Ordering takeout at home with Paul Manafort, as he plots his post-prison comeback
'America wants Manafort 2.0," I say at my second meeting with Paul Manafort, in early June."But my impression is that you haven't changed at all."
Manafort has spent most of his 45-year career behind the scenes. He has rarely given interviews beyond his role as a campaign surrogate, and he has never before sat for an extended on-the-record interview about his role at the center of the country's ongoing fixation with Donald Trump, Ukraine, and Russia. So why talk now? Ostensibly, he wants to sell books. His memoir,"Political Prisoner," is due out in mid-August.
"I don't feel like I need to explain myself," he says."But I'm not unwilling to explain myself. There are certain things that I would probably not do again. But I don't apologize for things I've done in my life. Because I've always had the right motives for what I did in my life.""I would have to think about that," he replies.
But as with Al Capone, the crimes that put Manafort behind bars were ancillary to his core business model. Capone got rich selling alcohol. Manafort got rich selling influence. He could take a pile of cash and convert it into a self-reinforcing loop of political power. First he'd generate the votes needed to win an election. Then he'd squeeze out key decisions from the policymakers he had helped elect. He did this not only in the United States but all over the world.
Manafort Jr. attended Georgetown University, where he majored in business administration. Manafort Sr. was investigated for ties to organized crime as mayor of New Britain, Connecticut ."I decided I was not going to let them get to me the way they got to him," his son says.Late in his career, the elder Manafort was questioned by investigators from the state of Connecticut looking into organized crime.
The launch of Manafort, Black, and Stone couldn't have happened at a more advantageous time. Ronald Reagan's embrace of deregulation, coupled with rising globalization, meant there was a tremendous amount of money to be made for anyone who could figure out how to partner with foreign kleptocracies.
Charlie Black, Manafort's partner at the time, confirmed to me that their firm would"make some informal soundings at the State Department" before taking on a new client."The US government wouldn't always agree," he said,"but they didn't necessarily disagree." Black also backed up Manafort's claim about his role in persuading Marcos to step down.
It strikes me, as we talk, that Manafort is living in a kind of bubble, one that impels him to block out unfriendly voices and inconvenient facts. I ask him for examples of strong US diplomats. He mentions his mentor, James Baker, who served as chief of staff and Treasury secretary under Reagan. With Baker, Manafort says,"you were clear where the line was."
"I don't know if he took an honorarium," Manafort says."I mean, he went there and gave a speech. That's what I know he did." "If it was 2015—" he begins. As with the sandwiches, any fact that could reflect badly on him doesn't remain nailed down for long."I believe you," he says. His voice is even, but his hands are gripping the arms of his chair."It's a major mistake to do anything with Putin after he invaded Crimea."
What Obama and Biden didn't know was that Çavuşoğlu was part of a secret network of foreign officials, bought and paid for by Manafort, who were essentially serving as lobbyists for Yanukovych. According to emails sent by Manafort's associates, Çavuşoğlu was paid 230,000 euros for carrying the pro-Yanukovych message to Washington. Other foreign officials, known as the Hapsburg Group, were paid $2.5 million at Manafort's direction.
Yanukovych won the presidency by a margin of 3 percentage points. Manafort was ecstatic. He dashed off celebratory emails to his subordinates and began preparing lists of action items. Soon he was strategizing how to take Yanukovych to the White House, for a face-to-face meeting with Obama. Allegations that Kilimnik was a spy shouldn't have come as a surprise to Manafort. Kilimnik was open about the fact that he'd attended a language school run by the Soviet military. Rick Gates, who worked closely with Manafort in Ukraine, later told the FBI that Manafort's own employees believed Kilimnik had worked as a linguist for Russian intelligence. But Manafort tells me he had no reason to think Kilimnik was spying for Russia.
The ouster of Yanukovych proved to be devastating for Manafort. He had been making truckloads of money off his Ukraine success, and his spending patterns suggest that he expected the windfall to continue. He spent compulsively, accumulating hundreds of suits, a $9,500 ostrich-skin vest, and a $18,500 python-skin jacket. He spent $6 million on a SoHo condo and a Brooklyn brownstone.
In the memo, Manafort claimed to be an outsider, like Trump, who had left what he called"the Washington establishment." That wasn't entirely true. Manafort's establishment credentials would prove useful to Trump for managing the convention, and for brokering contacts with the leaders of what was then the Republican mainstream, including James Baker and Dick Cheney.
As Manafort's influence within Trump's campaign grew, he went even further in his efforts to drum up foreign business. He arranged for Gates, then serving as his deputy campaign chairman, to send Kilimnik regular updates that included more than 50 pages of internal polling data. In our interview, Manafort makes his first public admission that he was the one who told Gates to email Kilimnik the information.
Manafort's attempts to loop his Russian and Ukrainian patrons into the campaign went beyond sharing polling data. He offered Deripaska, the pro-Putin oligarch,"private briefings" on the Trump campaign. He also entertained a Ukrainian"peace plan" that would have involved Trump officially recognizing Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea, and having Putin install a puppet government, to be headed by Yanukovych, in eastern Ukraine.
"I don't think I play closer to the line than some," he says."In presidential politics, everybody's looking at what winning might mean. Everybody is. And what they end up doing depends on the situations." The real crime, in a sense, is that Manafort's chief goal during his time on Trump's campaign — using his access to the Oval Office to enrich himself — wasn't even a crime.
He smoothly pivots from detailing the hardships of his confinement to using it as a justification for the many inconsistencies in his story that were documented by Mueller's team. Manafort initially agreed to cooperate with Team M in return for a plea deal. But during the investigation, he continued to communicate with Trump's team, using Sean Hannity as an intermediary."I won't sell out," Manafort texted Hannity at one point. Mueller will"want me to give up DT or family, esp JK, he wrote, referring to Trump and Jared Kushner."I would never do that," he continued, adding,"they will want to make up shit on both.
He calls Putin a"war criminal." He calls Russia's attacks on Ukraine"carpet-bombing." He approves of Finland and Sweden joining NATO.
"There's what happened on January 6," Manafort replies."And then there's what they're trying to make January 6.""But you can't. You can't divorce it from the reality of why it's happening today."
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