The most significant lies affirmed by the court today are those regarding Russian Intelligence Officer Konstantin Kilimnik and the meeting at the Havana Club on August 2. The key points, which
were touched upon nicely in this WaPo article yesterday:
- The meeting happened while Manafort was Trump's Campaign Chairman, and was with a person he knew to be a Russian Intelligence Officer.
- The purpose of the meeting was discussion of a "Ukrainian Peace Plan" which would have involved splitting Ukraine in two and removing all US sanctions - an extremely favorable outcome for Russia.
- Manafort gave Kilimnik extremely detailed, private internal polling data. This happened after Manafort attended the Trump Tower Meeting, and clearly knew that Russia was actively engaged in an effort to get Trump elected.
- The Special Counsel explicitly notes that Manafort's lies on these points was motivated by a desire to secure a pardon, implying that telling the full truth would be highly damaging to Donald Trump personally.
- It is also worth noting that Kilimnik was funnelling money into the Trump Inauguration through GOP operative Sam Patten, who continues to cooperate.
All occurrences of the word "Peace Plan" are redacted, but Marcy Wheeler
has a nice runthrough of how to read the transcript here. As a supplement, here are relevant bits from the
hearing transcript released last week on the polling data:
- On Manafort's lies being motivated by a desire for a pardon, since telling the truth would damage (or even personally implicate) Trump:
Special Counsel: And our view is, that is a lie. That that is really under -- he knew what the Gates 302s were. It's obviously an extremely sensitive issue. And the motive, I think, is plain from the <redacted>, is we can see -- we actually have -- we can see what it is that he would be worried about, which is that the reaction to the idea that <6 lines of redaction> would have, I think, negative consequences in terms of the other motive that Mr. Manafort could have, which is to at least augment his chances for a pardon.
- On the poll being either more detailed or private, and Kilimnik (the Russian Intel Officer) immediately taking a good deal of action overseas related to the data:
Special Counsel: Mr. Manafort, again, now that he's sort of down that road of saying this was just a <redacted> poll, he has to now explain away how it is that the person on the ground [Kilimnik] in the Ukraine doesn't know that. And he says: Well, I didn't tell them. And then you have an email -- I mean, it just got worse and worse, where Mr. Kilimnik is saying: I just spoke to <redacted>, and I am doing X, Y and Z with him.
- On Kilimnik writing a three page report back to Manafort in connection with the polling data:
Special Counsel: What is of interest to us is that the questions in the poll are completely consistent with the ongoing effort, at the very least by Mr. Kilimnik, to promote a <redacted> . Mr. Kilimnik submits a three-page written document in connection with that polling to Mr. Manafort and others to help frame those questions....So, the continuity of Mr. Kilimnik's interest -- and by the way, Mr. Kilimnik points out in that documentation that <redacted> would be able to facilitate Mr. Manafort being the -- that if he were the spokesperson, and denominated as such within the US, that he would also have access to senior people <redacted>-- that's as far as I can go on this record.
Kyseessä ei ole mikään rikosjuttu, jossa pitää todistaa teko ilman järkevää epäillystä, vaan siinä punnitaan kummankin osapuolen todistusaineisto, jolloin parempi voittaa (teoriassa tietty).
