The Kyiv Post unexpectedly made international news after U. S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team alleged that Paul Manafort was willing to risk tougher bail conditions for a chance to improve his image in an op-ed submitted to the newspaper on Dec. 4 for publication.
Prosecutors allege that Manafort, the former Donald J. Trump campaign manager who worked for a decade in Ukraine on behalf of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, on Nov. 29 extensively edited an op-ed arguing that the 68-year old political consultant had pushed for Ukraine’s closer integration with the European Union.
Manafort faces federal charges of conspiracy, laundering at least $18 million out of $75 million earned in Ukraine and failing to register as a foreign agent for Ukraine while undertaking a multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign in Washington, D.C., on behalf of Yanukovych, who ruled from 2010 to 2014.
Manafort had been seeking to ease the terms of an $11.7 million bail agreement that confined him to house arrest in Virginia while he awaits trial.
But his hand in the Kyiv Post op-ed has put his request in jeopardy.
In a status hearing on Dec. 11, U. S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson admonished Manafort to follow her Nov. 8 order not to engage in pre-trial publicity that might sway potential jurors ahead of his trial.
Oleg Voloshyn byline
The Kyiv Post published the op-ed on Dec. 7, three days after receiving it. Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner went ahead with publication after Oleg Voloshyn, the bylined author of the piece, gave assurances that he wrote the op-ed and stands by its arguments. Voloshyn is a former Yanukovych-era Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman.
After the Kyiv Post published the piece online, prosecutors the next day filed in court a record of changes to the draft op-ed that had been suggested and approved by Manafort, along with other notations sent to Manafort’s longtime business associate, Konstantin Kilimnik, a suspected Russian intelligence agent. The changed version, which makes substantially the same argument as Voloshyn’s draft, was returned to Voloshyn for publication.
The op-ed was then sent to Kyiv Post deputy chief editor Olga Rudenko by email from Irina Milinevskaya, press secretary for the 43-member Opposition Bloc in parliament. (Manafort advised the Opposition Bloc in 2015 after Yanukovych fled power amid the EuroMaidan Revolution on Feb. 22, 2014. It includes many members of the now-defunct Party of Regions led by the exiled Yanukovych.)
Judge warns Manafort
Despite prosecutors’ claims that Manafort violated or at least skirted the judge’s order, Jackson only warned the defendant not to engage in such public relations activities again. Specifically, after Manafort’s indictment, the judge ordered that everyone involved in the case “refrain from making statements to the media or in public settings that pose a substantial likelihood” of influencing potential jurors.
The judge on Dec. 11 did not alter bail conditions restricting Manafort to house arrest, but warned: “I’m inclined to view such conduct in the future to be an effort to circumvent and evade the requirements of my order as it’s been clarified this morning.”
Prosecutors consider Manafort a flight risk and argued that the Kyiv Post op-ed shows that he cannot be trusted.
Prosecutors also disputed claims by Manafort and Voloshyn that publication in Kyiv would have no effect on public opinion in Washington.
Kyiv Post’s reach
“Defendants are well aware of the reach of the Kyiv Post,” wrote FBI Agent Brock Domin in a Dec. 4 court declaration. “Manafort’s submission suggests that reaching Washington D. C. was the point.”
Even after the revelations of Manafort’s hand in shaping the op-ed, Voloshyn continued to insist to the Kyiv Post and others that the work is his own.
“For me, ghostwriting and editing are two very different things,” said Voloshyn.
Metadata on the original file that Milinevskaya sent to Rudenko lists the original author as Kilimnik. Voloshyn said, when asked about this: “Maybe because it’s very easy to do. Just copy paste the text. I don’t know the technical issues.”
Kilimnik did not reply to an emailed request for comment while Mueller spokesman Joshua Stueve declined to comment. Kevin Downing, an attorney for Manafort, also did not reply to a request for comment.
Voloshyn told the Kyiv Post that his motivation in writing the op-ed is to set the record straight regarding reports that Manafort had worked with the Kremlin to thwart Ukraine’s ambitions to join the European Union and NATO.
“The most notorious one was published by McClatchy, claiming that Manafort tried to torpedo and derail European integration,” Voloshyn said.
Manafort’s changes
Emails by Manafort to Kilimnik seized by prosecutors show Manafort’s view of his editing: “It keeps (Voloshyn’s) approach but takes out pieces that would not be good to mention. You will notice that I left several areas where you need to insert points.”
Among the changes, Manafort removed a passage saying “it was that factor that made initially mostly pro-Russian team of the president [Yanukovych] work extensively on rapprochement with the EU.”
Another sentence originally read, before Manafort’s deletion: “Without (Manafort’s) input, Ukraine could have long been in Russian clout as many of Yanukovych’s voters frankly expected when they cast ballots in his favor in 2010.”
Manafort emailed the edited draft on Nov. 29 to Kilimnik, who replied on the morning of Nov. 30: “Thanks for quick turnaround —got it. Will do my part on this one.”
Mueller’s team contacted Manafort’s attorneys on Nov. 30, prosecutors write, receiving assurance “that steps would be taken to make sure it was no longer going to be published.”
But once the Kyiv Post had the op-ed, the decision to publish was out of Manafort’s hands. The op-ed was prefaced by an extensive editor’s note outlining what the newspaper knew on Dec. 7.
“After it was sent to my mailbox, nobody reached out to us saying something like ‘we changed our mind,’ nobody tried to stop it from publication,” Rudenko said.
Chief editor Brian Bonner said the published version contains only minimal stylistic changes to the submission made by the Opposition Bloc on Voloshyn’s behalf.
After the Kyiv Post publication, prosecutors concluded: “It appears that a public relations campaign is exactly what Manafort had in mind.”
UPDATE: After publication, Voloshyn sent the Kyiv Post the original, unedited draft of the op-ed, created and written the afternoon of Nov. 29. The file lists the author as “HP,” possibly for the Hewlett-Packard computer on which it was created.
