A former associate of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was charged Friday with failing to register as a foreign agent in the United States.
W. Samuel Patten, from 2014 until 2018, allegedly worked with Russian national on lobbying and political consulting services.
As part of his lobbying work, he violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, prosecutors say. The charge is a felony and carries a maximum prison sentence of five years.
The charges were recommended from special counsel Robert Mueller’s office to the U.S Attorney’s Office in Washington.
The Russian national is not named, nor is the company that the two formed in the United States.
The document filed in federal court by U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu says that Patten’s work included work on behalf of “a prominent Ukrainian oligarch” and a Ukrainian political party.
According to the U.S. attorney’s office, Patten traveled to Ukraine to meet with the Russian national he worked with — likely Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked alongside Manafort and has also been indicted — as well as the Ukrainian oligarch.
For the work, the Ukrainian oligarch paid the company through an offshoot Cypriot account — totaling more than $1 million from 2015 to 2017.
The money was for the company’s “work for the Opposition Bloc and other Ukrainian consulting work, a portion of which was received as a result of conduct which violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act.”
According to the court document, Patten contacted members of the U.S. legislative and executive branches, as well s the media. Those communications were an effort to set up meetings between Kilimnik and the Ukrainian oligarch “with members of Congress and staff.”
Patten coordinated with Kilimnik to set up meetings in Washington in January 2015 between the Ukrainian oligarch and lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Patten is scheduled to appear in federal court in Washington at 11 a.m., and the charges in the criminal information document show that he is expected to plead guilty.
“Patten knew at the time that he took all of the actions described above that [FARA] required him to register in order to engage legally,” wrote Liu in the criminal information document.
Patten’s personal website boasts that “as an international political consultant based in Washington, DC, he works extensively in the United States as well as in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.”
Patten also worked for Cambridge Analytica during the 2014 election cycle, the Daily Beast reported in April.
That work was later adopted by “at least one major U.S. presidential candidate,” the Daily Beast said.
Manafort was convicted on Aug. 21 in federal court in Virginia for bank and tax fraud charges brought against him by Mueller. He faces similar charges in Washington in a case set to begin in late September, and has pleaded not guilty.
[Also read: Robert Mueller needs more time to decide to retry Paul Manafort in Virginia]
