Paul Manafort allegedly had a sneaky plan to tie an Obama administration official to an anti-Semitic Ukranian political party, and getting it done was as easy as "bada bing bada boom."
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's prosecutors filed a new criminal information document in Manafort's case Friday, a move that typically signals that a defendant has reached a plea deal. In it, there are some colorful details about the ex-Trump campaign chair's history of fighting the Democratic Party.
Before Manafort joined the Trump campaign, he spent time lobbying American officials on behalf of Ukranian oligarch Viktor Yanukovich. In 2012, per the new document, he apparently decided to label an unnamed official in former President Barack Obama's administration as anti-Semitic for supporting Yanukovich's political rival Yulia Tymoshenko. Manafort learned about Tymoshenko's ties to an anti-Semitic group, worked with Israel's government to publicize the story, and then said he had "'someone pushing it on the [New York Post],'" Friday's filings allege. "Bada bing bada boom," Manafort allegedly said. Per the filing, he "sought to have the [Obama administration] understand that 'the Jewish community will take this out on Obama on election day if he does nothing.'"
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Manafort was convicted on eight counts of financial fraud last month, and was set to face a second trial for money laundering, obstruction of justice, and foreign lobbying violations. Those proceedings were disrupted with the new document's filing Friday. The additional filing also accuses Manafort of "cheating the United States out of over $15 million in taxes" and will let the government seize four of Manafort's properties, per The Washington Post. He is expected to plead guilty to the superseding indictment Friday.
