Paul Manafort, former campaign leader for Donald Trump, and business partner Rick Gates face a new raft of federal charges in Special Counsel Robert Muller’s Russia-related probe for the Department of Justice.
A grand jury indictment filed this afternoon accuses the two men of hiding millions of dollars in income from Manafort’s lobbying on behalf of Ukraine and not reporting it to the IRS. Then, after that money dried up (when the Ukrainian president Manafort had been representing fled to Russia after being removed from office), the two men obtained millions in bank loans on their real estate by falsely inflating Manafort’s income and failing to disclose debts.
All told, the grand jury included 32 charges in this new indictment. This is on top of the previous indictment of the two men in October for concealing their ties with the Ukrainian government and failing to properly register as agents of a foreign official.
As with the previous indictment, nothing in these charges directly entangles Trump into any allegations of election manipulation with the Russian government. For that matter, the charges don’t even accuse Manafort or Gates of participating in any sort of election manipulation scheme. These charges are all accusing the two men of concealing from the government the millions of dollars Manafort made from Ukraine and then engaging in fraudulent claims to get bank loans.
Read the indictment yourself here.
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