WASHINGTON — The special counsel, Robert Mueller, announced charges Monday against three advisers to President Trump’s campaign and laid out the most explicit evidence to date that his campaign was eager to coordinate with the Russian government to damage his rival, Hillary Clinton.
The former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, surrendered to the FBI and pleaded not guilty to charges that he laundered millions of dollars through overseas shell companies — using the money to buy luxury cars, real estate, antique rugs, and expensive clothes. Rick Gates, Manafort’s longtime associate as well as a campaign adviser, was also charged and turned himself in.
But information that could prove most politically damaging to Trump came an hour later, when Mueller announced that George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and was cooperating with investigators. In court documents released Monday, federal investigators said they suspected that Russian intelligence services had used intermediaries to contact Papadopoulos to gain influence with the campaign, offering “dirt’’ on Clinton in April 2016 in the form of “thousands of e-mails.’’
Papadopoulos secretly pleaded guilty weeks ago to lying to the FBI about those contacts and has been cooperating with Mueller’s prosecutors for months.
Monday’s dramatic announcements capped months of speculation about which of Trump’s campaign advisers might be first to be charged by Mueller, and they seemed to be a sign that the special counsel’s investigation is nowhere close to complete.
“There’s a large-scale, ongoing investigation of which this case is a small part,’’ Aaron S.J. Zelinsky, a prosecutor on Mueller’s team, said at Papadopoulos’s plea hearing this month. The transcript of the hearing was released Monday.
It is now clear, from Papadopoulos’s admission and e-mails related to a meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016, that the Russian government offered help to Trump’s candidacy and some campaign officials were willing to take it.
The United States has concluded that President Vladimir Putin of Russia tried to tip the outcome of the 2016 election in favor of Trump. As part of that effort, Russian operatives hacked Democratic accounts and released a trove of embarrassing e-mails related to Clinton’s campaign. Mueller and his team are investigating whether anyone close to Trump participated in that effort.
The announcements rippled across Washington, affecting both political parties. Powerful Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta quit his lobbying firm Monday. The firm, the Podesta Group, was hired to do lobbying work on behalf of Ukraine, work that is at the heart of Manafort’s indictment.
The tax and money-laundering case against Manafort describes a complicated scheme in which he lobbied for a pro-Russia party in Ukraine and its leader, Viktor F. Yanukovych, and hid proceeds in bank accounts in Cyprus, the Grenadines, and elsewhere. Prosecutors say he laundered more than $18 million and spent the money extravagantly. A home improvement company in the Hamptons was paid nearly $5.5 million, according to the indictment. More than $1.3 million went to clothing stores in New York and Beverly Hills, Calif.
Manafort bought a $3 million brownstone in Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn and a $2.8 million condominium in SoHo, prosecutors said. “Manafort used his hidden overseas wealth to enjoy a lavish lifestyle in the United States without paying taxes on that income,’’ the indictment reads. He was also charged with failing to register as a foreign lobbyist.
The charges carry the potential for roughly 20 years in prison, putting pressure on Manafort to provide information on others in exchange for leniency. Among other considerations, Manafort could shed light on how widely in the campaign it was known that Russia had damaging information on Clinton. A senior White House lawyer, Ty Cobb, said last week that the president was confident that Manafort had no damaging information about him.
In a court appearance Monday, Manafort and Gates pleaded not guilty and were placed under house arrest on multimillion-dollar bonds. Papadopoulos is awaiting sentencing.
Manafort’s lawyer, Kevin Downing, called the money-laundering charges “ridiculous’’ and noted that in the past half-century, prosecutors have charged only a handful of people with flouting foreign lobbying rules. Such violations are normally handled as an administrative matter. Mana-fort’s Ukraine lobbying “ended in 2014, two years before Mr. Manafort served in the Trump campaign,’’ Downing said.
Lawyers for Papadopoulos declined to comment.
While the indictment paints an unflattering picture of the man Trump tapped to run his campaign, the allegations long predate his involvement in the presidential race. Trump seized on that fact, declaring on Twitter that “there is NO COLLUSION!’’
But as Trump typed out that message, Mueller’s team was unsealing documents related to Papadopoulos that directly undermined the president’s claim.
Trump called Papadopoulos an “excellent guy’’ when he announced his foreign policy team in March 2016. On Monday, however, White House officials described him as someone who played an insignificant role in the campaign.
“Look, this individual was a member of a volunteer advisory council that met one time over the course of a year,’’ said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House press secretary. “I’m not here to speak on behalf of the thousands of people that may have volunteered on the campaign.’’
In March 2016, while traveling in Italy, Papadopoulos met a London-based professor of diplomacy who reportedly has deep ties to the Russian government. The professor took interest in Papadopoulos “because of his status with the campaign,’’ court documents said. The professor is Joseph Mifsud, according to a Senate aide familiar with e-mails in which Mifsud is mentioned. Two Senate committees are conducting Russia inquiries of their own, and investigators have been poring over thousands of e-mails produced by the Trump campaign.
Mifsud introduced Papadopoulos to others, including someone with ties to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a woman who he believed was a relative of Putin. Papadopoulos repeatedly tried to arrange a meeting between the Trump campaign and Russian government officials, court records show.
“We are all very excited by the possibility of a good relationship with Mr. Trump,’’ the woman, who was not identified, told Papadopoulos in an e-mail. She was not actually a relative of Putin, according to court documents.
Campaign officials knew that Papadopoulos was developing contacts in Russia, court documents show.
He repeatedly tried to arrange a formal meeting for Trump in Russia.
Among those in the campaign who knew about the contacts was Sam Clovis, who helped supervise the foreign policy team, according to a former campaign aide. Clovis could not be reached for comment.
Ultimately, senior campaign officials said Trump should not make the trip and instead leave it to “someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal,’’ according to an e-mail cited in court papers. No campaign official made a formal trip to Russia.
When FBI agents approached Papadopoulos on Jan. 27, he lied about his Russian contacts, according to court documents. That day, Trump invited FBI Director James Comey to dinner at the White House and asked him to pledge loyalty, according to notes Comey took at the time.
As the FBI scrutiny continued, Papadopoulos changed his phone number and deleted his Facebook account, which he had used to communicate with the Russians. The FBI has obtained e-mails, text messages, and the transcript of chats on Facebook and Skype records as part of its investigation.
FBI agents quietly arrested Papadopoulos at Dulles International Airport outside Washington on July 27, a day after agents raided Manafort’s Virginia home. The Justice Department disclosed Monday that Manafort had withheld evidence from Mueller that was discovered during this raid.
With the charges against Manafort, Mueller has taken a broad view of his mandate. He was tapped to investigate Russian election meddling, whether anyone around Trump was involved, and other crimes that followed from that investigation. The charges against Manafort do not directly relate to Trump or the campaign.
Manafort had been under investigation in New York and Virginia until Mueller was appointed and assumed control.
The special counsel has struck an aggressive posture in the case, and Monday’s charges were no exception. The Justice Department often invites lawyers to meet and discuss potential indictments. It is both an opportunity for lawyers to argue for leniency, and for prosecutors to spot potential weaknesses in their case.
But on Friday night, people close to Manafort and Gates and lawyers involved in the investigation said they had received no indication that an indictment against them was imminent.
