Paul Manafort

The lobbyist who came back to politics

Paul Manafort’s post-prison career looks less like exile and more like resumption. Ahead of Albania’s May 11 parliamentary election, he was part of Chris LaCivita’s team in Tirana — “a friend and collaborator,” in the words of the Democratic Party of Sali Berisha — working alongside LaCivita and longtime Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio for the opposition candidate (Times of India (Associated Press)). Berisha’s party said the Americans had been working on “all aspects of the campaign, from strategy to messaging and public communication” (Times of India (Associated Press)). Berisha also signed a two-year, $6 million contract with the Republican consulting and lobbying firm Continental Strategy, a sign of how eagerly foreign candidates were courting Trump’s orbit (Times of India (Associated Press)). For a man convicted of concealing lucrative foreign lobbying work, the return to foreign campaigns was a striking coda.

He had already told his own version of the story. His memoir, Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced, was published by Skyhorse and announced for an August 16 release (Kirkus Reviews). The publisher’s description calls the charges against him a “HOAX” and says the book explodes “the lies about his work in Ukraine, his previous work with foreign governments and business interests in other countries, his involvement with the Trump campaign, and the ‘process crimes’ for which he was wrongly convicted and sent to prison” (Kirkus Reviews). Kirkus noted he served as Trump’s campaign manager for two months, was sentenced to more than seven years, and served less than two before being pardoned (Kirkus Reviews).

From New Britain to the K Street elite

Paul John Manafort Jr. was born on April 1, 1949, in New Britain, Connecticut (Firstpost). Politics ran in the family: his father once served as mayor of his hometown (Firstpost). Manafort earned a law degree from Georgetown University, joined a law firm after school, and then moved into the lobbying business (Firstpost).

Before Trump, Manafort was a fixtures-list Republican operative: he worked on the presidential bids of Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bob Dole (Firstpost). In 1980 he co-founded the Washington lobbying shop Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly — the “Stone” was Roger Stone, the political insider who would later help recruit Manafort into Trump’s circle (Firstpost). The firm built its fortune representing foreign leaders with checkered reputations: Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, Somalia’s Mohamed Siad Barre, Angola’s Jonas Savimbi, and eventually Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine (Firstpost).

The Ukraine work made him rich — and then ruined him. As Yanukovych’s strategic adviser, Manafort earned tens of millions of dollars, spending it on luxury homes, cars, $1 million in antique rugs, and suits including an $18,500 python jacket (Firstpost). At his trial, prosecutors alleged that more than $75 million of Ukrainian money had flowed into his offshore accounts, most of them in Cyprus (Firstpost).

The 2016 campaign and the ledger

Manafort landed the chairmanship of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, worked on it for five months, and resigned as campaign chairman on August 19, 2016 (Reuters, Firstpost). The trigger was Ukraine: investigators for the country’s new post-revolution government released files showing secret cash payments from Yanukovych to Manafort worth $12.7 million (Firstpost). “Paul is a true professional and I wish him the greatest success,” Trump said at the time (Firstpost).

Conviction, sentencing, and pardon

In 2017, special counsel Robert Mueller’s team charged Manafort (Times of India (Associated Press)). In August 2018 he was convicted of eight counts: five counts of making false income tax returns, two counts of bank fraud, and one count of failure to report foreign bank and financial accounts — hiding tens of millions in Ukrainian consulting income from tax authorities and misleading banks about his finances to get loans (Firstpost, ThePrint (Bloomberg wire)). He later pleaded guilty in Washington to two conspiracy counts, each punishable by up to five years: conspiring to lobby illegally for Ukraine, laundering money to support a lavish lifestyle, and tampering with witnesses (Al Jazeera, ThePrint (Bloomberg wire)).

Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced him to 73 months in the D.C. case, with 30 months running concurrently with the 47 months he had received in Virginia, for a combined sentence of just over 7.5 years (Al Jazeera, Reuters). He had been jailed since June 2018, when his house arrest was revoked over allegations that he tried to influence witnesses while awaiting trial (Al Jazeera). In court he read from a written statement: “I am sorry for what I have done and all the activities that have gotten us here today” (Al Jazeera). Prosecutor Andrew Weissmann had told the court that Manafort’s crimes spanned more than a decade and continued even while he was awaiting trial, including concealing his foreign lobbying work, laundering millions, and — while under house arrest — coaching witnesses to lie on his behalf (Al Jazeera).

He was released to home confinement in May 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic (ThePrint (Bloomberg wire)). Then, in the final weeks of his presidency, Trump pardoned him on December 23, 2020 (Reuters). Trump had previously resisted the move, reportedly because of the political risk; the pardon came days after similar clemency for other Mueller-investigation figures, and drew bipartisan criticism — Republican Senator Ben Sasse called it “rotten to the core” (ThePrint (Bloomberg wire)). Trump himself had cast Manafort as a “good man” and the investigation as “a witch hunt and it’s a disgrace” (ThePrint (Bloomberg wire)).

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance tried to prosecute Manafort separately, announcing a 16-count state indictment on mortgage fraud and related charges in March 2019 — less than an hour after the federal sentencing (Reuters). State courts ruled that prosecuting him for the same underlying conduct violated New York’s double-jeopardy laws, and the state’s highest court let that dismissal stand in its February 4 order (Reuters). Manafort’s lawyer in that case was Todd Blanche, who called the indictment “a clear violation of New York law” (Reuters).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not assert Manafort’s retroactive FARA registration date, the alleged Deripaska contract, or the alleged sharing of polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, since none were verified from a source read in full. It does not evaluate the factual merits of the memoir’s claims about a “HOAX” prosecution; it reports only what the publisher said the book argues. It does not state a year for the Albania report or the memoir release, which the pages read did not show. It reports the $75 million and $12.7 million figures only as prosecutorial and documentary allegations, not as established facts. It does not claim any post-pardon role for Manafort in the U.S. government or the Trump campaign.