today the case marked united states of america versus paul j. manafort jr. became united states of america versus paul j. manafort jr. and konstantin kilimnik, trump campaign chair paul manafort is now facing felony charges alongside his long-time business partner in ukraine, a man who special counsel robert mueller has said in multiple court filings has tied to a russian intelligence service. in the superseding indictment that was unsealed today the two of them together are charged with obstruction of justice for witness tampering. the defendants, manafort and kilimnik, knowingly and intentionally attempted to corruptly persuade another person with intent to influence, delay and prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding. they re charged with obstruction of justice, witness tampering and they re also charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice which means that mueller has now indicted yet another person. the 20th person indicted in the scandal thus far. it also
improve his standing with rich russians connected to vladimir putin. we don t know what business trump s campaign chairman was up to when he was offering private briefings on the presidential campaign to a russian oligarch close to vladimir putin to whom he owed a lot of money. we do know that konstantin kilimnik visited manafort twice while manafort was running the trump campaign. these e-mails published by the atlantic suggests one purpose of those meetings was to convey messages from that russian oligarch to paul manafort while he was running the trump campaign. kilimnik himself later suggested to acquaintances back home that on one of those visits to manafort during the campaign he konstantin kilimnik played a role in getting the republican party to change its platform, to take a less hard line against russia. that change in the party platform at the republican national convention remains still mostly unexplained. it is reportedly under investigation by the special counsel s offi
these absolutely remarkable e-mails that were first described in the washington post. they were ultimately obtained and published by the atlantic magazine. in these e-mails which we got last year they show that as soon as manafort got into the trump campaign immediately he started to scheme with konstantin kilimnik about how he could use his role on this presidential campaign to somehow settle his affairs, maybe collect some money, maybe reduce his debts in the former soviet union. on the evening of april 11th, 2016, two weeks after donald trump hired paul manafort onto his presidential campaign, manafort e-mailed his old lieutenant konstantin kilimnik who had worked for him for a decade in the ukrainian capital of kiev. manafort wrote, i assume you have showed my friends our media coverage, right? kilimnik responded a few hours later from kiev, absolutely. every article. manafort then asked in response, how do we use to get hole?
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extradited to the u.s. to face these charges. him being a fugitive from u.s. justice hiding in russia raises some more interesting questions about what comes next here. some in some ways it might seem futile for the special counsel to charge people who are not in this country, people who are in russia, when russia s definitely not going to extradite any of them to a u.s. courtroom. but you know what? bringing federal criminal charges against those russians creates a weird dynamic and a weird dilemma for president trump. if president trump decided to try to make this part of the russia investigation go away by pardoning paul manafort, well, now that manafort is charged in a joint indictment alongside russian citizen konstantin kilimnik, this prosecution and the investigation that goes along with it could no longer be stopped simply by trump pardoning manafort. to stop this part of the investigation trump would also have to pardon konstantin kilimnik, russian citizen, russian intelligenc