Court documents released this week in the government's case against Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in Virginia offer more detail concerning some of the charges he's facing.
CNN:
The search warrant documents, which have been available in court records for months but previously had dozens of pages redacted, reveal for the first time how prosecutors believe former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian's financial backer Rinat Akhmetov and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska propped up Manafort's alleged crimes.
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Prosecutors have previously said Manafort engaged in a money laundering conspiracy after he hid his foreign lobbying activities. But the newly unredacted parts of the search warrants for the first time connect Manafort and his longtime deputy Rick Gates to alleged Ukrainian government corruption.
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In an interview with FBI investigators in 2014, Gates said "that various oligarchs would chip in to pay them for their consulting work," according to the search warrant. Earlier this year, Gates pleaded guilty to lying to investigators and engaging in a conspiracy related to the Manafort business and lobbying work. He has since been cooperating with prosecutors and has not yet been sentenced for the crimes.
"Gates said he was directed by Ukrainians to open accounts in Cyprus and Grenadines. Gates was told that it was easier for the Ukrainians to pay Gates and Manafort from one Cypriot account to another Cypriot account. Gates was also told that Ukrainians did not want others to know the identity of their campaign manager," one search warrant affidavit says.
The affidavit also lists a $10 million loan that Deripaska gave to a Manafort business, citing 2010 tax records. It also mentions another unnamed oligarch that Manafort worked with to discuss an unspecified New York real estate transaction.
Deripaska has said that instead of assisting Manafort's scheme, he was its victim. The Russian accused Manafort and Gates in a lawsuit earlier this year of "vanishing" $26 million he gave them a decade ago. It's not clear whether the $10 million loan mentioned in the warrant this week was part of the transfers Deripaska named in the lawsuit, though The Associated Press reported last year that Manafort had a $10 million annual contract with Deripaska that began in 2006 and ran for a few years. The lawsuit, which Deripaska filed in New York state following Manafort and Gates' indictment by special counsel Robert Mueller, is now paused because of the criminal matter.
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The search warrant affidavit says that a shell company Manafort controlled -- named John Hannah LLC after Manafort's and another business partners' middle names -- received the large loan from Deripaska. Manafort used the same shell company to purchase an apartment in Trump Tower years earlier, in 2006, according to public records. That was around the time Deripaska began funding Manafort's work, according to the court filing.
One warrant also says that Manafort was deeply in debt when he worked for Trump in 2016 and especially at the time he left the campaign that August.
The court released the more revealing versions of search warrants and affidavits in advance of a hearing tomorrow during which Judge T.S. Ellis will consider Manafort's request to have certain seized evidence excluded from trial.
Also today, Manafort added another lawyer, Frank Cihlar, to his DC team. Cihlar and Manafort's lead attorney, Kevin Downing, have worked together in the past.
Cihlar signed on to a motion Manafort's defense team submitted Thursday asking the court to let their client out of jail so he can prepare for his two upcoming federal trials.
Investigators detail Manafort money from Ukrainian corruption, Russian oligarch (CNN)