The Atlantic Gets Hold Of Sketchy Emails Manafort Sent Last Year About Putin Ally

Paul Manafort , senior aid to Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump attends an event on foreign policy in Washington on Wednesday April 27, 2016 in Washington, DC, USA. Photo by Olivier Douliery/Sipa USA
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

The Atlantic has obtained the 2016 email correspondence between Paul Manafort and his longtime business partner Konstantin Kilimnik that appears to reference an effort to get back in the good graces of a Kremlin-aligned oligarch with whom Manafort had had a falling out.

The existence of the emails was previously reported by the Washington Post and according to the Post, they have been turned over to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. However, the Atlantic report published Monday provides a fuller account of the exchanges between Manafort  and Kilimnik — which occurred at a time when Manafort was taking on a bigger role within the Trump campaign — as well as confirms that shorthand names used in the emails were references to Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska and one of his aides.

In some of the emails obtained by The Atlantic, Kilimnik seemed to signal to Manafort that he had been forwarding to a Deripaska aide named Victor media coverage of the work Manafort was doing for the Trump campaign.

“I am carefully optimistic on the issue of our biggest interest,” Kilimnik said in one of the emails obtained by the Atlantic. “Our friend V said there is lately significantly more attention to the campaign in his boss’s mind, and he will be most likely looking for ways to reach out to you pretty soon, understanding all the time sensitivity. I am more than sure that it will be resolved and we will get back to the original relationship with V.’s boss.”

A spokesperson for Deripaska denied that the Russian oligarch received any of the emails or was otherwise in contact with Manafort during that time, according to the Atlantic.

Manafort’s spokesperson reiterated the defense he initially gave of the emails when they were first reported by the Washington Post. The spokesperson, Jason Maloni, told the Atlantic they were “innocuous” and that it was “no secret Mr. Manafort was owed money by past clients.”

Deripaska’s spokesperson,Vera Kurochkina, rebutted the suggestion that Deripaska owed Manafort money.

“To the contrary, as set out in widely reported court filings, it is Mr. Manafort who has failed to provide any accounting in respect of investments for which he was responsible. Mr. Manafort is the debtor here, not the creditor,” she told The Atlantic.

Manafort and Deripaska worked together on a 2008 deal to buy Black Sea Cable, a Ukrainian telecommunications company, according to a lawsuit later filed by Deripaska in a Cayman Islands bankruptcy court. The deal fell apart, and Deripaska took Manafort to court in 2014 with the claim that Manafort and his associates disappeared after Deripaska gave them nearly $19 million as part of the Black Sea Cable transaction.

The lawsuit has since gone quiet, with no new filings since 2015, according to the Atlantic’s search of the court records.

Latest Muckraker

Notable Replies

  1. From these and other documents, it looks like Manafort felt he could walk off with bags full of Russian money and not end up a customer of Ye Olde Plutonium Taverna. Maybe he’s setting us up for an insanity plea. Stay away from heights, Paul.

  2. Avatar for cd cd says:

    when can we cut out the oligarch crap and start referring to them as russian mobsters, more accurate and broadly understood relative to the term “oligarch”

  3. Perhaps because they’ve joined up with American and other International billionaires, aka: oligarchs? It isn’t just the Russian oligarchs-mobsters, its the American oligarchs-mobsters, the Arab oligarchs-mobsters, European oligarchs-mobsters.

    They want to return the world to a feudal system, where 99.9% of the people are starving.

  4. Avatar for rptwiz rptwiz says:

    The Boss nailed it in Badlands:
    Poor man wanna be rich
    Rich man wanna be king
    And a king ain’t satisfied
    'Til he rules everything.

  5. Avatar for paulw paulw says:

    So are we pretty clear that the quid pro quo for Manafort working for free was that the mob he’d been ripping off wouldn’t call in the debt?

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

2 more replies

Participants

Avatar for system1 Avatar for paulw Avatar for cd Avatar for ottnott Avatar for karlsgems Avatar for katwillow Avatar for rptwiz Avatar for outsidertrading618

Continue Discussion
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: