Manafort sent offer to Russian

Mogul would get ’16 race briefings

Less than two weeks before Donald Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination, his campaign chairman offered to provide briefings on the race to a Russian billionaire closely aligned with the Kremlin, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Paul Manafort made the offer in an email to an overseas intermediary, asking that a message be sent to Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum magnate with whom Manafort had done business in the past, the people said.

"If he needs private briefings we can accommodate," Manafort wrote in the July 7, 2016, email, portions of which were read to The Washington Post along with other Manafort correspondence from that time.

The emails are among tens of thousands of documents that have been turned over to congressional investigators and special counsel Robert Mueller's team as they probe whether Trump associates coordinated with Russia as part of Moscow's efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election.

[RUSSIA REPORT: documents on Russian interference in election ]

Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni confirmed to The Associated Press that the email exchanges were legitimate but said no briefings ever occurred. A spokesman for Deripaska dismissed the email exchanges as scheming by "consultants in the notorious 'beltway bandit' industry."

Nonetheless, investigators believe that the exchanges created a potential opening for Russian interests at the highest level of a U.S. presidential campaign, according to people familiar with the probe.

Several of the exchanges, which took place between Manafort and a Kiev-based employee of his international political consulting practice, focused on money that Manafort believed he was owed by eastern European clients.

The notes appear to be written in deliberately vague terms, with Manafort and his employee, Konstantin Kilimnik, never explicitly mentioning Deripaska by name.

Investigators believe that key passages refer to Deripaska. The billionaire is referred to in some places by his initials, "OVD," and one email invokes an expensive Russian delicacy in what investigators believe is a veiled reference to Manafort's past work with Deripaska.

In one April exchange days after Trump named Manafort as a campaign strategist, Manafort referred to his positive press and growing reputation and asked, "How do we use to get whole?"

Kilimnik did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment.

Maloni said Wednesday that the email exchanges reflected an "innocuous" effort to collect past debts.

"It's no secret Mr. Manafort was owed money by past clients," Maloni said.

Maloni said no briefings with Deripaska ever took place but that, in his email, Manafort was offering what would have been a "routine" briefing on the state of the campaign.

Vera Kurochkina, a spokesman for Rusal, the company led by Deripaska, on Wednesday derided inquiries from The Washington Post that she said "veer into manufactured questions so grossly false and insinuating that I am concerned even responding to these fake connotations provides them the patina of reality."

Manafort's real estate dealings and overseas bank accounts already have drawn the interest of Mueller and congressional investigators as part of their examination of Russia's 2016 efforts. People close to Manafort believe Mueller's goal is to force the former campaign chairman to flip on his former Trump associates and provide information.

In August, Mueller's office executed a search warrant during an early morning raid of Manafort's Alexandria, Va., condominium, an unusually aggressive step.

Mueller has also summoned Maloni, the Manafort spokesman, and Manafort's former lawyer to answer questions in front of a grand jury. Sources said that last month, members of Mueller's team told Manafort and his lawyers that they believed they could pursue criminal charges against him and urged him to cooperate in the probe, providing information about other members of the campaign. The New York Times reported this week that Manafort had been threatened with indictment by prosecutors.

The Associated Press reported in March that before signing with Trump's campaign, Manafort secretly worked for Deripaska and proposed plans for political consulting work in eastern Europe that he said could "greatly benefit the Putin Government."

In a 2005 memo to Deripaska, Manafort laid out the details of the proposal that were subsequently spelled out the following year as part of a $10 million contract, according to interviews with people familiar with payments to Manafort and business records obtained by the AP. It's unclear how much of the work was carried out. The AP previously reported that Manafort and Deripaska maintained a business relationship until at least 2009. The two later had a falling-out.

Deripaska, one of Russia's richest men, is widely seen as an important ally of that country's president, Vladimir Putin. A U.S. diplomatic cable from 2006, published by WikiLeaks, referred to Deripaska as "among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis."

The billionaire has struggled to get visas to travel to the United States because of concerns that he might have organized crime ties in Russia, according to the Wall Street Journal. He has denied any such ties.

Manafort has said he worked for Deripaska to advance his business interests but denied his work was meant to advance Russia's interests.

WHITE HOUSE RECORDS

As part of the Russia investigation, Mueller also has requested extensive records and email correspondence from the White House covering a variety of matters, including the president's private discussions about firing his FBI director, according to two people briefed on the requests.

White House lawyers are working to turn over internal documents that span 13 categories that investigators for Mueller have identified as critical to their investigation, the people said.

The list of requests was described by two people briefed on them. Both insisted on anonymity in order to discuss a sensitive investigation. Some details of the requests were first reported Wednesday afternoon by The New York Times.

The requests broadly ask for any document or email related to a series of highly publicized incidents since Trump became president, including the firings of FBI Director James Comey and national security adviser Michael Flynn, the people said. The list demonstrates Mueller's focus on key moments and actions by the president and close advisers, which can address whether Trump sought to block the FBI investigations of Flynn and of Russian interference.

The special counsel team's work in recent months has zeroed in on Manafort and Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser.

Mueller's agents have questioned witnesses and business associates of both men about whether they sought to conceal the nature of consulting work that could benefit foreign governments.

In the past few weeks, White House lawyer Ty Cobb began sending records to the special counsel. Cobb is working within the White House to gather more of those documents and has told staff members and lawyers that he hoped to turn over many more this week.

Cobb declined to discuss the subjects that Mueller's team has questioned him about.

"The White House doesn't comment on any communications between the White House and the Office of Special Counsel out of respect for the Office of Special Counsel and its process," Cobb said in a statement. "We are committed to cooperating fully. Beyond that I can't comment."

Information for this article was contributed by Tom Hamburger, Rosalind S. Helderman, Carol D. Leonnig, Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima of The Washington Post; and by Chad Day and Eric Tucker of The Associated Press.

A Section on 09/21/2017

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