Trump’s ex-campaign manager surrenders to FBI

President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort has reportedly arrived at the FBI’s offices in Washington to face charges as part of an investigation into the Trump campaign’s links to Russia.

Manafort walked into the FBI Headquarters in Washington DC at approximately 8:15 am local time with his lawyer, but had no comment for reporters. The charges being brought against Manafort by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, who has been investigating alleged collusion between campaign team members and Russian officials during the 2016 US election, have just been made public.  

They include 12 counts which include conspiracy against the US, conspiracy to launder money, being an unregistered agent of a foreign principal - in this case Ukraine, and seven counts of failure to report foreign bank accounts and transactions. Charges against Rick Gates, a former longtime business partner of Manafort’s, have also been included in the same indictment. Both have also been charged with submitting false Foreign Agent Registration Act forms as well. 

The indictment alleges both men “generated tens of millions of dollars of income as a result of their Ukraine work” from 2006 to 2016 and that in order to hide the profits from US authorities, they laundered the money. They are also being charged for not reporting their work in “direct[ing] a campaign to lobby US officials on behalf of the Government of Ukraine, the President of Ukraine, and Ukrainian political parties.” While Manafort exited the campaign in August 2016 and seemingly any public affiliation with Trump’s team going forward from campaign to White House, Gates has been working with White House staff on an intermittent basis. Manafort has groomed Gates for several years and the pair have been connected through documents of companies Manafort had established in Cyprus, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and the Seychelles in order to receive payments from his Eastern European business and political clients, according to the New York Times.