The special counsel’s accusation this week that Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, tried to tamper with potential witnesses originated with two veteran journalists who turned on Mr. Manafort after working closely with him to prop up the former Russia-aligned president of Ukraine, interviews and documents show.
The two journalists, who helped lead a project to which prosecutors say Mr. Manafort funneled more than $2 million from overseas accounts, are the latest in a series of onetime Manafort business partners who have provided damaging evidence to Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Their cooperation with the government has increasingly isolated Mr. Manafort as he awaits trial on charges of violating financial, tax and federal lobbying disclosure laws.
Prosecutors assert that Mr. Manafort’s fight included trying to shape the accounts that former business partners offered prosecutors. In court filings this week, they said that starting in late February, Mr. Manafort repeatedly tried to reach the two journalists — with whom he had fallen out of contact until recently — to coordinate their accounts about their work to tamp down international criticism of Mr. Yanukovych for corruption, persecuting rivals and pivoting toward Russia and its president, Vladimir V. Putin. The prosecutors did not name the journalists, but three people familiar with the project identified them as Alan Friedman and Eckart Sager.
- Alleged attempts by Paul Manafort, the former chairman of President Donald Trump’s campaign, to tamper with witness testimony may indicate Manafort was trying to evade a separate charge accusing him of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
- Experts say witness tampering, particularly by someone in Manafort’s position, is highly unusual and risky.
- Manafort’s alleged activities suggest he is resorting to any methods available to try and avoid pleading guilty to other charges brought against him.
President Donald Trump on Friday declined to rule out the possibility that he could pardon his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort or personal lawyer Michael Cohen.
The President also reiterated his belief that he has the power to pardon himself, though he again said he would not do so.
"I haven’t even thought about it," Trump told reporters on the White House South Lawn, referring to Manafort and Cohen. “I haven’t thought about any of it. It’s certainly far too early to be thinking about that.”
He added, "They haven’t been convicted of anything. There’s nothing to pardon."