In an earlier post I mentioned that Manafort had previously violated the terms of his release back in December when he ghost-wrote an editorial to influence public opinion on his trial. When I posted that, I didn’t realize that the same person who acted as Manafort’s intermediary on that violation was the person who acted on Manafort’s behalf in the witness tampering: Konstantin Kilimnik.
You may recognize this name because Kilimnik, a long time colleague of Manafort, has been accused of having ties to Russian intelligence services. Here’s the WaPo article from December outlining Kilimnik’s relationship with Manafort and with Russian intelligence, along with his involvement in the creation of the editorial that violated the terms of Manafort’s release.
So not only did Manafort tamper with witnesses, he did it with the help of someone who is tied to Russian intelligence. Astounding!
Here’s the full text of today’s filing against Manafort. And here’s the paragraph from that filing that “outs” Kilimnik as “Person A” – the person who, as established in the rest of the filing, assisted Manafort with the witness tampering.
The inference that Person A acted on Manafort’s behalf is all the more reasonable in light of evidence already before this Court demonstrating that Manafort and Person A coordinated in connection with an op-ed that appeared in the Kyiv Post during Manafort’s home confinement. [p. 14]
UPDATE: Now the WaPo has weighed in, also identifying “Person A” as Kilimnik:
And here’s the relevant paragraph:
In court documents, prosecutors with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III allege that Manafort and his associate — referred to only as Person A — tried to contact the two witnesses by phone and through encrypted messaging apps. The description of Person A matches his longtime business colleague in Ukraine, Konstantin Kilimnik.
