United States

The indictment of Paul Manafort, the guilty pleas of Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos, and indictments of Russian intelligence officers

That issue took on heightened importance because the congressional and Mueller investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election remained in the headlines and continued to provide a subtext for virtually everything that unfolded in Washington. By October 2017 the Mueller investigation had led to its first criminal charges, as Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman from June to August 2016, was indicted for conspiracy, money laundering, tax fraud, failure to file reports of foreign financial assets, serving as an unregistered foreign agent, and making false and misleading statements under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Manafort had been forced to resign his post with the Trump campaign after an investigation by the Ukrainian government revealed that he had received some $13 million under the table for his work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. Phone calls between Manafort and Russian intelligence agents had been intercepted.

In December 2017 Flynn was indicted and pled guilty to the charge of lying to FBI, reportedly regarding his contact with Kislyak. Also pleading guilty to having lied to the FBI was George Papadopoulos, a onetime adviser to Trump who had tried several times to arrange meetings between representatives of the Trump campaign and Russians. Papadopoulos had been informed that Russian government officials had compromising information about Hillary Clinton. As the investigation moved forward, it appeared to focus on several key areas of inquiry, the role and nature of cyberattacks and information-influencing operations (including fake news), money laundering, the possibility of collusion by the Trump campaign with Russia, and whether obstruction of justice had occurred.

On July 13, 2018, indictments were issued for 12 Russian intelligence officers for their role in the hacking of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee in an attempt to influence the 2016 presidential campaign in Trump’s favour. The indictments painted a detailed portrait of a complex undertaking by Russian agents that included attempts to infiltrate state election boards, money laundering, “phishing” efforts to access the e-mail of Democratic Party and Clinton campaign officials, dissemination of the stolen documents through WikiLeaks and false online personas, and financing through the use of cyber currency (such as Bitcoin). In the wake of the indictments, Trump continued to vociferously question the authenticity of the intelligence community’s accusations of Russian involvement.