Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort met with his business associate Konstantin Kilimnik, who has been linked to a Russian intelligence agency by Robert Mueller, in early 2017, Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni told TPM Tuesday evening. The statement came after a court filing earlier in the day suggested the meeting took place while Manafort worked for the Trump campaign.
Maloni wrote in an email that the meeting took place “after the campaign” in “Jan or Feb 2017.”
Attorneys for Manafort revealed the Madrid trip earlier today in a court submission that they failed to properly redact. The apparent error showed that special counsel prosecutors have accused Manafort of lying about sharing the campaign data, and that he only “acknowledged” the Madrid meeting after prosecutors showed him that they knew Kilimnik was in the Spanish capital the same day.
That document appeared to place the Madrid meeting during Manafort’s time as Trump campaign chair. In a section following the mention of the Madrid meeting, Manafort’s lawyers wrote that “these occurrences happened during a period when Mr. Manafort was managing a U.S. presidential campaign and had countless meetings, email communications, and other interactions with many different individuals, and traveled frequently.”
Other filings appear to corroborate that information, including an Oct. 2017 submission from Mueller stating that Manafort had travelled to “Dubai, Cancun, Panama City, Havana, Shanghai, Madrid, Tokyo, and Grand Cayman Island” in the preceding year.
The revelations about the Madrid trip and other interactions with Kilimnik came in a filing from Manafort’s lawyers pushing back on claims from the Mueller team that Manafort broke his plea agreement by lying to investigators.
Kilimnik told Radio Free Europe in February 2017 that he was pitching his own peace plan for Ukraine, involving the local political party with which he was working.
