Thread by @christinawilkie

Prosecutor just reminded ABJ that Manafort made "false statements to the FBI and false statements to the grand jury repeatedly."

This was one of the strangest things about the $125,000 payment I dug into: Each of Manafort's 3 lies about the $$ was totally new. 1/

They weren't a story that kept changing, they were totally unrelated stories, and he seemed unaware that each new one made his last statement completely false, not just a little false. 2/

Story #1. The money came from Gay, repayment of a debt that Gay owed Manafort. This was false because the money didn't come from Gay, it came from Fabrizio's ad buying firm, whose name never surfaced in this version of the story. 3/

Story #2. The money was income, paid to him by Fabrizio, essentially it was Manafort's long lost cut of the proceeds from business he sent Fabrizio's firms over the years. His finders fee, if you will. This version is also what Manafort told his accountant in 2017. 4/

But this story wasn't true because Fabrizio immediately told prosecutors the money he sent to Manafort's lawyers wasn't payment to Manafort for anything, it was part of Gay's share of their secret "commission split" arrangement, and Gay had told him where to send it. 5/

OK, so then Manafort goes to story #3, which is that the $125,000 was a loan from Fabrizio to Manafort, a personal loan from a fried, at which point Manafort produced an unsigned, random one page supposed loan agreement.

Again, totally different story than the previous two. 6/

Again, Fabrizio denies it. Says, I didn't loan Paul any money. In fact, he adds, when Manafort hit him up for a contribution to Manafort's defense fund, Fabrizio turned him down.

Again, why Manafort told a story that relied on the other guy to back him up is inexplicable. 7/

The whole time Manafort was telling the Fabrizio versions, he knew prosecutors had texts where Manafort instructs Gay where to wire the money.

But if this were really a loan from his old pal TF, why would Manafort send wiring instructions to a totally unrelated 3rd person? 8/

Per prosecutors, the fact that records have Manafort calling Gay first for the $125,000, and sending Gay the wiring instructions, not Fabrizio, strongly suggests that Manafort was aware of the kickback scheme, and that he and Gay had their own "commission split" going. 9/

Best part of all is that none of the shenanigans at the super PAC would have ever come to light if Manafort had just said, "yeah, there was a commission split deal, and here's how it worked."

Instead, he lied. And when he got caught, he lied again. And then he lied again. 10/

And now here we are, with example number ten million in American politics of the cover-up becoming worse than the crime.

Meanwhile, neither ABJ nor the prosecutors really seemed to care about some defunct super PAC's backroom commission deal. 11/

If you want to read how this all played out in court, here's a good transcript.
documentcloud.org/documents/5731…

My story on all this should help you fill in the redacted names. cnbc.com/2019/03/10/pau…

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