Paul Manafort

Kurdish independence referendum

In mid-2017, Manafort left the United States in order to help organize the 2017 Kurdistan Region independence referendum that was to be held on September 25, 2017, something that surprised both investigators and the media. He was hired by the President of Kurdistan Region Masoud Barzani's son Masrour Barzani who heads the Kurdistan Region Security Council. To help Manafort's efforts in supporting Kurdish freedom and independence, his longtime associate Phillip M. Griffin traveled to Erbil prior to the vote. The referendum was not supported by United States Secretary of Defense James Mattis. Manafort returned to the United States just before both his indictment and the start of the 2017 Iraqi–Kurdish conflict in which the Peshmerga-led Kurds lost the Mosul Dam and their main revenue source at the Baba GurGur Kirkuk oilfields to Iraqi forces.

Manafort has been married to Kathleen Bond Manafort since August 12, 1978. They have two daughters, including Jessica.

Lobbying career

In 1980, Manafort was the founding partner of Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm Black, Manafort & Stone, alongside principals Charles R. Black Jr. and Roger Stone. After Peter G. Kelly was recruited, the name of the firm was changed to Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly (BMSK) in 1984.

Manafort left BMSK (then a subsidiary of Burson-Marsteller) in 1995 to join Rick Davis and Matthew C. Freedman in forming Davis, Manafort, and Freedman.

Association with Jonas Savimbi

In 1985, Manafort's firm, BMSK, signed a $600,000 (~$1.48 million in 2024) contract with Jonas Savimbi, the leader of the Angolan rebel group UNITA, to refurbish Savimbi's image in Washington and secure financial support on the basis of his anti-communism stance. BMSK arranged for Savimbi to attend events at the American Enterprise Institute (where Jeane Kirkpatrick gave him a laudatory introduction), The Heritage Foundation, and Freedom House; in the wake of the campaign, Congress approved hundreds of millions of dollars in covert American aid to Savimbi's group. Allegedly, Manafort's continuing lobbying efforts helped preserve the flow of money to Savimbi several years after the Soviet Union ceased its involvement in the Angolan conflict, forestalling peace talks.

Lobbying for other foreign leaders

Between June 1984 and June 1986, Manafort was a FARA-registered lobbyist for Saudi Arabia. The Reagan Administration refused to grant Manafort a waiver from federal statutes prohibiting public officials from acting as foreign agents; Manafort resigned his directorship at OPIC in May 1986. An investigation by the Department of Justice found 18 lobbying-related activities that were not reported in FARA filings, including lobbying on behalf of The Bahamas and Saint Lucia.

Manafort's firm, BMSK, accepted $950,000 yearly to lobby for Ferdinand Marcos, the then-president of the Philippines. Additionally, he was involved in lobbying for Mobutu Sese Seko, the authoritarian President of the Republic of Zaïre (predecessor of today's Democratic Republic of the Congo), securing a US$1 million (~$2.2 million in 2024) annual contract in 1989, while he also attempted to recruit the Somali strongman, Siad Barre, as a client.

His firm lobbied on behalf of the governments of the Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, earning between $660,000 and $750,000 each year between 1991 and 1993, and Nigeria, earning $1 million in 1991. These activities resulted in Manafort's firm being listed amongst the top five lobbying firms receiving money from human-rights-abusing regimes in the Center for Public Integrity report "The Torturers' Lobby".

The New York Times reported that Manafort accepted payment from the Kurdistan Region to facilitate Western recognition of the 2017 Kurdistan Region independence referendum.

Involvement in the Karachi affair

Manafort wrote the campaign strategy for Édouard Balladur in the 1995 French elections and was paid indirectly. The money, at least $200,000, was transferred to him through his friend, Lebanese arms dealer Abdul Rahman al-Assir, from middlemen fees paid for arranging the sale of three French Agosta-class submarines to Pakistan, in a scandal known as the Karachi affair.

Association with the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence Agency

Manafort received $700,000 from the Kashmiri American Council between 1990 and 1994, supposedly to promote the plight of the Kashmiri people. However, an FBI investigation revealed the money was actually from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency as part of a disinformation operation to divert attention from terrorism. A former Pakistani ISI official claimed Manafort was aware of the nature of the operation. While producing a documentary as part of the deal, Manafort interviewed several Indian officials while pretending to be a CNN reporter.

Transition to Ukraine

Manafort's involvement in Ukraine can be traced to 2003, when Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska hired Dole, Manafort's prior campaign candidate, to lobby the United States Department of State for a waiver of his visa ban, primarily so that he could solicit otherwise unavailable institutional purchasers for shares in his company, RusAL. Then, in early 2004, Deripaska met with Manafort's partner, Rick Davis, also a prior campaign adviser to Bob Dole, to discuss hiring Manafort and Davis to return the former Georgian Minister of State Security, Igor Giorgadze, to prominence in Georgian politics.

By December 2004, however, Deripaska shelved his plans in Georgia and dispatched Manafort to meet with Akhmetov in Ukraine to help Akhmetov and his holding firm, System Capital Management, weather the political crisis brought by the Orange Revolution. Akhmetov would eventually flee to Monaco after being accused of murder, but during the crisis, Manafort shepherded Akhmetov around Washington, meeting with U.S. officials like Dick Cheney. Akhmetov introduced Manafort to Yanukovych, to whose political party, the Party of Regions, Akhmetov was a contributor.

Lobbying for Viktor Yanukovych and involvement in Ukraine

Manafort worked as an adviser on the Ukrainian presidential campaign of Yanukovych (and his Party of Regions during the same time span) from December 2004 until the February 2010 Ukrainian presidential election, even as the U.S. government (and U.S. Senator John McCain) opposed Yanukovych because of his ties to Russia's leader Vladimir Putin. Manafort was hired to advise Yanukovych months after massive street demonstrations known as the Orange Revolution overturned Yanukovych's rigged victory in the 2004 presidential race.

Borys Kolesnikov, Yanukovych's campaign manager, said the party hired Manafort after identifying organizational and other problems in the 2004 elections, in which it was advised by Russian strategists. Manafort rebuffed U.S. Ambassador William B. Taylor Jr. when the latter complained he was undermining U.S. interests in Ukraine. According to a 2008 U.S. Justice Department annual report, Manafort's company received $63,750 from Yanukovych's Party of Regions over six months ending on March 31, 2008, for consulting services.

In the 2010 election, Yanukovych managed to pull off a narrow win over Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, a leader of the 2004 demonstrations. Yanukovych owed his comeback in Ukraine's presidential election to a drastic makeover of his political persona, and—people in his party say—that makeover was engineered in part by his American consultant, Manafort.

In 2007 and 2008, Manafort was involved in investment projects with Deripaska—the acquisition of a Ukrainian telecommunications company—and Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash—redevelopment of the site of the former Drake Hotel in New York City). Manafort negotiated a $10 million (~$15.4 million in 2024) annual contract with Deripaska to promote Russian interests in politics, business, and media coverage in Europe and the United States, starting in 2005. A witness at Manafort's 2018 trial for fraud and tax evasion testified that Deripaska loaned Manafort $10 million in 2010, which, to her knowledge, was never repaid.

At Manafort's trial, federal prosecutors alleged that between 2010 and 2014, he was paid more than $60 million by Ukrainian sponsors, including Akhmetov, believed to be the richest man in Ukraine.

In May 2011, Yanukovych stated that he would strive for Ukraine to join the European Union. In 2013, Yanukovych became the main target of the Euromaidan protests. After the February 2014 Ukrainian revolution (the conclusion of Euromaidan), Yanukovych fled to Russia. On March 17, 2014, the day after the Crimean status referendum, Yanukovych became one of the first eleven persons who were placed under executive sanctions on the Specially Designated Nationals List (SDN) by President Barack Obama, freezing his assets in the US and banning him from entering the United States.

Manafort then returned to Ukraine in September 2014 to become an adviser to Yanukovych's former head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine Serhiy Lyovochkin. In this role, he was asked to assist in rebranding Yanukovych's Party of Regions. Instead, he argued to help stabilize Ukraine. Manafort was instrumental in creating a new political party called Opposition Bloc. According to Ukrainian political analyst Mikhail Pogrebinsky, "He thought to gather the largest number of people opposed to the current government, you needed to avoid anything concrete, and just become a symbol of being opposed". According to Manafort, he has not worked in Ukraine since the October 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election. However, according to Ukrainian border control entry data, Manafort traveled to Ukraine several times after that election, all the way through late 2015. According to The New York Times, his local office in Ukraine closed in May 2016. According to Politico, by then Opposition Bloc had already stopped payments for Manafort and this local office.

In an April 2016 interview with ABC News, Manafort stated that the aim of his activities in Ukraine had been to lead the country "closer to Europe".

Ukrainian government National Anti-Corruption Bureau studying secret documents claimed in August 2016 to have found handwritten records that show $12.7 million in cash payments designated for Manafort, although they had yet to determine if he had received the money. These undisclosed payments were from the pro-Russian political party Party of Regions, of the former president of Ukraine, Yanukovych. This payment record spans from 2007 to 2012. Manafort's lawyer, Richard A. Hibey, said Manafort didn't receive "any such cash payments" as described by the anti-corruption officials. The Associated Press reported on August 17, 2016, that Manafort secretly routed at least $2.2 million in payments to two prominent Washington lobbying firms in 2012 on behalf of the Party of Regions, and did so in a way that effectively obscured the foreign political party's efforts to influence U.S. policy. Associated Press noted that under federal law, U.S. lobbyists must declare publicly if they represent foreign leaders or their political parties and provide detailed reports about their actions to the Justice Department, which Manafort reportedly did not do. The lobbying firms unsuccessfully lobbied the United States Congress to reject a resolution condemning the jailing of Yanukovych's main political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko.

Financial records certified in December 2015 and filed by Manafort in Cyprus showed him to be approximately $17 million (~$21.9 million in 2024) in debt to interests connected to interests favorable to Putin and Yanukovych in the months before joining the Trump presidential campaign in March. These included a $7.8 million debt to Oguster Management Limited, a company connected to Deripaska. This accords with a 2015 court complaint filed by Deripaska claiming that Manafort and his partners owed him $19 million in relation to a failed Ukrainian cable television business. In January 2018, Surf Horizon Limited, a Cyprus-based company tied to Deripaska, sued Manafort and his business partner Richard "Rick" Gates, accusing them of financial fraud by misappropriating more than $18.9 million that the company had invested in Ukrainian telecom companies, known collectively as the "Black Sea Cable". An additional $9.9 million debt was owed to a Cyprus company that was tied through shell companies to Ivan Fursin, a Ukrainian Member of Parliament of the Party of Regions. Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni maintained in response, "Manafort is not indebted to Deripaska or the Party of Regions, nor was he at the time he began working for the Trump campaign." During the 2016 Presidential campaign, Manafort, via Kilimnik, offered to provide briefings on political developments to Deripaska, though there is no evidence that the briefings took place. A July 2017 application by the FBI for a search warrant revealed that a company controlled by Manafort and his wife had received a $10 million (~$12.5 million in 2024) loan from Deripaska.

According to leaked text messages between his daughters, Manafort was also one of the proponents of violent removal of the Euromaidan protesters, which resulted in police shooting dozens of people during 2014 Hrushevskoho Street riots. In one of the messages, his daughter writes that it was his "strategy that was to cause that, to send those people out and get them slaughtered."

Manafort has rejected questions about whether Kilimnik, with whom he consulted regularly, might be in league with Russian intelligence. According to Yuri Shvets, Kilimnik previously worked for the GRU, and every bit of information about his work with Manafort went directly to Russian intelligence.

Congressional investigations

In May 2017, in response to a request of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), Manafort submitted over "300 pages of documents... included drafts of speeches, calendars and notes from his time on the campaign" to the Committee "related to its investigation of Russian election meddling." On July 25, he met privately with the committee.

A congressional hearing on Russia issues, including the Trump campaign-Russian meeting, was scheduled by the Senate Committee on the Judiciary for July 26, 2017. Manafort was scheduled to appear together with Trump Jr., while Kushner was to testify in a separate closed session. After separate negotiations, both Manafort and Trump Jr. met with the committee on July 26 in closed session and agreed to turn over requested documents. They are expected to testify in public eventually.

The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded in its August 2020 final report that as Trump campaign manager "Manafort worked with Kilimnik starting in 2016 on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election" and to direct such suspicions toward Ukraine. The report characterized Kilimnik as a "Russian intelligence officer" and said Manafort's activities represented a "grave counterintelligence threat." The investigation found:Manafort's presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for the Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign. The Committee assesses that Kilimnik likely served as a channel to Manafort for Russian intelligence services, and that those services likely sought to exploit Manafort's access to gain insight [into] the Campaign...On numerous occasions over the course of his time of the Trump Campaign, Manafort sought to secretly share internal campaign information with Kilimnik...Manafort briefed Kilimnik on sensitive campaign polling data and the campaign's strategy for beating Hillary Clinton.The Committee did not definitively establish Kilimnik as a channel connected to the hacking and leaking of DNC emails, noting that its investigation was hampered by Manafort and Kilimnik's use of "sophisticated communications security practices" and Manafort's lies during SCO interviews on the topic. The report noted: "Manafort's obfuscation of the truth surrounding Kilimnik was particularly damaging to the Committee's investigation because it effectively foreclosed direct insight into a series of interactions and communications which represent the single most direct tie between senior Trump Campaign officials and the Russian intelligence services." In April 2021, a document released by the U.S. Treasury Department announcing new sanctions against Russia confirmed a direct pipeline from Manafort to Russian intelligence, noting: “During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Kilimnik provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy”.

The fifth and final volume of the August 2020 Senate Intelligence Committee report, in a section on Manafort, noted: "Manafort had direct access to Trump" as well as the Trump campaign's senior officials, strategies, and information," and "Manafort, often with the assistance of Gates, engaged with individuals inside Russia and Ukraine on matters pertaining both to his personal business prospects and the 2016 U.S. election." The report found that beginning around 2004, Manafort began to work for Deripaska and pro-Russian oligarchs in Ukraine, and that this involvement led to Manafort's involvement in the victory of Yanukovych in the 2010 Ukrainian elections. The committee report stated: "The Russian government coordinates with and directs Deripaska" as part of the influence operations that Manafort assisted with, and that "Manafort's influence work for Deripaska was, in effect, influence work for the Russian government and its interests."

Private investigation

The Trump–Russia dossier, also known as the Steele dossier, is a private intelligence report comprising investigation memos written between June and December 2016 by Christopher Steele. Manafort is a major figure mentioned in the Steele dossier, where allegations are made about Manafort's relationships and actions toward the Trump campaign, Russia, Ukraine, and Viktor Yanukovych. The dossier claims:

that "the Republican candidate's campaign manager, Paul MANAFORT" had "managed" the "well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between [the Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership," and that he used "foreign policy adviser, Carter PAGE, and others as intermediaries." (Dossier, p. 7)

that Yanukovych told Putin he had been making untraceable "kick-back payments" to Manafort, who was Trump's campaign manager at the time. (Dossier, p. 20)

Indictments and charges

On October 30, 2017, Manafort was arrested by the FBI after being indicted by a federal grand jury as part of Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign. The indictment against Manafort and Rick Gates charged them with engaging in a conspiracy against the United States, engaging in a conspiracy to launder money, failing to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts, acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign principal, making false and misleading statements in documents filed and submitted under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), and making false statements. Prosecutors claimed Manafort laundered more than $18 million (equivalent to $23,642,411 in 2025), money he had received as compensation for lobbying and consulting services for Yanukovych.

Manafort and Gates pleaded not guilty to the charges at their court appearance on October 30, 2017. The US government asked the court to set Manafort's bail at $10 million and Gates at $5 million. The court placed Manafort and Gates under house arrest after prosecutors described them as flight risks. If convicted on all charges, Manafort could have faced decades in prison.

Following the hearing, Manafort's attorney Kevin M. Downing made a public statement to the press proclaiming his client's innocence while describing the federal charges stemming from the indictment as "ridiculous". Downing defended Manafort's decade-long lobbying effort for Yanukovych, describing their lucrative partnership as attempts to spread democracy and strengthen the relationship between the United States and Ukraine. Judge Stewart responded by threatening to impose a gag order, saying "I expect counsel to do their talking in this courtroom and in their pleadings and not on the courthouse steps." Revealed on September 13, 2018, Manafort and Donald Trump had signed a joint defense agreement allowing their attorneys to share information during the Mueller investigations and, previously, joint defense agreements had been arranged between Donald Trump and both Michael Cohen and Michael Flynn.

On November 30, 2017, Manafort's attorneys said that Manafort had reached a bail agreement with prosecutors that would free him from the house arrest he had been under since his indictment. He offered bail in the form of $11.65 million worth of real estate. While out on bond, Paul Manafort worked on an op-ed with a "Russian who has ties to the Russian intelligence service", prosecutors said in a court filing requesting that the judge in the case revoke Manafort's bond agreement.

On January 3, 2018, Manafort filed a lawsuit challenging Mueller's broad authority and alleging the Justice Department violated the law in appointing Mueller. A spokesperson for the department replied that "The lawsuit is frivolous but the defendant is entitled to file whatever he wants".

On February 2, 2018, the Department of Justice filed a motion seeking to dismiss the civil suit Manafort brought against Mueller. Judge Jackson dismissed the suit on April 27, 2018, citing precedent that a court should not use civil powers to interfere in an ongoing criminal case. She did not, however, make any judgment as to the merits of the arguments presented.

On February 22, 2018, both Manafort and Gates were further charged with additional crimes involving a tax avoidance scheme and bank fraud in Virginia. The charges were filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, rather than in the District of Columbia, as the alleged tax fraud overt actions had occurred in Virginia and not in the District. The new indictment alleged that Manafort, with assistance from Gates, laundered over $30 million through offshore bank accounts between approximately 2006 and 2015. Manafort allegedly used funds in these offshore accounts to purchase real estate in the United States, in addition to personal goods and services.

On February 23, 2018, Gates pleaded guilty in federal court to lying to investigators and engaging in a conspiracy to defraud the United States. Through a spokesman, Manafort expressed disappointment in Gates' decision to plead guilty and said he had no similar plans. "I continue to maintain my innocence," he said.

On February 28, 2018, Manafort entered a not guilty plea in the District Court for the District of Columbia. Jackson subsequently set a trial date of September 17, 2018, and reprimanded Manafort and his attorney for violating her gag order by issuing a statement the previous week after former co-defendant Gates pleaded guilty. Manafort commented, "I had hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence."

On March 8, 2018, Manafort also pleaded not guilty to bank fraud and tax charges in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Judge T. S. Ellis III of the Eastern District of Virginia set his trial on those charges to begin on July 10, 2018. He later pushed the trial back to July 24, citing a medical procedure involving a member of Ellis's family. Ellis also expressed concern that the special counsel and Mueller were only interested in charging Manafort to squeeze him for information that would reflect on Mr. Trump or lead to Trump's impeachment. Ellis later retracted his comments against the Mueller prosecution.

On May 30, 2018, friends of Manafort announced the establishment of a legal defense fund, with the intention to assist him in paying his legal bills.

On June 8, 2018, Manafort and Kilimnik were indicted for obstruction of justice and witness tampering. The charges involved allegations that Manafort had attempted to convince others to lie about an undisclosed lobbying effort on behalf of Ukraine's former pro-Russian government. Since this allegedly occurred while Manafort was under house arrest, Judge Jackson revoked Manafort's bail on June 15 and ordered him held in jail until his trial. Manafort was booked into the Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Virginia, at 8:22 PM on June 15, 2018, where he was housed in the VIP section and kept in solitary confinement for his own safety. On June 22, Manafort's efforts to have the money laundering charges against him dismissed were rejected by the court. Citing Alexandria's D.C. suburbia status, abundant and significantly negative press coverage, and the margin by which Hillary Clinton won the Alexandria Division in the 2016 presidential election, Manafort moved the court for a change of venue to Roanoke, Virginia, on July 6, 2018, citing constitutional entitlement to a fair and unbiased trial. On July 10, Judge T. S. Ellis ordered Manafort to be transferred back to the Alexandria Detention Center, an order Manafort opposed.

In February 2023, Manafort agreed to pay $3.15 million to settle a civil suit brought by the Justice Department in 2022 regarding undisclosed foreign bank accounts.

New York State indictment

On March 13, 2019, the same day on which he was sentenced in the Washington case, Manafort was indicted by the Manhattan District Attorney on 16 charges related to mortgage fraud. District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said the charges stemmed from an investigation launched in March 2017. Unlike his previous convictions, these were levied by the State of New York, and therefore, a presidential pardon cannot override or affect the sentence in the event of conviction. In August 2017, NBC News reported that a state investigator was assessing the legal basis for prosecuting potential defendants in the Mueller probe with state crimes, given that pressing such charges could legally provide an end run around any presidential pardons.

On December 18, 2019, Justice Maxwell Wiley of the New York Supreme Court, Criminal Term, New York County, dismissed the charges against Manafort. On August 20, 2020, the New York County District Attorney's Office appealed the dismissal to the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division. In October 2020, a panel of the Appellate Division unanimously upheld the dismissal.

Despite Manafort being pardoned in December 2020 for his federal crimes, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office announced it would nevertheless continue to pursue state charges. However, on February 4, 2021, the New York Court of Appeals declined to hear the Manhattan District Attorney's appeal.

Trials

The numerous indictments against Manafort were divided into two trials.

Eastern District of Virginia

Manafort was tried in the Eastern District of Virginia on eighteen charges, including tax evasion, bank fraud, and hiding foreign bank accounts - financial crimes uncovered during the special counsel's investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 election. The trial began on July 31, 2018, before U.S. District Judge T. S. Ellis III. On August 21, the jury found Manafort guilty on eight of the eighteen charges, while Ellis declared a mistrial on the other ten. He was convicted on five counts of tax fraud, one of the four counts of failing to disclose his foreign bank accounts, and two counts of bank fraud.

The jury was hung on three of the four counts of failing to disclose, as well as five counts of bank fraud, four of which were related to the Federal Savings Bank of Chicago run by Stephen Calk. Mueller's office advised the court that Manafort should receive a sentence of 20 to 24 years, a sentence consistent with federal guidelines, but on March 7, 2019, Ellis sentenced Manafort to just 47 months in prison, less nine months for time already served, adding that the recommended sentence was "excessive" and that Manafort had lived an "otherwise blameless life." However, Ellis noted that Manafort had not expressed "regret for engaging in wrongful conduct".

District of Columbia

Manafort's trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia was scheduled to begin in September 2018. He was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, money laundering, failing to register as a foreign lobbyist, making false statements to investigators, and witness tampering. On September 14, 2018, Manafort entered into a plea deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to two charges: conspiracy to defraud the United States and witness tampering. He also agreed to forfeit to the government cash and property with a combined worth estimated between $11 and $26 million, and to cooperate fully with the Special Counsel. A tentative sentencing date for Manafort's guilty plea in the D.C. case has been set for March 2019.

Mueller's office stated in a November 26, 2018, court filing that Manafort had repeatedly lied to prosecutors about a variety of matters, breaching the terms of his plea agreement. Manafort's attorneys disputed the assertion. On December 7, 2018, the special counsel's office filed a document with the court, listing five areas in which they claimed Manafort has lied to them, which they stated negated the plea agreement. DC District Court judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled on February 13, 2019, that Manafort had violated his plea deal by repeatedly lying to prosecutors.

In a February 7, 2019, hearing before U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Amy Berman Jackson, prosecutors speculated that Manafort had concealed facts about his activities to enhance the possibility of his receiving a pardon. They said that Manafort's work with Ukraine had continued after he had made his plea deal and that during the Trump campaign, he met with his campaign deputy, Rick Gates, who also had pleaded guilty in the case, and with alleged Russian Federation intelligence agent, Konstantin Kilimnik, in an exclusive New York cigar bar. Gates said the three left the premises separately, each using different exits.

On March 13, 2019, Jackson sentenced Manafort to 73 months in prison, with 30 months concurrent with the jail time he received in the Virginia case, for a resultant sentence of an additional 43 months in jail (30 additional months for conspiracy to defraud the United States and 13 additional months for witness tampering). Manafort also apologized for his actions.

Prison sentence

Manafort was jailed from June 2018 until May 2020. During that time, he was briefly held at the United States Penitentiary Canaan in Waymart, Pennsylvania. He was held at Federal Correctional Institution, Loretto in Loretto, Pennsylvania (inmate #35207-016). In June 2019, he was moved to the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York in Manhattan. In August 2019, he was moved back to the Federal Correctional Institution, Loretto, Pennsylvania, with