MORE Mueller Time: After Gates guilty plea, a SURPRISE NEW indictment from the special counsel
It’s Friday just before 5pmEST, and we’ve just learned that Bob Mueller’s day was not over:
Breaking at 4:43pm: Mueller filing NEW charges against Paul Manafort, connected to secret payments to former European politicians.
— Ari Melber (@AriMelber) February 23, 2018
According to Nicole Wallace on MSNBC, the charges involve Manafort wiring 2 million Euros to four European politicians in an effort to get them to lobby on behalf of Russian-backed Ukranian politicians and policies. The Patch has yet more specifics:
Special counsel Robert Mueller is accusing President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman of secretly paying former European politicians to lobby on behalf of Ukraine.
The new allegation against Paul Manafort comes in a newly unsealed indictment made public Friday. The indictment followed a guilty plea by Manafort’s longtime business associate, Rick Gates.
The indictment accuses Manafort of paying the former politicians, informally known as the “Hapsburg group,” to appear to be “independent” analysts when in fact they were paid lobbyists. Some of the covert lobbying took place in the U.S.
The indictment says the group was managed by a former European chancellor. Court papers accuse Manafort of using offshore accounts to pay the group more than 2 million euros.
Make no mistake: Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team are putting pressure on Mueller to flip on someone. Trump? Maybe Pence? (Manafort did, after all, have a lot to do with the choice of Trump’s running mate.) Maybe BOTH?
