What's in Store for Paul Manafort? Franklin Foer Explains

06 March 2019 15:55

On March 13, the Washington D.C. federal court is set to sentence Paul Manafort, the former Donald Trump aide and advisor to ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, for financial crimes relating to money he earned while working in Ukraine. However, as Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller continues investigating Manafort’s role in alleged Russian collusion during the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, there is still a lot we don’t know, including when the investigation will end, according to The Atlantic journalist Franklin Foer.

“We know that Paul Manafort's going to prison now, and probably for the rest of his life, but there may be other things that Mueller's interested in. It seems like there's other things that he's interested in, and we just don't know where it's going to go,” Foer told Hromadske.

And there is still a lot Ukraine would like to see come out of the investigation. One of the key figures in this case is Russian political consultant Konstantin Kilimnik, who passed on 75 pages of polling data to Ukrainian oligarchs Rinat Akhmetov and Sergiy Lyovochkin, Foer says.

Kilimnik has also been alleged to have ties to the Russian intelligence service.

“All the Americans that worked with him in the past joked about him being a Russian spy, but I never really believed it until I saw Robert Mueller keep saying that they had intelligence that said this,” Foer stated, adding,“They kept mentioning it over and over again: we have intelligence that this guy Kilimnik is an "asset" of Russian intelligence.”

Hromadske spoke to The Atlantic’s Franklin Foer to discuss the latest in the Manafort investigation and what this means for Ukraine.