By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--October 31, 2017
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Here's what the Manafort indictment comes down to: It's not that he broke the law by repping for parties in foreign countries. It's not illegal to do that. And he wasn't acting as an agent of some sort of hostile power such that issues like treason would come into play. His business activities were legal, but he was supposed to fill out paperwork to register as a foreign agent. He allegedly didn't do that, so he was apparently in violation of the law.
But usually when the Justice Department finds someone to be guilty of this particular violation, they don't prosecute. They just tell them to get it taken care of.Now, it is surely a terrible thing to take money, under the guise of “political consulting,” from an unsavory Ukranian political faction that is doing the Kremlin’s bidding. But it is not a violation of American law to do so. The violations occur when, as outlined above, there is a lack of compliance with various disclosure requirements. Mueller seems to acknowledge this: The money-laundering count does not allege that it was illegal for Manafort and Gates to be paid by the Ukrainian faction. It is alleged, rather, that they moved the money around to promote a scheme to function as unregistered foreign agents, and specifically to avoid the registration requirement. That seems like a stretch. To be sure, the relevant money-laundering statute includes in its definition of “specified unlawful activity” “any violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938.” (See Section 1956(c)(2)(7)(D) of Title 18, U.S. Code.) But the prosecution still has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the money was the proceeds of unlawful activity in the first place. Moreover, the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Even from Paul Manafort’s perspective, there may be less to this indictment than meets the eye.
Manafort and Gates (a) knew the money was the proceeds of illegal activity and (b) transported the money the way they did with the specific intent of avoiding having to register as foreign agents. This count will thus fail if there is any doubt that the Ukrainian money was illegal under American law, that Manafort and Gates knew it was illegal, that they knew the work they were doing required them to register as foreign agents, or that it was their intention to promote a failure-to-register violation. Even from Paul Manafort’s perspective, there may be less to this indictment than meets the eye — it’s not so much a serious allegation of “conspiracy against the United States” as a dubious case of disclosure violations and money movement that would never have been brought had he not drawn attention to himself by temporarily joining the Trump campaign. From President Trump’s perspective, the indictment is a boon from which he can claim that the special counsel has no actionable collusion case. It appears to reaffirm former FBI director James Comey’s multiple assurances that Trump is not a suspect. And, to the extent it looks like an attempt to play prosecutorial hardball with Manafort, the president can continue to portray himself as the victim of a witch hunt. Since we're talking strictly about activity in which Manafort engaged before his brief involvement with the Trump campaign, it's hard to believe Mueller has much to go on that actually touches the Trump campaign. There is some speculation that this indictment is strictly designed as leverage to get Manafort to turn on others, and that may very well be the case, but that doesn't mean anything he knows will amount to proof that the Trump-colluded-with-Russia story has any substance to it.
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Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain
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