their weapons mostly to hunt whitetail deer in the fall and winter.

“I came in support of the Second Amendment,” said Bob Bauer, 80, of nearby Greentown. “What’s happened in this country recently is an affirmation. People need to be able to take care of themselves.”

Bauer held a .38-caliber pistol in his hand during the ceremony.

No matter how much anyone tried to explain it all, Carol Ward, 59, sat on the front porch of her old farmhouse across from the Sanctuary both baffled and annoyed. She’d never seen so many people in Newfoundland before, and in all her years there, she never knew hunters to carry an AR-15 come opening day.

“This whole thing, all this, is ridiculous,” she said, smoking a small cigar. “They’re very dedicated to what they believe in, I guess, whatever the hell that is.”

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