raw

By silencing me and everyone else, the Special Counsel was able to control the narrative.

That was part of their strategy.

I was part of their strategy.

In our case, the prosecutors wanted to get as much of their information into the public domain as possible. They wanted to shape the stories quickly. They used a tool known as a “speaking indictment,” which goes beyond the usual statement of charges brought against a defendant and actually allows prosecutors to put information out about alleged events into the public domain. This means that they are allowed to speak publicly about unproven accusations. In our case it allowed the prosecutors to say whatever they wanted in the context of the ongoing Russia investigation without any accountability. This allowed the media to carry on with this destructive narrative over several years, and in my mind ruined any chance for a fair trial. It is another deceptive weapon used in the legal arena.

I had no idea how any of this actually worked until I was thrown into it. The judicial system operates by its own set of rules, and it is a wicked game all its own—not dissimilar and yet uniquely distinct from the wicked game of presidential politics.

I was about to get an education.

I had no legal choice but to stand back and take it while the media attacked me and my family with misstated facts drawn directly from the indictments and exacerbated by what can only be described as the abject failure of journalists to do their jobs.

To start things off, the media said I began working for Paul in 1980. Fact check: I was born in 1972 and would have been eight years old at that time.

Then multiple media reports confused me with Rick Davis—Paul’s longtime business partner. Because we share a first name, I suspect, they routinely wrote about me working on campaigns I’d never worked on, and in countries I’ve never visited.

The media stated that I was worth tens of millions of dollars. Not true. I own one home, which wasn’t worth nearly as much as the media (or the Special Counsel’s narrative) stated. But the prosecutors and media kept trying to paint me as a peer of Paul Manafort’s. I wasn’t. I was his employee. Paul owned multiple houses, a closet full of expensive custom suits, and lived a lifestyle I could never afford. As I learned, he was much wealthier than I even knew. I had never been to his house in the Hamptons and had no clue of the lifestyle he lived there.

It’s not a crime that Paul was wealthy. But after years of working for him, even I was surprised to learn certain details about his lifestyle.

The media consistently said that Paul and I worked for pro-Russian interests in Ukraine, which was the polar opposite of the truth.

And the media consistently overstated the seriousness of the crimes for which we were indicted—while neglecting to point out the fact that none of them were related to Russia, to Trump’s campaign, or to the 2016 election.

There were twelve charges in the original indictment; eight of them impacted me, as the government attempted to tie me to Paul’s charges in order to create a “conspiracy” charge which was needed to put pressure on Paul. The majority of the counts related to not disclosing foreign bank accounts, held by Paul. Additional charges were filed against Paul for not paying enough in income taxes. One of the foreign bank charges related to me specifically failing to report a foreign bank account. I had a bank account during the two separate times my family lived in the United Kingdom. I unknowingly omitted checking a box on our tax returns after Obama changed the law in 2010. I am accountable for that mistake.

Interestingly, the Special Counsel did not make a charge of “tax evasion.” There is a significant difference between tax evasion and filing false tax returns. The latter means paying some taxes but not enough. Rarely are these brought as criminal charges. Normally there are remedies for those types of issues, and most individuals have an opportunity to resolve the deficiency. These matters should have been dealt with by the IRS, and not via sweeping indictments by Special Prosecutors.

Paul had foreign bank accounts for his businesses, some of which I learned later were never reported to the IRS because he was using a loophole in the tax code. The indictment claimed he had “hidden” $150 million in those accounts over ten years. He had failed to report that he had foreign accounts, but the amount wasn’t anywhere near $150 million. First the Special Counsel had double-counted some of Paul’s accounts, which they later acknowledged. Second these were business accounts and the Special Counsel was using a gross number, not the actual total after deducting media and advertising buys, polling costs, external consulting fees, staff, the leasing of office space, and other common business expenses. It was eventually concluded that the amount of taxes owed over a six-year period, which went unpaid because of the lack of reporting, was approximately $4.5 million. That is a large number for sure and inexcusable, but far less than what the Special Counsel calculated and the media reported. There was no accountability for their inaccuracies, but the damage had been inflicted and it fueled a media firestorm. Was this a mistake, or was it purposeful?

I may never find out, but some proof was offered to me by my financial adviser, who was interviewed by the Special Counsel about my finances. It would be more than a year after my indictment before I could talk with him. But he was explicit in recounting how the Special Counsel provided incorrect information to him about my net worth, and he steadfastly corrected them on multiple occasions until they reached a point of frustration. Despite the interview and knowing that I was not worth anywhere close to $26 million, the Special Counsel continued to use this number in multiple documents that were part of the public narrative used against me. This information was categorically false, and the Special Counsel knew it.

Was it wrong for Paul to not fully report his income? Yes. Of course, it was. But how was any of this related to Russia collusion? It wasn’t. The IRS never audited Paul or me. In tax investigations, an audit is a required first step. A chance to remedy any discrepancies found in an audit is step two. In this case, Paul would have owed a lot of money and owed interest and penalties on the amount he failed to pay. If he refused to pay the amount owed, then criminal proceedings might have proceeded. But none of those steps were ever taken—not before, during, or after this investigation. This was a misapplication of the law. Everyone should be treated equally under the law.

In addition to the tax charges, the Special Counsel stated that Paul and I had failed to register as “foreign agents” under a section of the law called the Foreign Agents Registration Act (or FARA). As I briefly mentioned in the last chapter, the law, which was created during World War II, was specifically meant to keep foreign agents who represent foreign governments from talking to members of Congress without first registering and declaring those activities with the U.S. government. American individuals and companies had to register when they were working on behalf of foreign governments when talking to members of Congress as well—just to keep everything clear. It sounds nefarious, largely because no one has heard of the obscure law. Rest assured that today everyone in Washington, D.C. and beyond knows about FARA. (Registrations increased by 50 percent following the Special Counsel’s actions against members of Trump’s campaign.) The allegation by the Special Counsel was that Paul did not register as a foreign agent despite working for a foreign political party.

But none of what Paul or I did during our decade working together in Ukraine was done in secret. There were hundreds of communications back and forth to the U.S. State Department, explicitly demonstrating that Paul was working with the Party of Regions, Viktor Yanukovych, and others. It was widely known. During his ten years of work in Ukraine, Paul met with four different U.S. ambassadors on a frequent basis to communicate with them about U.S. policy goals toward Ukraine. Everyone in Washington was aware that Paul was working in Ukraine and for the most part knew what he was doing. In the entire time that Paul worked in Ukraine, and even after our voluntary interviews with the FBI in 2014, not one single U.S. government official enquired or directed Paul to file under FARA. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt certainly did not have an issue when he appealed to Paul in the summer of 2013 to “lobby” the Ukrainian government on his behalf to expedite the quarantine procedures for his dog when he moved to the country to take up his post.

During the course of the Special Counsel investigation, we learned that the FBI had opened a preliminary investigation on Paul. We were never aware of this before, or the fact that in 2014 the FBI agent conducting that investigation, Karen Greenaway, concluded that there was not enough evidence to pursue Paul. However, the investigation was reopened in 2017 by Andrew Weissmann—a DOJ prosecutor who eventually moved over to the Special Counsel team—even before the Special Counsel was formed.

Paul was never paid by or worked for the government of Ukraine. He was working for the Party of Regions, a political party, and individual candidates, and he rarely ever spoke to members of Congress about that work. So, it was ambiguous under the law whether he (and certainly whether I by extension) needed to register under FARA or not. We sought legal advice in 2007 and 2009 and were told that registration was unnecessary. Even if it was ultimately determined that we did need to register, the decades-old precedent when dealing with American citizens allowed for retroactive FARA registration. There were no penalties. There was no jail time. In fact, it was not uncommon for American companies and lobbyists working overseas to register ten years after their work as “foreign agents” was completed. For example, Tony Podesta, the brother of Hillary Clinton’s campaign Chair John Podesta, and former congressman Vin Weber, both working for public affairs firms that Paul hired in 2012, were allowed to retroactively file their FARA registrations in 2017. Yet Paul and I were held to a different standard, and the way the media framed the issue made it sound as if we had committed high treason.

The exaggeration and drama poured into the way the media talked about the alleged money laundering charges in our indictments as well, as if Paul and I were some sort of sophisticated bankers. The “money laundering” in this case amounted to Paul paying bills for goods and services from his foreign accounts instead of his U.S. accounts. Since the money in those foreign accounts was not reported to the IRS, they charged, it amounted to “money laundering” under the law. It did not mean that the money had been “cleaned” through a series of secret transactions, or filtered through any illegal channels—which is the classic definition of money laundering. Was there a reason that these charges, which stemmed from many years earlier, were being brought now? Absolutely.

These same gotcha games, process crimes, exaggerations, and bad-guy storylines were applied across the board, to every person ensnared in the Mueller investigation, and I could only begin to imagine what some of these other individuals and their families were going through.

At this juncture, I was desperate for advice on my options and next steps. I reached out to my mentor, Charlie Black, and asked him for help. He said if he were ever in my shoes, there was only one person he would call: D.C. defense attorney Tom Green.

Tom has been involved in more special and independent counsel investigations than any other lawyer I have been able to research. He is a Democrat, so this decision was not about aligning on politics, although I had been warned that our different political affiliations would cause a stir in D.C. circles. It was about finding an attorney with the reputation, experience, and the heart to help me understand what was happening to me. Tom helped me through this difficult time with compassion and wisdom. He went way beyond the scope of what a lawyer needed to do for a client, and some of the most significant relationships in my life today are a result of direct and indirect actions Tom took on my behalf. I will be forever indebted to him. Choosing Tom would prove to be one of the greatest gifts through this difficult experience.

The reason we were targeted is clear to understand and was explained to each of us by our various attorneys. All of the pressure by the Special Counsel was meant as leverage to force us to plea. Without a plea, the Special Counsel could not get the step closer to Trump that they desperately needed in order to justify and continue their investigation.

I can’t even count the number of sleepless nights my wife and I endured, spinning over everything, weighing legal advice, trying to figure out what to do, and how to make it stop, all while trying to protect our children. That was always our first and most important goal.

Did any of us deserve to have the law weaponized against us, just because we worked for Donald Trump? What if the shoe was on the other foot, and this was a Democrat? Anyone but Trump? Would there not be public outrage over the tactics that were being used to ensnare and pressure this group of people who worked or previously worked for the president?

Tom reviewed every charge the Special Counsel laid upon me. He knew Robert Mueller, personally, for more than forty years, and I felt he would be able to assimilate all of the moving legal pieces and help me plot our next course. He arranged to meet with a couple of the prosecutors from the Special Counsel’s Office after they reached out to him. Following that initial meeting, Tom made it absolutely clear to me exactly what they wanted: even after the FBI report to the contrary, they were convinced that Trump was aided by Russia in the 2016 election and that he and/or members of his campaign played a role in that effort.

This is not how investigations are supposed to work in our country. Evidence is supposed to be gathered first, and then charges are determined. In this case, the Special Counsel proceeded to force a new investigation, despite being told directly that there was no evidence suggesting links with Trump’s campaign. And they would use “every weapon that the legal system afforded them” to investigate this assertion, Tom said.

There was nothing that Paul and I were accused of doing that would justify what happened to each of us, either. Nothing in the indictments should have risen to this level of prosecution, and it wouldn’t have, were the prosecutors not on the hunt for Trump.

And I knew there was going to be no easy out, no messing around, for either of us.

I’d been told that if we went to a first trial, even with Paul as a co-defendant, my personal legal bill would likely be in excess of $1.5 million. A second trial could cost even more.

I didn’t have it—and the Special Counsel knew it. This was part of the pressure.

In addition, I learned that the conspiracy charges leveled against me meant that I would have to go to trial with Paul. There would not be separate trials. So the fate of me (and my family) was tied to a man that I did not know everything about. His lawyers were not fully sharing all of the information with my attorneys and they were insistent on taking control of the entire legal process.

Tom Green spoke to me about seeing families torn apart by trials.

“You don’t want to put yourself or your family through a trial,” Tom said. “In addition to the financial expense, there’s just no way people do well in these things, mentally, emotionally, physically.”

He kept talking about the “circus” a trial would be for my family, and to seriously consider the impact. What I didn’t know at the time was that Manafort’s trial would end up being a circus for all involved regardless. Tom’s thought was that I should get out of this quickly, and with as little pain as possible. What he didn’t know at the time was that this was going to be a Special Counsel investigation like no other.

“I think Manafort probably did some things. Maybe he inflated assets. Maybe didn’t pay all of his taxes,” he said. “I don’t know all of it yet. I don’t think the indictment is representative of what he really did, but you’re under an incredible amount of pressure here. These guys are going to try and crush you. This is how the system works.”

It was clear to Tom that the Special Counsel was likely withholding some discovery, but it would take time to work through the legal system. More prosecutorial tactics. They had buried us in paperwork. They wanted me to plea, and they would keep applying every pressure imaginable until I did. And the lead prosecutor in my case, Andrew Weissmann, was notorious for knowing how to manipulate the system to get the results he wanted.

I still wasn’t ready to give in. This was gut-wrenching. But I had to protect my family from an investigation that was ultimately not about me.

Tom suggested that we simply go in and talk with the Special Counsel to see what information they specifically had that related to me and my charges. In legal terms, this is called a proffer process. The nickname for it in legal circles is “Queen for a Day.” It’s a provision where you agree to meet with prosecutors and tell them the truth about everything they ask, under an agreement that they can’t use anything from that interview against you.

It would give them a chance to test how the evidence they had stacked up to the truth of the firsthand, eyewitness accounts I had to offer, and it would give me a chance to figure out what they had, and what they might have to offer in return for my cooperation.

In making our decision to take this step, Tom made it clear: “Immunity is guaranteed if you have anything on Trump, on Russia collusion or anything else.”

“That would be great,” I said, “but I have absolutely nothing. All I have is what I saw, and what I know.”

On January 29, 2017, we drove to the office the Special Counsel had set up in Patriot’s Plaza, along the Potomac River in Southwest Washington, D.C. Outside it was all brick, with a glass entryway. Inside, it was as pathetic and outdated as most government office buildings tend to be.

We came in through the garage, so no one would see me, and rode a freight elevator to the third floor. We went through a secure door into a small reception area. There were small lockers against a wall to store cell phones and other electronics.

As we followed the protocols and waited to enter our conference room, Bob Mueller walked in the main door. I was no more than two feet from him, and I think he was clearly surprised to see us.

“Good morning, everyone,” he said in a quiet voice while looking across the lobby toward another door.

I remember it vividly because it was the only time I saw Robert Mueller throughout the course of the entire investigation. He never sat in on any of our meetings, calls, or trial prep sessions. Given his lack of participation, some believed, myself included, that Mueller was in charge of the investigation in name only and that it was Andrew Weissmann who was really driving the investigation.

We were eventually escorted to a small conference room and waited for the Special Counsel’s team to join us.

We met with Weissmann and Greg Andres in a small interview room. Weissmann started with a long preamble about the purpose of a proffer and making sure I understood the importance of telling the truth. Looking at Weissmann, I felt nothing but disdain. I felt that he had manufactured and manipulated evidence to attack me and my family. Throughout this process, I would come to realize that Weissmann did not care about people. They were pawns to him. He was mentally calculating his next move at every moment. Unlike Andres, who was more beligerant, Weissmann would engage quietly, asking questions very deliberately and with a purpose that was sometimes unknown. He and Paul were very much alike in many ways. They were both calculating and strategic, but also manipulative and arrogant. They played their given fields like a chess game—always prepared and ten moves ahead of anyone else.

He had a famous history of using scorched-earth tactics in his work on the Enron case and elsewhere to get the convictions he was after. Without question, in my mind, Weissmann was the architect of the Russian investigation. His political bias was public knowledge. In fact, in 2020, Weissmann made known his political leanings again by agreeing to host a fundraiser for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

After being around personalities as strong as Trump’s, or Paul’s for that matter, it gets pretty easy to spot certain traits in people. And in Weissmann, I could quickly see that what drove him was the “win”—in the legal world, being better at this game than anybody else. He was dismissive of other lawyers, judges, the Supreme Court, you name it. Whenever he was in the room, other prosecutors and investigators deferred to him. It was automatic. He seemed to intimidate them. But even after doing some reading on his work on the Enron case, it was still shocking that someone could act so sinisterly. In both cases, Weissmann seemed to have a predetermined narrative and would go to any lengths to make the chess pieces fit into that narrative. I would come to learn that during the majority of his legal career, most of his major trial cases were overturned at some point over the years.

The first questions out of the gate were whether I had ever had conversations with Donald Trump about working with Russia to interfere in the election.

“No,” I said. “Absolutely not.”

Had I ever heard or overheard Donald Trump talking about those subjects?

“No,” I said again. “Absolutely not.”

They pivoted to asking me about Paul, and the frustration on their part was visible right away. At one point Andres exclaimed, “You’re not telling us what we want to hear.” Weissmann interjected quickly to shut down those comments. But that sentiment was reflected in later questioning as well in the months to come.

They focused heavily on the FARA registration issue, and they were confused by the nuances of how things worked in Ukraine—that we could have been paid to do work by a businessman who was simultaneously a politician, and how that could be legal. I had to explain it to them. They tried to pressure me over my decision-making power in coordinating with Paul, as if I might have participated in a scheme to not register under FARA for some nefarious reason. I didn’t. I also explained to them that I was Paul’s employee, not a partner. That seemed to surprise them. I wondered for a moment if they were confusing me with Rick Davis, just like the newspapers had done. I told them I had no legal rights or even verbal rights to make decisions for Paul on these issues.

They volleyed among asking about Paul, the campaign, and Trump, but it was very clear that they eventually wanted to focus on Paul. They asked if I knew about the letters Paul sent to “KK,” Konstantin Kilimnik, and whether we had shared polling data with him, and I said, “Yes” to both. But I also explained why Paul was sharing that information, and my explanations only seemed to frustrate them further.

They asked whether Paul’s intent in communicating with KK was to bring in Russians to help with the campaign.

“Absolutely not. That doesn’t even make sense!” I laughed, educating them on the way Paul used to poke fun at the dismal skills the Russians had when it came to campaigning.

Not once did they bring up anything that accused Paul or me—or anyone else associated with Trump or his campaign—with Russia collusion. Not once. They never asked me to confirm any evidence they had or stories others had shared with them. They just pounded on Paul and fished around, asking me if I knew of any other connections between campaign staff and the Russian government or Russian individuals.

We left the Special Counsel’s office around 6:30 p.m. on January 29 with a commitment to return two days later. During the second day of discussions, we again focused for a period of time on the subject of FARA. The Special Counsel asked me about a particular meeting Paul had a number of years ago with California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, one of the few congressmen with a long history of advocating for advancing U.S./Russia relations as a way to counter China’s strength in the world. He and Paul had a twenty-plus-year relationship, and the particular meeting Weissmann was referring to happened while Paul and I were working with Viktor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions. Lobbyist and former congressman Vin Weber set up that particular meeting, and the Special Counsel asked specifically what I remembered about it. I didn’t remember much because Vin and Paul had done several meetings together. I was never at the meeting. They asked if anyone said anything specifically about discussions related to Ukraine. “They just said it was a good meeting,” I responded. “I don’t believe Paul or Vin said anything about Ukraine.” The information I gave to them was secondhand. Then they asked me who said it was a good meeting. I responded, “Paul told me it was a good meeting. I think Vin might have said it as well. They both told me it was a good meeting.”

We wrapped things up and planned to do a follow-up meeting the next day. But that night, as I replayed the discussions in my head, I remembered that it wasn’t both Paul and Vin who said it was a “good” meeting. Only Paul had told me the meeting was “good.” I thought I ought to correct the record just to be as accurate as possible.

The next morning, February 1, I told Tom about the issue at his office before we headed to the Special Counsel’s office again. He thought I was being overly cautious by trying to correct such a minor detail, but he thought it would be an important action to genuinely show my sincere effort to be truthful. Tom went in ahead of me and told the Special Counsel about the matter before we started our second day of the proffer session.

Tom came back to the conference room, indicated that he gave the information to the Special Counsel, and said that we would be starting in a few minutes. A couple of minutes later Weissmann came storming into the interview room, visibly angry.

“We’ve got a major issue,” he said. “You’ve lied.”

I was shocked

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You indicated that after the meeting, both Paul and Vin Weber told you the meeting went well. Your counsel just informed us that it was only Paul, not Vin, who told you that.”

“That is correct,” I said.

“You lied to us!” Weissmann fumed. I could not understand why he was so angry.

Tom was stunned. He had just left the room with Weissmann and did not expect this reaction.

Weissmann continued, “We will not be moving forward with any plea agreement unless you agree to accept a Title 18, U.S. Code, Section 1001 charge,” he said.

That is the specific charge for “knowingly or willfully making a false statement under oath.”

Perjury.

“I will leave you and your attorney alone to discuss this matter,” he said, and he left the room.

We both sat in stunned silence for about thirty seconds. Tom and I didn’t even look at each other until I finally turned to him and said, “What do we do?”

I was close to deciding to plea so that we could start to put this all behind us. The proffer so far had shown that they didn’t have anything on Trump and that all I was doing was clarifying some things for them in terms of what they thought they had on Paul and those associated with him, pertaining mostly to his work in Ukraine. Cooperating on all of that would surely be easier than going through a trial and enduring the financial burdens associated with it. My wife vehemently disagreed. She felt that you don’t say you are guilty if you are not.

Tom looked at me and said, “Rick, I don’t know what to say. I can’t believe they’re doing this. I think we have to move forward and take the plea. Let’s move forward. I will talk to Bob [Mueller] directly. I will get the charge dropped.”

At a later point, outside of the building, Tom told me he thought they were just trying to put the screws to me to get me to plead right away. He was sure they would drop the 1001 charge once I agreed. The basis for the lie wasn’t there, he said. It had no bearing and no relevance to anything they were investigating.

I took him at his word, and we moved on.

Without evidence, intent, or admission the Special Counsel was allowed to determine what constituted perjury. They could bring perjury against anyone for any reason and they were not accountable to anyone. If you simply forgot a fact or a date you could be charged with perjury. If you made a statement and then attempted to change or correct it, you could be charged with perjury. If you were asked about a document but it was not shown to you, and you mangled the facts, you could be charged with perjury. Think about the grave impact of this unilateral, unchecked power.

To be abundantly clear: I pled to a lying charge before the U.S. District Court in D.C. I have accepted that charge and the consequences associated with it. I write the facts of what transpired that day now so that you can formulate your own opinion and draw your own conclusions from these events. Legally, I cannot say I did not lie.

After working through the perjury charge, the Special Counsel had me back at their offices to continue our discussions. I was on edge and even more intimidated. Weissmann used this to his advantage and soon said, “Please take a look at these emails.”

I thought I was there to talk about some aspect of the Trump campaign, and suddenly I was looking at a series of emails between me and my younger brother. They were from a time when I had joined the board of a publicly traded company. My brother emailed my father thinking the fact that I was on the board might mean it was a good time to invest. It wasn’t insider trading. Not even close. I didn’t tell them to buy the stock. There was no pending news that I was aware of at that time that would have moved the stock price one way or another. But Weissmann, Andres, and one of the FBI agents asked all sorts of questions about the inner workings of that company, the timing of the emails, when shares of the stock were purchased and sold, and I couldn’t help but think, “Are they really threatening my brother and father? And what happens if my father who’s been through triple bypass surgery comes up with a different answer than me? Are they going to charge him with perjury?”

The threat was not direct or overt. It was much more subtle. But the message was unmistakably clear: I needed to step up and plea or the Special Counsel was going to target not just me, but those close to me. And it was only going to get worse.

In addition to the threats against my family, the Special Counsel continued to escalate the pressure on me to plead. They indicated that a superseding indictment was coming. In our case, the Special Counsel intended to separate and expand the financial charges which amounted to charging me with an additional twenty-three new counts—all of them related to the same charges but extended over a longer period of time. This was a common prosecutorial tactic. For example, a single charge of not claiming a foreign bank account could now be charged as not claiming a foreign bank account in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013. The potential penalty increased dramatically.

The pressure against me just continued to build.