--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hello, Mom! Yes, Sean? You'll never believe it, but this is the last week of Uber ads for a good while, Mom.
--:-- [Sean is speaking to his mother]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wow! I wanted to kind of call all my Uber friends and touch base and see how their lives have changed since we started talking about Uber.
--:-- [Sean continues speaking to his mother]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh! I did take a Uber... Well, before you get into it, though, I just want to remind you that Uber is moving forward, and you can find out how the company's adding new features to the app at uber.com slash moving forward. Uber.com slash moving forward.
--:-- [Sean returns to speaking about the topic at hand]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The very first trial to come out of the Robert Mueller investigation begins tomorrow in Alexandria, Virginia. And it's a bit of a doozy. Five counts of filing false income tax returns. Four counts of failing to report foreign bank accounts. Four counts of bank fraud charges. And five counts of bank fraud conspiracy. Paul Manafort is facing the music and Andrew Prokop has been following along for Vox.
--:-- [Sean introduces the guest]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So Manafort has been kind of a legendary figure in Republican consulting and lobbyist circles for decades. He worked on several presidential campaigns and then he started this mega lobbying business that just raked in cash from all sorts of shady clients abroad. But the most money he made, it seems, was doing work for the government of Ukraine. Amounting to over $12 million given to Manafort over five years.
--:-- [Andrew Prokop begins speaking]
--:-- Andrew Prokop: In 2016, he joined Donald Trump's presidential campaign and was the campaign chairman for several months. Today, the resignation of the embattled campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, amid a wave of bad headlines and growing questions about Manafort's connections to Russia.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So what's the trial about? It sounds like a lot of financial crime. It's a little complicated because he's actually facing two trials. The one this week in Virginia, the first trial, it's basically a set of charges that are all related to his finances. how he made tons of money from his work in Ukraine, parked the money in a set of offshore accounts, and used it to buy luxury goods and services for himself in the U.S. and real estate without ever paying taxes on it or declaring it as income.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: They are showing his spending like his home putting green, high-priced Yankees tickets, a $21,000 watch, designer clothes, Oriental rugs. Then there are another set of charges about what he tried to do for cash afterwards, doctoring his company's profit and loss forms to get these big hefty loans that would give him some more liquid cash.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: In addition to these 18 charges Paul Manafort is facing in Virginia for all this money laundering and bank fraud, there's this whole other trial that's going to begin in September in D.C.? Yes. So he's charged with seven other counts, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to launder money, acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign principle, making false and misleading Foreign Agent Registration Act statements, another false statements charge, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So this sounds more like the juicy conspiratorial stuff that the Mueller investigation sort of has as a stock and trade. It is more about foreign influence, but there's still nothing that directly alleges that Manafort worked with the Russian government to interfere with the 2016 campaign.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Okay, tell me a bit more about these financial crimes at issue in this first trial that starts tomorrow in Virginia. Around 2005, Manafort started working for the pro-Russian political party in Ukraine and its leader, Viktor Yanukovych. They were out of power at the time, and Manafort put together a campaign strategy to put them back in power.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He redid his look, his physical appearance, the suits he wore, the way he did his hair, and then put together like really a top-notch American-style political campaign. Yanukovych became president. He ruled for four years and kept paying Manafort in that time. Manafort's name is scrawled 22 times in a handwritten list of cash payments that's known in Ukraine as the Black Ledger.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: While that was going on, Manafort set up these offshore bank accounts. And Mueller says that about $75 million passed through them from Ukraine in this period. Manafort would basically use that money directly to buy things for himself in the U.S. He would wire the money from his foreign offshore accounts to a home improvement company in the Hamptons or an antique rug store in Alexandria Virginia or a men clothing store in New York
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And several cars are involved too, three different Range Rovers, a Mercedes. Basically, Manafort was living the high life, and he spent about $12 million directly from these offshore accounts without ever mentioning it in his tax returns as income.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Mueller essentially argues that this violated the law in two ways. One is that he didn't report any of this money on his income tax returns or pay taxes on it. So then in early 2014, Yanukovych was deposed. A leader backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and so deeply unpopular for his rampant corruption that he was chased out of his multi-billion dollar palace and into exile in Russia. Manafort stopped getting those big payments.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So there's a second set of charges about what he supposedly tried to do to get cash then, which was basically a constant series of alleged misstatements or outright lies on documents he'd submit to banks to try to get loans on the properties he owned.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Has the president commented on these trials? Does he view this as a great injustice or is he on board with this aspect of the Mueller investigation?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Trump has interestingly been a little reticent to weigh in on Manafort. I think that's because the charges against Manafort are very serious and very strong. Like, you know, it's not like just money. He's accused of essentially laundering $30 million and then, you know, defrauding three different banks.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So what he's done is basically tried to argue that this prosecution is unfair because, you know, Democrats do similar things and they don't get prosecuted, which is pretty ridiculous. I haven't heard of a Democrat being accused of laundering $30 million and not being prosecuted for it.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But that's where we are. Lately, Trump has been complaining that Manafort was sent to jail. Let me pull up the tweets. Evergreen statement. Let me pull up the tweets. Didn't know Manafort was the head of the mob. What about Comey and crooked Hillary and all the others? Very unfair.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What kind of argument is that? What? Yeah, I guess, you know. What about Comey? What about James Comey?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Oh my god. Is anyone testifying against him from like the Trump campaign or anywhere else in either of these two trials?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the star witness against Manafort is his protege, Rick Gates, who worked with him in Ukraine, worked with him on the Trump campaign, was charged with him by Mueller last October. And in February, Gates cut a plea deal in exchange for his cooperation.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So he's expected to take the stand in both the Virginia and D.C. trials to make the case for why his former boss is a criminal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How did it take the Mueller investigation to crack open insane amounts of bank fraud and money laundering? Wouldn't that be something that someone else would catch on to sooner?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He was actually under investigation for this back in 2014. The FBI was looking into him, but for whatever reason, they didn't decide to move forward with it then. Only after he got this high-level role on the Trump campaign and then allegations of potentially being involved in collusion with Russia. Here we are.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's charged with all of these offenses related to his finances, his foreign lobbying, but still not yet anything directly related to interfering with the 2016 election.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So Mueller has been going about this investigation very purposefully, and he's had his eye on Manafort from the very start. And that's for good reason. I mean, if you're investigating whether Donald Trump's presidential campaign of 2016 worked with the Russian government to interfere with the election, then maybe the guy who has a history of working for pro-Russian interests in the region and who happened to be heavily in debt to a Russian oligarch at the time, is pretty clearly someone who you should be investigating.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And there are a couple of things we know publicly that Manafort did during the campaign that have raised some questions. Manafort attended the infamous meeting at Trump Tower that Donald Trump Jr. set up with a Russian lawyer.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Then there are a series of interesting emails that Manafort sent during the campaign that have come to light. These emails involve two people. One is Oleg Deripaska, the billionaire Russian oligarch who Manafort used to work for and was in a whole lot of debt to.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: The AP reports Manafort told Deripaska in 2005 he was pushing policies, quote, at the highest levels of the U.S. government, the White House, Capitol Hill, and the State Department. According to the documents and according to the report, Manafort wrote in his memo, we are now of the belief that this model can greatly benefit the Putin government if employed at the correct levels with the appropriate commitment to success, end quote.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And then there was Konstantin Kilimnik, who used to work for Manafort in Ukraine, and Mueller says that he is tied to Russian intelligence. Manafort and Kilimnik emailed each other basically talking about connecting his Trump campaign work to satisfying his debt to Oleg Deripaska in some way.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: At the end of July 2016, Kilimnik writes that he had met with, quote, the guy who gave you your biggest black caviar jar. I have several important messages from him to you. Like actual caviar? Money. Caviar being code for money. It's really good code.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I just wonder, you know, thinking about this guy who has been involved in foreign elections for over 30 years and has supported all sorts of sort of foreign strongmen, what even made him a viable political actor in the United States after all of that shady business abroad?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But he really wasn't viable. He hadn't worked in American politics really for many years. The only reason that Trump turned to him specifically is he so distrusted the rest of the Republican establishment. And also Manafort happened to own a property in Trump Tower.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Only a campaign this uncaring about potential ethical problems and also just plain lacking connections with the existing mainstream Republican establishment would pluck out this shady figure who had been focusing almost entirely on shady regimes abroad and then say, this is the guy I want to run my presidential campaign.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Andrew Prokop reports on politics for Vox.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram from This Is Today Explained. Support for our show today comes from Uber. Uber is moving forward and adding new features to its app to take the stress out of pickup one of them is called pickup notes where you can text your driver a little something before he or she picks you up like hey I'm the guy who looks like sasquatch find out more at uber.com slash moving forward.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, tell me about your life. Oh, my life? It's very hot in Southern California. No, no, I mean your life since finding out about Uber.com slash moving forward.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, Uber. Okay. Well, week before last, I had to go somewhere in the night, late night. So I did take over, and it was a good ride, I guess.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, nice. Did you use pickup notes to describe yourself? Did you say, like, I'm the lady who rated and reviewed Today Explained on Apple Podcasts because that kind of thing actually does really help the show?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No, I didn't give them any pickup notes. No, I didn't. Okay, fair enough.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Have you ever listened to the Reveal podcast, Mom? Reveal? No. It's seriously one of the best shows in existence. It's from the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX. And, you know, as you'd expect, it has a lot of great investigative storytelling.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I will listen to it. Yeah, the newest episodes about this American war crime from World War Two that's sort of been lost to history. It's about how American soldiers opened fire on a bunch of German soldiers who were prisoners of war and unarmed at the time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, my gosh. Yeah, they get this 93 year old veteran to talk about the secret that he's been keeping for more than 70 years. Wow.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Anyway, yeah, you can find it on Apple Podcasts. Apple Podcasts? Okay. All right. All right, darling. You take care. You too. Bye.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Andrew Prokop, none of the charges in the D.C. trial or the Virginia trial have anything to do with the Trump campaign and collusion with Russia. So why should people care about this?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So Mueller has been going about this investigation very purposefully, and he's had his eye on Manafort from the very start. And that's for good reason. I mean, if you're investigating whether Donald Trump's presidential campaign of 2016 worked with the Russian government to interfere with the election, then maybe the guy who has a history of working for pro-Russian interests in the region and who happened to be heavily in debt to a Russian oligarch at the time, is pretty clearly someone who you should be investigating.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And there are a couple of things we know publicly that Manafort did during the campaign that have raised some questions. Manafort attended the infamous meeting at Trump Tower that Donald Trump Jr. set up with a Russian lawyer.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Then there are a series of interesting emails that Manafort sent during the campaign that have come to light. These emails involve two people. One is Oleg Deripaska, the billionaire Russian oligarch who Manafort used to work for and was in a whole lot of debt to.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: The AP reports Manafort told Deripaska in 2005 he was pushing policies, quote, at the highest levels of the U.S. government, the White House, Capitol Hill, and the State Department. According to the documents and according to the report, Manafort wrote in his memo, we are now of the belief that this model can greatly benefit the Putin government if employed at the correct levels with the appropriate commitment to success, end quote.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And then there was Konstantin Kilimnik, who used to work for Manafort in Ukraine, and Mueller says that he is tied to Russian intelligence. Manafort and Kilimnik emailed each other basically talking about connecting his Trump campaign work to satisfying his debt to Oleg Deripaska in some way.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: At the end of July 2016, Kilimnik writes that he had met with, quote, the guy who gave you your biggest black caviar jar. I have several important messages from him to you. Like actual caviar? Money. Caviar being code for money. It's really good code.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I've always thought this is a really big loose end from the 2016 campaign. We don't know what this was really about, what Manafort might have offered or actually done for Oleg Daripaska, as clearly seems to be discussed in these emails.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Most people think that all of these charges against Manafort are essentially being brought against him to pressure him to flip on Trump And yet he hasn been flipping Why hasn he flipped The most likely explanation is that he just waiting for a pardon If he keeps his mouth shut and doesn tell Mueller anything, President Donald Trump will get him out of prison and he'll skate away.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Was there a time in Paul Manafort's political career where he wasn't involved in shady dealings? Maybe like the earliest in the 1970s. And what was he doing then?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He was involved in young Republican circles. He worked on Gerald Ford's 1976 presidential campaign and then formed this big lobbying business right after Ronald Reagan won the presidency.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So, you know, this has deep roots. And then how long before he gets involved in foreign elections? It was already in the 1980s when Manafort was reaching out to do business to some of the shadier authoritarian regimes or violent opposition movements around the world.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He had the Marcos regime in the Philippines was one of his big clients in the 80s. He ruled under martial law for most of his 20 years in power. His dictatorial regime is accused of widespread human rights abuses, including killing 3,000 opponents and torturing tens of thousands of others.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: The right-wing guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi of Angola, he did a whole PR campaign for him in D.C., even though his troops were accused of all sorts of crimes. All of that basically seems to have really given Manafort a taste for making a lot of money.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: That's why he eventually reached out to the former Soviet Union, where these massive fortunes had just been made by oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska from Russia or Ukrainian oligarchs, too, who funded Manafort's work.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: and what about an individual like this would have looked most appealing to the trump campaign when it hired him as a campaign manager in 2016 trump had done well in a couple of the early states in february 2016 but he had a problem in that to actually get the nomination you need to get the delegates to vote for you at the Republican convention. And his campaign team at the time, which was a pretty small crew, didn't really have any experience in doing that.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And Manafort had a ton of experience with that. He had worked at Republican presidential conventions, 1976, Gerald Ford, 1980, Ronald Reagan, and 1996, Bob Dole. And he knew how to put together a strategy to actually lock down the delegates and make sure that they vote for Donald Trump.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He was brought in first to just do this delegate wrangling job and then within a couple months had taken over the whole campaign.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I just wonder, you know, thinking about this guy who has been involved in foreign elections for over 30 years and has supported all sorts of sort of foreign strongmen, what even made him a viable political actor in the United States after all of that shady business abroad?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But he really wasn't viable. He hadn't worked in American politics really for many years. The only reason that Trump turned to him specifically is he so distrusted the rest of the Republican establishment. And also Manafort happened to own a property in Trump Tower.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Oh, is that right? That's a good thing to bond about with your new boss. Only a campaign this uncaring about potential ethical problems and also just plain lacking connections with the existing mainstream Republican establishment would pluck out this shady figure who had been focusing almost entirely on shady regimes abroad and then say, this is the guy I want to run my presidential campaign.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Andrew Prokop reports on politics for Vox.
