Greasy political operative and rejected Goodfellas extra Paul Manafort has turned himself in to the FBI after being indicted on a number of federal charges.
The indictments against Manafort are the first to result from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Manafort’s former business associate Rick Gates was also charged this morning.
Mueller obtained grand jury indictments on Friday, but until today, it was not known which members of the Trump campaign would be instructed to turn themselves over to authorities.
The indictments are set to be unsealed momentarily.
Manafort joined the Trump campaign in March of 2016.
Three months later, Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner met with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya, who informed them he was holding information that he claimed would prove beneficial to the efforts to sabotage Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
In August of 2016, Manafort’s ties to Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych became a source of controversy, as it was revealed that he had illegally received $ 12.7 million in off-the-books funds from the Party of Regions.
That same week, Manafort resigned from the campaign.
Details regarding the charges against Manafort and Gates are unknown at this time.
Several media outlets are reporting that they’ve reached out to both men’s attorneys for comment, but have received no response.
Whatever the case, the indictments signal the start of a new phase in Mueller’s investigation of the Trump campaign.
At the heart of the investigation is the question of whether or not Trump’s firing of former FBI director James Comey amounts to obstruction of justice.
Mueller is taking a wide-ranging approach to the matter, probing the Trump campaign’s financial dealings with Russia in order to determine if the president and his team had incentive to try and silence Comey.
In July, the FBI raided Manafort’s Alexandria, Virginia, seizing a number of financial and tax documents.
We will have further details about this developing story as more information becomes available.
UPDATE: The Manafort and Gates indictments have been unsealed. We niw know that the charges include “conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading FARA statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts.”
