On the heels of a court filings that revealed, via a redaction error, that prosecutors believed Paul Manafort had shared 2016 polling with a Russian business associate, the New York Times reported Tuesday that the polling included both public and internal polls.
An unnamed person with knowledge of the situation told the Times that Manafort and his longtime business deputy Rick Gates shared the polling with the Russian, Konstantin Kilimnik, whom Mueller in previous court filings has alleged maintained links to a Russian intelligence agency including in 2016.
Gates was instructed by Manafort to have Kilimnik pass the data along to pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarchs Serhiy Lyovochkin and Rinat Akhmetov, both of whom Manafort had worked with, according to the Times.
The Times initially reported that Manafort had instructed the data be sent to Oleg Deripaska, but issued a correction Wednesday afternoon to that reporting.
Deripaska, a funder of Manafort’s Ukraine lobbying whose relationship with Manafort went south over a failed business deal, is the oligarch to whom Manafort sought to offer private briefings during the campaign.
The polling data was shared in the spring of 2016, the Times reported, and while most of the polling in question was publicly available, some of the data shared was assembled by a private firm on behalf of the Trump campaign.
The court filing was Manafort’s response to special counsel Robert Mueller’s allegations that he lied to investigators after reaching a cooperation deal with prosecutors.
“Shared internal polling data with the Russians.” If only there were a shorter phrase for this type of activity.
How about “ITMFA”?
As luck would have it, there is a shorter phrase, in fact a word, treason.
Starts with ‘c’ and ends with ‘n’.
Collusion? Corruption?