Mueller: Manafort shared 2016 campaign data with Russian spy

Jan. 8 (UPI) -- Special counsel Robert Mueller's team accused former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort of sharing campaign polling data from the 2016 U.S. presidential election with a man linked to Russia's intelligence agencies, court documents mistakenly revealed Tuesday.

Defense lawyers filed the court document in response to allegations by Mueller that Manafort shared the information with alleged Russian spy Konstantin Kilimnik. Though key passages detailing the exact allegations were blacked out, news organizations, including CNBC and The Washington Post, were able to read the redacted sentences by copying and pasting the entire document into a word processing program.

His lawyers later refiled the documents, correcting the error.

Mueller said Manafort broke his plea deal by lying to prosecutors about his dealings with Russians, in particular Kilimnik, who worked for Manafort's consulting firm. Prosecutors said Manafort and Kilimnik also discussed a possible peace plan in Ukraine.

Manafort's lawyers argued, though, that their client did not lie to Mueller's team, and that inconsistencies in his interviews could be explained by documents and other details jogging his memory of information he earlier forgot.

"Issues and communications related to Ukrainian political events simply were not at the forefront of Mr. Manafort's mind during the period at issue and it is not surprising at all that Mr. Manafort was unable to recall specific details prior to having his recollection refreshed," Manafort's lawyers said in response.

In December, Mueller laid out five ways in which Manafort lied to investigators, a violation of his plea agreement in a case out of the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia.

On Sept. 14, Manafort entered a plea agreement with the Mueller team, saying he would cooperate with prosecutors in the D.C. money laundering and foreign lobbying case. The arrangement came less than a month after a federal jury in Virginia found him guilty on eight counts in a bank fraud trial in a separate case linked to the Mueller probe.

Prosecutors in the Virginia conviction said Manafort and his business associate, Rick Gates, passed money they received from Ukraine through foreign bank accounts to conceal it from the Internal Revenue Service.

The D.C. indictment charged Manafort with conspiracy, money laundering, tax fraud, failure to file reports of foreign financial assets, serving as an unregistered foreign agent and giving false and misleading statements under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Witness tampering charges were added in June 2018 and named Kilimnik as an accomplice.

In the Virginia case, Manafort faces at least seven years in prison, and he could face between 17 years and 22 years in prison in the D.C. case. That number could increase if he faces additional charges related to the alleged lies detailed in the Mueller memo.