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In this episode of American Greed, Paul Manafort.

You've heard about the extravagant clothes.

Here is, we submit to you the ostrich code in question, and we submit it to

without comment.

Now, meet the man.

I will stipulate for purposes of today that you could characterize this as

influence battle.

For years, influence peddler Paul Manafort builds high -profile

then makes tens of millions of dollars selling his access to the players in

charge. Manafort was motivated primarily by two things, power and money.

I struggle to think of a client Paul Manafort wouldn't have taken on.

After decades in D .C., Manafort uses his political savvy and insider

connections to earn the biggest payday of his career from pro -Russian

in Ukraine.

It was definitely in their interest to make sure they had the right people with

the right connections and power.

But after making millions and illegally hiding his wealth, Manafort loses it

all. So what did he do? He just lied.

And his effort to hitch himself to a rising star...

leads to the exposure of a massive bank and tax fraud scheme.

It's very sad what's happened to Paul, the way he's being treated.

In 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump makes waves, promising to clean up

American politics.

We are going to Washington, D .C., and we are going to drain the

swamp. That spring, to help secure his party's nomination, the outsider

candidate turns to a big -time Washington insider, Paul Manafort.

There's a lot of irony in the Trump -Manaport connection, not the least of

is a candidate who is running as a primary part of his platform on draining

swamp has just hired to run his campaign, the ultimate swamp creature.

Manaport's path to the Trump campaign begins years earlier.

in an industrial town not far from Hartford, Connecticut.

Paul Manafort first became enamored with politics at his father's knee. His dad

ran for and won the mayorality of New Britain, Connecticut, their hometown.

His dad was a guy who practiced a very hard style of politics, but

New Britain was also a place that was filled with corruption.

Paul Manafort's father was accused and even charged with perjury but never

convicted and had a road named after him and was kind of a hero in his hometown.

So it's certainly possible that the son would conclude that you can walk right

up to the edge of the line without paying the penalty.

In the late 1960s, Manafort leaves New Britain for Washington, D .C., where he

attends Georgetown University.

While many members of his generation celebrate peace and love, he's pictured

the school yearbook flashing a V for victory sign, an apparent celebration of

the 1968 election victory of Richard Nixon.

After Nixon's resignation in 1974, Manafort, then a lawyer, serves in

the White House under his successor, President Gerald Ford.

Paul Manafort, even in those early days, showed signs of becoming the master

strategist that he would eventually fully realize.

He was just this shrewd operator who understood how to get in the head of

somebody and to figure out what they wanted and how he could deliver it to

After helping Ford defeat Ronald Reagan for the GOP nomination in 1976,

Manafort works on Reagan's presidential campaign four years later.

The South will be targeted. It will get specialized media. We will carry the

Reagan record to the South, particularly.

He kind of went where he saw an opening, and by the time he was first getting

involved professionally around Reagan, that was the hot thing in American

politics.

It turns out to be a good bet.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem.

Government is the problem.

Out of Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign, Washington was suddenly flooded with

Republicans who'd been out of power for several years. And they had the new

power in town. But nobody had figured out how to really capitalize on that

power. Manafort will lead the charge on K Street.

D .C.'s lobbying center.

In 1980, he teams up with two other Reagan campaign veterans, Charlie Black

and Roger Stone, who will later work for the Trump campaign.

Together, the three men form a political firm with an innovative two -part

business model.

They were electing people who they established intimate relationships with.

And then they would turn around and ask them for favors on behalf of corporate

clients. And this was an incredible advantage.

And it made them a fortune.

The firm's principals bring in six -figure salaries representing big -name

domestic clients, including a high -powered New York real estate developer

Donald Trump.

Manafort ran a firm that blew up based on a reputation for getting things

done. If you're a lobbyist, you're going to be effective some of the time.

You're going to be effective maybe not all of the time. But the important thing

is to create the perception of power.

And Manafort was a master of that.

The way he creates this perception is partially spelled out in a company pitch

obtained by NBC News in 1988.

The document lists the close political ties that key members of the firm had in

the Reagan administration, and it promised that personal relationships

Department of State officials would be utilized to upgrade a back -channel

relationship.

Though what they're doing is legal, some consider it questionable.

Some of the old guard in Washington, D .C. turned up their noses at what

Blackstone and Manafort were doing, and they saw it as really unseemly.

They were breaking all sorts of norms. They were creating all sorts of new

conventions for Washington. And I think it's even possible to say that through

their firm, Paul Manafort and his crew did a lot to create the swamp, if you

will, as we know it.

Coming up on American Greed, Paul Manafort finds big paydays overseas and

makes a stunning admission about the nature of his work.

I will stipulate for purposes of today that you could characterize this as

influence peddling.

Over the decades that he works in Washington, Paul Manafort becomes a

-the -scenes master of crafting politicians' images.

When you set up here with all this gadgetry, do you see yourself in the

the Wizard of Oz?

No, because if we were, we'd have curtains on the front of the window.

But in this world of power and money, it's not just American politicians and

American lobbying clients who turn to him for help.

There were definitely instances before Paul Manafort of lobbyists working on

behalf of scuzzy foreign governments.

But nobody had made it a cottage industry in quite the same way that Paul

Manafort did.

He basically went out and found all manner of folks with unsavory

who were willing to pay huge sums in order to try to buff their reputations

improve their standing in Washington.

The work is not without controversy.

The Prime Minister of the Bahamas, Lyndon Pinling, and key officials of his

government have long been described in reports of American drug agents as

receiving huge payoffs from big -time Colombian and American drug bosses.

But in 1984, a Washington lobbying firm run by these men, all of whom are now

key advisors in the Bush campaign, went to work for the Pinling government at

$800 ,000 a year.

When these reports first surfaced, Manafort's partner, Charlie Black,

wrongdoing, saying the firm would never work for a foreigner whose interests are

at odds with those of the United States.

But other bad press will follow.

In 1992, Manafort's firm, then called Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, features

heavily in the torturous lobby.

Published by the Center for Public Integrity, This report outlines the

work on behalf of questionable foreign clients said to receive U .S. aid and

abuse human rights.

There's certainly an argument to be made that Manafort was kind of the angel on

the shoulder of some of these arguably very bad people that he was trying to

them to embrace democratic.

tactics and strategies, but also democracy.

That's certainly the way Manafort and his allies saw it.

Manafort's detractors say, that's a bunch of bull.

It's possible to know who Manafort's firm works for, who they lobby, and how

much they make because of a law called the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or

FARA, created in the 1930s.

you think this is?

Right in Madison Square Garden, USA.

And this is Fritz Kuhn, leader of the German -American Bund, hiding behind the

American flag, but taking his orders from Berlin.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act was enacted in 1938 in response to

congressional concerns about Nazi subversive activities in the United

particular clandestine.

propaganda being disseminated throughout the United States.

Now a partner at the law firm of Wiggin and Dana, David Laufman once served as

chief of the Department of Justice's counterintelligence and export control

section.

There, he was responsible for enforcement of FARA, the law that

like Manafort to disclose their lobbying and public relations work performed in

the U .S. on behalf of a foreign power.

The whole point of the statute is not to suppress or regulate the content of

speech, but when that speech is propagated by people in the United

on behalf of a foreign government or a foreign political party to require

registration with the government and periodic disclosures so that the

people or U .S. lawmakers can be properly put on notice of who's behind

content so they can weigh.

what credit or weight to attach to him.

In Farrah filings like these from the 1980s, Manafort divulges which

he's working for, what he's doing for them, and the vast sums he's paid.

Paul Manafort went from being a guy who came from relatively little means to

a guy running a firm that was suddenly printing money.

This was the 1980s, the age of Gordon Gekko. And Manafort was somebody, when

suddenly stumbled upon wealth, really set out to enjoy it.

Manafort and his partners and even some of the associates at the firm were

wearing flashy tailored suits, driving big, shiny cars, often foreign.

He got one of the biggest homes in his friend's set.

When he had a pool, he didn't like where it was positioned, so he had it moved

several feet.

He would disappear for weeks and come back and expense a Concord round trip to

Paris and a week and a half in the nicest hotel there.

He was a guy who was unaccustomed to wealth, and when it came to him, he

flaunted it.

Working for unsavory foreign clients is not the only way Manafort builds this

wealth.

In 1989, he tells Congress he's used his inside connections to score

taxpayer dollars.

We did not think that that was improper.

What the system did for this former Reagan campaign director was allow his

to buy a run -down New Jersey housing development, refurbish it, and his

will receive $31 million in rent subsidies over the next 15 years.

Manafort will never face charges.

But in June 1989, he is hauled before a House committee where he makes a

stunning assertion. I will stipulate for purposes of today that you could

characterize this as influence peddling.

He commits this really elementary mistake.

He says, yes, I'm an influence peddler.

It was actually a very defining moment for Paul Manafort. He was sort of at

point where he was being forced to choose between potentially having some

foothold in government and being a full -fledged power lobbyist.

Talking to some people who worked with him back then was kind of the breaking

point, and he decided to choose the private sector and the big paydays from

lobbying.

Next on American Greed, Paul Manafort heads east and finds the opportunity

of a lifetime.

Manafort's work for Yanukovych was by far his most lucrative and long -term

client.

Following Paul Manafort's admission that he's an influence peddler, in the

1990s, his name largely disappears from the headlines.

Paul Manafort's legendary firm gets bought by a big corporate conglomerate.

he creates a new firm, which is a much smaller firm, and he has to hustle for a

new set of clients.

He really immersed himself in the foreign lobbying scene. That became his

train.

At a certain point, it appeared as if he was just going to disappear entirely

from Washington and really make his home around the world in the employ of some

of these fabulously wealthy clients who would be willing to pay him a lot of

money.

No longer working with his old partners at Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly,

Manafort looks east.

According to the report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in 2005,

begins a multi -million dollar working relationship with a Russian billionaire

named Oleg Deripaska.

He's believed to be among the closest oligarchs to Putin.

He's known as an aluminum king.

His reputation is not a pretty one.

Oleg Deripaska developed a reputation as someone not to be messed with.

According to the Mueller report, one of Manafort's employees will tell federal

investigators that Deripaska pays Manafort millions to help install

government officials in countries where Deripaska does business.

The pro -Putin oligarch also invests millions in a private equity fund that

Manafort launches.

In 2005, Manafort begins working in Ukraine for a recently defeated pro

politician named Viktor Yanukovych.

Manafort directs his Ukrainian operation from a small office in Kiev.

At his side is Rick Gates.

Rick Gates was kind of Paul Manafort's right -hand man.

Kind of a jack of all trades. I mean, he'd be somebody that would put together

the financials for Paul Manafort and Rick Gates' company in the morning and

maybe in the afternoon communicate some of the finer points of what Paul

Manafort would outlay in strategy.

Even though Manafort has mastered the art of crafting political images back in

the United States, doing so for Yanukovych is no easy task.

He had the image of, let's say, a Soviet factory boss.

He had a not -perfect suit.

It didn't fit very well. It was usually unbuttoned.

And when Manafort started working with him, Yanukovych turned into an American

dandy.

Yanukovych's one -time campaign chair, Taras Chernobyl, got a first -hand look

at the work Manafort did for his former boss.

He taught him to behave by American standards.

He had to smile and wear a perfect suit with each button perfectly fastened.

The hair had to be perfect.

The whole nine yards.

This is what he taught Yanukovych.

Under Manafort's tutelage, Yanukovych's pro -Kremlin party makes strong gains.

And in 2010, the American consultant helps his client defeat Yulia Tymoshenko

to become Ukraine's president.

For his work, prosecutors say Manafort is paid handsomely by Yanukovych's

backers, a group of politically -minded, ultra -wealthy, pro -Russian oligarchs.

Politics is just part of how they run their business.

They fund election campaigns.

Daria Kalinyuk is the executive director of the Anti -Corruption Action Center

in Kiev and a longtime observer of the way oligarchs operate in Ukraine.

They decide who will win at the elections.

And with this influence, they can adopt any law which makes privileges for their

companies.

Prosecutors working for Robert Mueller say that when these oligarchs pay

Manafort for his services, the money doesn't go through normal channels.

It was all under the table and all very roundabout.

It was all shadow money.

According to prosecutors and evidence presented at trial, various oligarchs

transfer money into Manafort's secret accounts in offshore banking havens like

the Seychelles and Cyprus.

They say Manafort will secret away more than $55 million in these hidden

accounts. So by sheltering his funds offshore, he was able to reduce his tax

bill by about $6 million.

Manafort began living just a truly extravagant lifestyle, really living and

paying for his family to live similarly extravagant lifestyles. And so he was

really spending like a drunken sailor.

In 2006, a company linked to Manafort purchases an apartment in Trump Tower

for $3 .7 million.

Six years later, using his untaxed money from Ukraine, he buys this Brooklyn

brownstone for $3 million and this 2 ,000 -square -foot two -bed, two -bath

in Soho for another $2 .8 million.

And he spends more on antique rugs than most people spend on their entire home.

He bought a million dollars worth of rugs. He wasn't reselling them on the

market. I mean, it seems like he just really liked rugs.

Then there are the clothes.

In just a few years, Manafort dropped $1 .3 million at a New York tailor and a

Beverly Hills clothier.

known as one of the most expensive stores in the country.

I think when you see $1 .3 million in clothing, I think that shocks a lot of

people. That's not the normal budget for most of society.

Among his purchases is a now infamous $15 ,000 ostrich skin bomber

jacket.

I think the ostrich jacket was a metaphor for Paul Manafort's greed. It

enough for him to be successful. He could have been extremely successful if

had just played by the rules.

But that wasn't enough. He wanted to live a very decadent lifestyle.

Up next, turmoil strikes in Ukraine.

And Paul Manafort's secret cash stream dries up.

All of a sudden it went from being a faucet or a fire hose to everything

turned off.

Paul Manafort's scheme to avoid paying $6 million in taxes.

is just one of the many secrets he's keeping.

After the election of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine in 2010, his rival, Yulia

Tymoshenko, is jailed.

Jailing Tymoshenko was a nasty bit of business.

And it was clearly politically motivated because Tymoshenko was far and away the

greatest political rival to Yanukovych.

And so his reputation took a big hit.

Ukraine still wanted to join the European Union and wanted to show that

still a democratic country.

And so Manafort set about trying to explain away this arrest, to say, you

what, this woman actually deserved to be in prison.

And he did so by setting up a whole lobbying campaign to try to change minds

Capitol Hill.

But they did it without making that transparent.

Despite the requirements of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, Manafort will

later admit in his criminal proceedings that he runs the operation without

registering and takes steps to keep it as secret as possible.

Money keeps flowing.

But in the last months of 2013, the effort comes to an abrupt halt.

It has all the signs of a revolution, and it's taking place in Kiev's

Independence Square.

Hundreds of thousands, and even about a million people went to protest on the

streets, demanding dignity, human rights, justice, and saying no

to corruption.

And President Yanukovych himself was a symbol of corruption.

In February 2014, the protests in Kiev turned deadly, and Yanukovych flees to

Russia.

Once gone, his lavish estate is open to the public, offering a glimpse into the

life of excess from which he and Manafort have now been removed.

When Paul Manafort went to work in Ukraine, he was making so much money for

Yanukovych that he let the entire rest of his lobbying practice fall away.

And when that relationship disappeared, when his client was sent into exile, he

had nothing.

To make matters worse, Manafort is also being sued by his old client.

Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Over a multi -million dollar investment deal

gone bad.

Eventually, Oleg Deripaska said that Manafort essentially took his

Despite his mounting problems, Manafort fails to adjust.

He and his family kept spending hand over fist as if nothing had changed.

So in order to keep up this facade, he ended up resorting to an increasingly

risky and sort of convoluted series of financial and accounting and tax

In December 2015,

Manafort begins applying for loans, even though he's hardly the perfect

candidate.

If banks looked at Paul Manafort's actual financial situation...

They would look at somebody who's had very little income coming in. They would

look at somebody who would be a real risk for repaying loans.

So what did he do? He just lied.

He was committing bank fraud by submitting false documents to obtain

banks and lenders. He would lie about his income. He would lie about his debt.

In one instance, evidence shows he takes a profit and loss statement showing his

company has lost $638 ,000.

He has it changed into a document that can be edited and simply changes the

numbers.

From a $638 ,000 loss in the initial document that was sent from the

after it was turned into a Word document that Paul Manafort could edit, it shows

a $3 million gain.

For Paul Manafort's purposes, he's telling the bank here, hey, I've got

coming in, and yes, I can pay you back.

According to lawyers working for special counsel Robert Mueller, Manafort will

use lies like this to secure $25 million in loans.

Coming up, with his financial life in turmoil, Paul Manafort seizes an

opportunity.

I think it's pretty clear that he sees Trump as the greatest opportunity for

salvation that he'll ever have.

I'll bring back our jobs and I'll bring back our money.

Do the clothes make the man?

Take a look inside Paul Manafort's closet at AmericanGreed .CNBC .com.

Want inside information from the show?

Join the Greed social network.

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We'll be right back.

In the early months of 2016, Paul Manafort is being pursued by Russian

oligarch Oleg Deripaska while also running a multi -million dollar bank

scheme. He's sitting in a place of desperation.

His marriage is in a bad place.

His finances are in a bad place.

He's looking for some way to reinvent himself, some lifeline.

And he sees Trump come onto the scene.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am officially running

for president of the United States.

And we are going to make our country great again.

For Manafort, Trump was nothing less than a political and a financial

Manafort uses his connections to score a job.

This is the job application letter, for lack of a better word, that Paul

Manafort submitted to Donald Trump through a mutual friend.

He talks about himself as sort of an insider who knows how to navigate these

very Byzantine party processes, but also casts himself as, quote, not a part

of the political establishment.

Though he's resorting to fraud to stay afloat, Manafort isn't asking for much.

One of the key selling points that Manafort makes and the case for in this

application is that he will work for free. He says, I'm not looking for a

job. And that he didn't need the money.

The pitch works.

And by March, Manafort is Trump's convention manager.

By late May, he's taken over.

So joining me now from Southampton, New York, is the chairman of the Trump

campaign, the head coach, if you will, Paul Manafort. Mr. Manafort, welcome

to the show, sir.

Thank you, Chuck.

Manafort may be working for free, but that doesn't mean he won't take

of his lucrative new gig.

to improve his balance sheet.

Manafort and his former Russian client, Oleg Deripaska, have had a falling out

over a multi -million dollar investment deal gone bad.

According to the Mueller report, Manafort asks how he might use his new

get whole with this Putin -allied oligarch and offers to provide him with

special briefings from inside the campaign.

All indications were when Paul Manafort said to Oleg Deripaska, this Russian

oligarch, can I provide you these insights into the U .S. political

the U .S. election, to the Donald Trump campaign potentially, to get whole with

you, he was referring to a debt that he owed Oleg Deripaska coming out of a

failed business agreement.

According to the Mueller report, Manafort's employee, Rick Gates, tells

investigators his boss has him share internal campaign polling data with

employee in Ukraine so he could, in turn, send it to their former clients in

country. Gates will also tell the feds he understands Deripaska to be one

intended recipient.

Later, when Russian efforts to push the election in favor of Trump are revealed,

this alleged move raises many questions.

A lot of close followers of the Russia controversy saw in Manafort's

to share polling with some of these oligarchs, perhaps an effort to try to

the Russian social media disinformation campaign that we now know was deployed

to help Donald Trump in the 2016 election.

I think, however, there's an equally strong and perhaps even more convincing

argument that what Manafort was trying to do was to make money, and that's why

he was sharing the polling information.

He would want to show these former clients that he still had some serious

According to the Mueller report, Manafort did not acknowledge ordering

share the polling data.

Though he did not respond to American Greed's requests for comments,

spokeswoman has said he never received any polling data or private briefings.

Hillary Clinton is the epitome of the establishment.

She's been in power for 25 years.

Despite his pronouncements, Manafort's days leading Trump's outsider quest are

numbered.

In August 2016, Manafort resigns from Team Trump.

in what the campaign calls a shake -up.

The following year, Trump is in the White House, and former FBI Chief Robert

Mueller begins his inquiry into Russian election interference.

Soon, Manafort finds himself directly in the crosshairs.

St. Paul Manafort caught the eye of Robert Mueller because of his

with Russia, connections with oligarchs, all of his offshore business dealings.

And then once they began looking, found all of the financial misconduct.

As will be revealed in future court proceedings, the financial misconduct

investigators find includes the hiding of Manafort's Ukraine income, his

multimillion -dollar bank fraud scheme.

and his secret lobbying efforts in Washington on behalf of his Ukrainian

clients. In October 2017, he and his deputy, Rick Gates, go

down hard.

Breaking news tonight, the first indictment for the Mueller

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his one -time top aide

federal charges.

At first, Manafort and Gates are indicted for hiding income from their

Ukraine.

and hiding their secret lobbying efforts.

Soon, their problems will grow.

Up next, Manafort heads to trial, and a judge shocks many with his

pronouncement from the bench.

That judge also added that Manafort has no criminal history and has, quote,

lived an otherwise blameless life.

There was nothing about that record.

that the adjective blameless should be applied.

In the supercharged political landscape of 2017, not everyone sees Paul

Manafort's indictment as justice at work.

People try to paint this as some sort of a political indictment or some sort of

a political attack going after the president's former campaign manager.

I think that when you have a $25 million bank fraud and $55 million in offshore

bank accounts, any prosecutor in America would bring that case regardless of his

connection to President Trump. But I do think, in addition, there was hope that

they could use those charges as leverage to provide cooperation from Paul

Manafort. And it wasn't that they wanted him to do in President Trump. They

wanted to learn the truth.

At first, Manafort doesn't flip.

But a few months after the initial indictment, someone very close to him

Manafort's former top aide, Rick Gates, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying

to investigators.

Gates is now cooperating with the special counsel.

It was really shocking when Rick Gates flipped on Manafort and decided to

testify against him. This is a guy who had worked for and around Manafort for

decades.

He knew that he had worked closely with Rick Gates, that Rick Gates knew about

all of the schemes. He was his close business partner and knew that his

cooperation would likely be devastating.

This is not the only trouble Manafort faces.

In June 2018, prosecutors hit him with additional charges.

They allege he's been coaching witnesses to say his secretive lobbying for

Ukraine took place outside the U .S. and was therefore totally legal.

That looked right there that this is somebody who is hiding legitimate and

serious criminal behavior. That was something that I think turned the tide

far as what people looked at when it came to Paul Manafort's indictment.

Manafort's bail is revoked.

And the man who has lived in fine homes across the country is sent to

lockup.

Manafort's case is split in two, with one trial scheduled at the courthouse in

Alexandria, Virginia, and another in Washington, D .C.

On July 31, 2018,

A jury in Virginia begins to hear the first of these cases.

Though Paul Manafort was the Trump campaign chairman for three months, this

trial is not about that.

Prosecutors argue that Manafort lied to hide his money when he was making it in

Ukraine and lied to get more from banks back home when that work ended.

In making that case, their star witness is Manafort's longtime associate, Rick

Gates.

Rick Gates is not a perfect witness, but very few cooperating witnesses are. But

what Rick Gates could provide is essentially a talking roadmap and could

the jury exactly how it was that Paul Manafort did his business. And for all

Rick Gates's own faults, there were documents to back it up. It made him a

credible witness.

On August 21st, the jury finds Manafort guilty on five counts of filing a false

tax return, one count of failing to disclose a foreign bank account, and two

counts of bank fraud while acquitting him on 10 additional charges.

When the trial ends, President Trump denies a connection to the case. It

involve me, but I still feel, you know, it's a very sad thing that happened.

This has nothing to do with Russian collusion.

Not long after his guilty verdict in Virginia, Manafort agrees to plead

to two conspiracy counts in his pending case in D .C.

I think at that point he knew that the only way that he could reduce his

potential prison exposure was to enter a guilty plea and to cooperate with the

special counsel. And so he agreed to do that. I don't know if he ever intended

to fully cooperate.

Throughout his case...

President Trump praises Manafort for not flipping and dangles the possibility of

salvation.

Tonight, the president is saying that a pardon for Paul Manafort, his former

campaign chair, is not off the table.

Two and a half months after agreeing to help prosecutors, the government says in

a court filing, and a judge will later agree, that Manafort has broken his

He broke it because he lied to investigators about certain questions

had and certain questions that no matter how he answered, he wouldn't have been

prosecuted for. And the question I think that will always hover over this story

is why? Why was he lying? Why did he decide not to fully play ball with

Mueller?

He must have believed that the truth would be damaging to people he was

to protect. I don't know if that was President Trump or others, or if it got

the very heart of cooperation about Russia.

But it may be that those lies or whatever it was he continued to protect

reason that Robert Mueller was never able to establish a conspiracy between

Russia and the Trump campaign.

In March 2019,

Judges in Manafort's cases in Virginia and D .C.

hand down separate sentences totaling seven and a half years in prison.

Manafort did not respond to requests for comment.

His is a fall from grace for a kingmaker who once stood behind the most powerful

men in the world.

Many who studied Manafort's long career as an influence peddler remained baffled

by the words of the Virginia judge in his federal case, who said that, except

for his recent crime, Manafort had lived an otherwise blameless life.

There was so much evidence revealing Manafort to be a shady operator that to

hear the judge sort of almost applaud him for living a blameless life to that

point was sort of galling to a lot of people.

That phrase, in an otherwise blameless life, really does stick into the craw

because everything that Manafort had done from the moment that he opened up

lobbying shop in Washington had been done to personally enrich himself at

the expense of American democracy.