...The tack in the backside of the Democratic Party...’s 2016 campaign will turn out to be bunk.
And the behavior of FBI agents and federal prosecutors who promoted that faulty evidence may disturb us more than we now know.
The first, the
At its best, the Steele dossier is an "unverified and salacious" political research memo funded by Trump’s Democratic rivals. At worst, it may be Russian disinformation worthy of the "garbage" label given it by esteemed news hound Bob Woodward.
The second document, known as the "black cash ledger," remarkably has escaped the same scrutiny, even though its emergence in Ukraine in the summer of 2016 forced Paul Manafort to resign as Trump's campaign chairman and eventually face U.S. indictment.
In search warrant affidavits, the FBI portrayed the ledger as one reason it resurrected a criminal case against Manafort that was dropped in 2014 and needed search warrants in 2017 for bank records to prove he worked for the Russian-backed Party of Regions in Ukraine.
| Ukraine’s top anticorruption prosecutor, Nazar Kholodnytsky, told me he warned the U.S. State Department’s law enforcement liaison and multiple FBI agents in late summer 2016 that Ukrainian authorities who recovered the ledger believed it likely was a fraud. |
For example, Ukraine’s top anticorruption prosecutor, Nazar Kholodnytsky, told me he warned the U.S. State Department’s law enforcement liaison and multiple FBI agents in late summer 2016 that Ukrainian authorities who recovered the ledger believed it likely was a fraud.
"It was not to be considered a document of Manafort. It was not authenticated. And at that time it should not be used in any way to bring accusations against anybody," Kholodnytsky said, recalling what he told FBI agents.
Likewise, Manafort’s Ukrainian business partner Konstantin Kilimnik, a regular informer for the State Department, told the U.S. government almost immediately after The New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
wrote about the ledger in August 2016 that the document probably was fake.
Manafort "could not have possibly taken large amounts of cash across three borders. It was always a different arrangement ‐ payments were in wire transfers to his companies, which is not a violation," Kilimnik wrote in an email to a senior U.S. official on Aug. 22, 2016.
He added: "I have some questions about this black cash stuff, because those published records do not make sense. The timeframe doesn’t match anything related to payments made to Manafort. ... It does not match my records. All fees Manafort got were wires, not cash."
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team and the FBI were given copies of Kilimnik’s warning, according to three sources familiar with the documents.
Submitting knowingly false or suspect evidence ‐ whether historical or to support probable cause ‐ in a federal court proceeding violates FBI rules and can be a crime under certain circumstances. "To establish probable cause, the affiant must demonstrate a basis for knowledge and belief that the facts are true," the FBI operating manual states.