For some, “Washington baggage” probably looks like a carry-on suitcase with a D.C.-area address on the luggage tag. For others, it looks more like a lobbying career that stretches over several decades.
Unless, of course, you’re Paul Manafort, who actually tried to use his foreign lobbying work as a selling point when pitching himself for a position on President Trump’s campaign last year.
In light of his indictment, the New York Times resurfaced a memo Manafort sent to Trump though Thomas Barrack early in 2016 seeking a role as the campaign’s national convention manager. “Mr. Manafort touted his overseas work, now the subject of investigations in the United States and Ukraine, as proof he was not part of the Washington establishment that Mr. Trump hated,” Ken Vogel observed.
The memo itself shows Manafort noted his experience “manage[ing] Presidential campaigns around the world” and claimed to have “avoided the political establishment in Washington since 2005.”
“I will not bring Washington baggage,” pledged Manafort in the memo.
In retrospect, of course, that promise is somewhat ironic, since Manafort’s Washington baggage is exactly what lead to his resignation from the campaign and contributed to his indictment by special counsel Robert Mueller. Though the baggage in question stems in part from work he completed for entities overseas, Manafort himself has admitted the services he provided to foreign principals in Ukraine involved performing outreach to “U.S. government officials and other Western influential persons.”
In a retroactive disclosure filed with the Justice Department last June, Manafort described his role as a foreign agent working on behalf of Ukraine’s governing party from 2012-2014 as providing “strategic counsel and advice to members of the Party of Regions regarding their interaction with U.S. government officials and other Western influential persons to advance the goal of greater political and economic integration between the Ukraine and the West.”
That’s not something lobbyists typically accomplish by “avoid[ing] the political establishment in Washington.” Quite the contrary.
And such appears to be the case with Manafort.
Between media reports and evidence presented in the indictment, Manafort stands accused of orchestrating a covert campaign from 2012 to 2014 on behalf of Ukraine’s pro-Russia Party of Regions by enlisting two powerful lobbying firms to work for the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, a think tank that allegedly served as a shell group for leaders in that country’s government. The two firms in question, Mercury Public Affairs and the Podesta Group, are entrenched in Washington’s “political establishment.” The indictment claims Manafort passed directions from the Ukrainian government to both firms through his associate and fellow indictee Rick Gates, though the firms have denied knowing at the time their work for the ECMU was ultimately being directed by politicians in Ukraine.
Manafort and Gates have both pleaded innocent to all charges. But even from what Manafort himself has admitted, just two years before assuring Trump he would “not bring Washington baggage” to his campaign, it sure looks like the embattled former lobbyist was relying on his connections in the capital to serve clients in Ukraine. At worst, if the information in the indictment is correct, Manafort was relying on his Beltway know-how to carefully conceal a campaign that arranged for powerful lobbying firms to work on behalf of foreign principals without disclosing their work to the Justice Department.
Even more than an overnight Samsonite stuffed with Brooks Brothers, that’s what Washington baggage looks like.
