Former Manafort colleagues told Mueller he attempted to influence their testimony: report

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http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/391315-manafort-attempted-to-contact-veteran-journalists-who-helped-him-with

Former Manafort colleagues told Mueller he attempted to influence their testimony: report
By Avery Anapol - 06/08/18 07:34 AM EDT


Two veteran journalists who previously worked with embattled former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort reportedly offered information to special counsel Robert Mueller that resulted in recent accusations that Manafort attempted to tamper with witnesses.

The journalists previously helped lead consulting and lobbying work in an attempt to prop up the reputation of former Russia-aligned Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in a business endeavor that Manafort funded with $2.4 million from overseas accounts, according to The New York Times.

The journalists’ decision to turn on Manafort is what prompted special counsel Robert Mueller to accuse Manafort of attempting to tamper with witnesses, as he did earlier this week, according to the report. Manafort will appear in court on Friday at a hearing on the witness tampering allegations.

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In court filings, federal prosecutors accused Manafort of trying to reach the journalists beginning in February, in an attempt to “shape” the information they told prosecutors.

Three Times sources identified the two journalists as Alan Friedman and Eckart Sager.

According to the filings, Manafort and another of his associates with ties to Russian intelligence, tried to reach Friedman and Sager via phone calls and encrypted texts. Rather than engaging with Manafort, the men informed Mueller that their former associate had tried to persuade them to “suborn perjury” and lie to investigators.

Mueller’s team asked a court on Monday to revoke Manafort’s pretrial release conditions, saying that his attempts to contact the associates were “in an effort to influence their testimony and to otherwise conceal evidence.”