Jack - Manafort Faces Witness Tampering

Episode Date: June 5, 2018

BONUS - In this free breaking news minisode, we discuss Manadfort recently being accused of witness tampering. Enjoy!

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Hello, welcome to Muller She Wrote. This is your anonymous host, A.G. And with me, as always, is Julie Sachanson. Hello. And Jordan Cob A.G. and with me as always is Julie Sa Johnson. Hello. And Jordan Coburn. Hello. So today is a Monday for us and it's probably a Tuesday morning for you if you're listening. And we're here doing merch and getting ready to record our MSW Book Club and some crazy

breaking news comes out. And so I thought it in our best interest to tell you a little bit about it before we do full coverage in our episode next Monday because it's only Monday. So all weekend, we knew something was coming. There might be a molar Monday because all weekend Trump was tweeting like a crazy person. And he does this, but like he's got these little,

like, I don't know, flags that he throws up that are like readable, right? That we can kind of tell what's going on. and he had not mentioned Manafort since he was indicted Right and because that can be considered witness tampering He's probably been told just don't even say his name and He started tweeting about him this weekend and it could have been because of the story that dropped just now as we're Sitting here getting ready to record basically Manafort is being charged with witness tampering in violation of his release agreement, right?

And Jordan, do you want to give us a definition of witness tampering? Yes, I wanted an exact definition myself, so figured, y'all would want one too. Good ol' Wikipedia. Witness tampering is the act of attempting to alter or prevent the testimony of witnesses within criminal or civil proceedings. Laws regarding witness tampering also apply to proceedings before the U.S. Congress, Executive Departments, and Administrative Agencies. And then this is a fun little one.

In situations where intimidation or retaliation against witnesses is likely, witnesses may be placed in witness protection to prevent suspects or their colleagues from intimidating or harming them. Now we haven't heard from Guess Who in a minute. Gates. Rick Gates. Yes, exactly. I didn't give you very long to guess. Right, I was kind of thinking it over. I figured I would just guess who in three good rigates. So just try to jump on it.

Rigg. I always think that rig James quotes you. Yeah. And I hear you. A rigates bitch. Yeah. And so James and David Nunes. Now, what we've heard, David, what we've heard just, and I, you know, again, we're going

to go over this and what's reported and what's conjecture for sure in next week's episode. A lot of this is conjecture right now because the reports are just coming out. But apparently this happened a couple of months ago. And Mueller's team has been investigating since then. And it was a couple of months ago. I remember and I could be wrong. We'll have to look up the dates on this. But this is just off the top of my head.

Gates was wanting to go on a vacation. And he had to put in a request to go on vacation with his family Because he was on a release, right? Just like Manafort is although Manafort had 76 ankle bracelets and Coachella Queen Did you know not co-op a rating and so yeah totally burning man burning Manafort? Oh my god, that'd be good burning evidence This is a flat man for the flower crown and a bunch of bracelets on him.

But you have an outstanding edit that you also wanted done too. Oh, which one? I edit the photo edit the one about the ankle bracelet. Oh, that's right. Oh, yeah. I asked it that episode when we found out he had to wear two ankle bracelets that I wanted somebody to draw him. We got one. 46 different ankle bracelets on it. Like all over his face. We need a lot more arms. Yeah. We need that and then some flower Reaths and a burning man in the background love it Just you know to set the scene But um not to joke around too much about this because it is fucking serious

But apparently and what we know for sure is that he attempted to tamper with a witness the New York Times put out a story Matt Apuzzo, he's one of the guys who keeps you, dropping all these bombs, that federal prosecutors accused Manifort of tampering with a witness in his federal tax and money laundering case. So there was a filing that prosecutors made working for special counsel that said,

Manifort violated the terms of his release while he was awaiting trial. And they asked a federal judge to revise those terms or send him to jail. Oh, send that. Until trial. So, we know that for sure. And we also know that the prosecutor said that Paul Manifort tried to contact witnesses by phone through an intermediary and through an encrypted messaging program. What's that?

What's that? You got a call. You know what an encrypted, I feel like to Maniford an encrypted messaging program is like a PDF. Yeah, exactly. Just text messaging. Yeah, but if you're trying to tell me. And one witness told the FBI that Mr. Maniford was trying to suborn perjury.

Two witnesses provided the text messages to the FBI, which also, they also searched Manifort's cloud-based Apple account according to court records. Newly fucked that cloud. Yeah. Look up suborn perjury for me. I was just gonna say I don't know what suborn identity.

I love that movie. S-U-B-O-R-N. Suborn perjury. To me, what that sounds like is he was trying to get people to live form Yeah, it's not context clues. Really a Lawyer for mr. Manafort did not respond to messages seeking comment Neither witnesses or the intermediaries were named so Then it just goes into say who Manafort is and we we all know who Manafort is if you've been listening

and and we all know who Maniford is if you've been listening. And the witnesses at issue in Monday's court filing relate to allegations that Mr. Maniford secretly retained a group of former European officials to act as lobbyists. We've talked about this too. Right. And what it sounds like to me is that he tried to probably reach out to Gates or maybe, I don't know,

some banners want, I don't know who he tried to reach out to, but Gates seems like the most likely person. Try to get him to live for him. And maybe the FBI, and this is conjecture now, stopped Gates from going on his vacation, saying, no man, you gotta wear a wire for us, and you gotta tell us what's going on with this, because you have to do whatever we say,

you're our bitch, otherwise you go straight to jail. Yeah, you have it. I guess for 10 years minimum. Yes, yeah, age use, right. Suburnation straight to jail. Yeah. Yeah. Did you have it? For ten years, by the way. For ten years, minimum. Yes. Yeah. Age-U's right. Suburnation of perjury is the crime of persuading a person to commit perjury. The swearing of a false oath to tell the truth in a legal proceeding whether spoken or written. Just like you said, yeah.

Yeah. Perfect. Thank you, Jordan. Do you think, thank you for asking? Both of you. I like using my law. Do you think he's stupid enough to talk to someone that flipped? Well, like Rick Gates? Yeah.

He might be. I mean, who else is there? Everyone's flipped. Yeah. And then maybe Rick Gates was like, oh yeah, I'm chill, man. Unless it's someone we don't know. I mean, again, the whole Gates thing is completely a guess. For me, I only say that because they

work together for decades. Yeah. And now he could go back to jail. And this is a serious offense, witness tampering. And it can also be used to further pressure man afford into flipping. And somebody else had a theory that maybe he already flipped months ago. And this is all a dog and pony show,

which we all know what that means now, to keep him safe. Wow. You know what? I feel like Jordan knows. You should be our flipping expert. You're in genetics, right? I feel like that's appropriate.

That's really funny. He has flipped. And we can name a move like the F. Gennie Friedman or something. Oh my God, yes. And if you're all russian, yeah, Frank the flip slates at it was a tad. Yeah.

Spetlana. That's Romanian, sorry. No, I love it. It's a veryflakes at it was a tent. Yeah. Spetlana. That's Romanian, sorry. No, I love it. It's a very offensive to me. Oh my god. Oh no. This just in, it is WhatsApp.

He was using. Whoa. On February 26th, Mr. Maniford wrote, no WhatsApp message to one of the people at a public relations firm, we should talk. Damn. What's app? They should call it, what's that act? Because I always, I've never used it.

Apparently it's good for trees and though. It's great for trees. It's like international conversations, right? Trees and booty calls. I was going to say, kick is more of like a okay cupid. For sure. Yeah. We're going to take it to the next level.

Mm-hmm. It sounds like people to public relations firm. And when that witness avoided him or hung up on him, prosecutors said, Maniford worked through an unidentified intermediary to try to get to the person that you was trying to relate to the born perjury. Yeah, from the born of, I love that. We're used to it.

Yeah, subborn misprision. Uh, basically, P wants to give him a quick summary that he says to everyone, which is true that our friends have never lobbied in the US and the purpose of the program was for the EU. That's what the intermedia in the WhatsApp message. Wow, there's a lot more details than there were a minute ago. Wow, that is, this is really crazy good journalism. Okay. Okay. So sorry, you said that the intermediary said that to Manafort? No, to the guy at the PR firm, whoever he was

trying to. Okay. That's the born. So Manafort intermediary PR firm and the PR firm is where it ends or do you think the PR firm was, but like, is there an important person at the PR firm? No, I think what it, well, it's, he's important now. But I think what it is is that Manifort was trying to tell somebody at a PR firm what to say in their testimony. And then when they hung up on it, Manifort got an intermediary to do it. I don't know who the intermediary is, but that person is now on the hook too, but it doesn't sound like Rick Gates is involved now.

Okay. I don't know. I wonder who that witness would be. It's someone in the PR firm then. Or someone connected to people at the PR firm. Right. Or somebody Manifort knows that he just had to call him up. Could be an EU guy. Could be Kalimnik.

It could be, I mean, there's, of course, we have to preface any of conjecture by saying, we know like 0.006% of what's going on. Exactly. What we don't know and what I don't know is immense. And it could be any number of people I've never even heard of. Right. So, that's crazy. Good question.

It sounds like somebody at the PR firm went to the FBI and said, dude's trying to get us to say some shit. That's true. That would be the most direct way. Uh huh. So that means that there's people at this PR firm we've never heard of that are potential witnesses in the case. And we don't know because that whole witness list

of 70 subpoenas, 35 individual witnesses. They're blinks or seals. Yeah, they're blank. They haven't filled in the names yet, so we don't even know. Or maybe he was trying to set up a domino effect and have multiple layers of people, and there was going to be a couple more people pass the PR

Like if anyone like bailed basically, yeah, yeah to just distance himself as much as he could maybe from the witness Oh, yeah, maybe what you're saying. Yeah, not for the PR person man I was supposed to tell this person and this person was supposed to tell the witness Shitty telephone. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Should he tell? Damn dude, this is so real, this makes it so real. Yeah, and finding out in real time like that was intense. Yeah, yeah. And I will say that the court document,

it doesn't say when, the hearing will be to reconsider. It's just a motion to reconsider. And, and, matter of what, could go back to jail until the trial. Dude. So, that's insane. Yeah. I don't know what that was.

We did a video pop-up. Yeah. I was going to pull up the exact language on Twitter of, uh, of the document, if you care. Okay. I care, yeah, that's here. It's like one sentence. Um, but, uh, so let's see.

The evidence set forth below and in the attached declaration of the FBI Special Agent, Domin establishes probable cause to believe that Maniforr has violated section blah blah blah blah blah, by attempting to tamper with potential witnesses while on pre-trial release and, accordingly, has violated conditions of his release. This violation triggers a statutory presumption that no conditions or combination of release conditions will assure the safety of the community and of others. The government therefore requests that the court promptly scheduled the hearing called for by the statute to determine Manafort's release status. Wow. So basically what they're saying is that we can't trust him at all now. This

is, I think the second time he's done some shit on his bail. He messed up his whole bail agreement by putting up properties that he didn't actually like $10 million in bond on his properties that weren't worth $10 million and so they had to drag him back in And that's when they put the other ankle bracelet on him or was that one for each court. I can't remember He also blabbed to the news like yeah, and he got a gag order on him for that And then he did that whole second thing. just mentioned. And now he was tampering with witnesses. So Mueller strikes. Mueller's team is like, we can't trust him

to be out in the public. I think he's probably gonna be incarcerated until his trial. He should be. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, there's so much reason for him to be. That's not even a stretch. He's so desperate.

He can't be trusted, because he'll do whatever he can. Because his life is on the line, his freedom. He's gonna be as shady as he needs to be while he's free. And now does he want to spend the next month in jail or risk polonium tea or a good point? Wow. I would flip personally. I guess we'll see what he does. Because he could get witness protection. He's acting like a cockroach when you turn the light on and over. He's got everything. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, okay. All of them. The whole administration. Look, I don't know what the destiny for Maniford is.

I don't know if he's going to be incarcerated up until he goes to trial in July. But one thing I do know for sure is that Maniford is... Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh Bucked, bucked. All right. Yeah. You guys, stay tuned. It's going to start getting crazy. I've been AG. I've been Julie St. Johnson. I've enjoyed and co-vern. And this is Muller She Wrote. MUSIC Muller She Wrote is produced and engineered

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