President Donald Trump’s No. 2 appointee at the Justice Department, Rod Rosenstein, specifically authorized special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate former Trump campaign Chairman Paul Manafort and approved his indictment, prosecutors said in a court filing late Monday night.
Some Trump allies have suggested that by pursuing charges of money laundering, tax fraud and unregistered foreign lobbying against Manafort, Mueller is straying from his core mission of probing alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia prior to the 2016 election.
However, Mueller’s team submitted a previously undisclosed memo to a federal court in Washington showing that a few months after Mueller was appointed last May, Rosenstein gave him explicit authority to target Manafort over the financial aspects of his lobbying work for the Ukrainian government — in addition to allegations he was linked to Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“The May 17, 2017 [appointment] order was worded categorically in order to permit its release without confirming specific investigations involving specific individuals,” Rosenstein wrote in the Aug. 2, 2017 memo. “The following allegations were within the scope of the Investigation at the time of your appointment and are within the scope of the Order: … Allegations that Paul Manafort: Committed a crime or crimes by colluding with Russian government officials with respect to the Russian government’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 election for President of the United States, in violation of United States law. Committed a crime or crimes arising out of payments he received from the Ukrainian government before and during the tenure of President Viktor Yanukovych.”
Large chunks of the text of the three-page “scope” memo placed in public court files Monday were blacked out because they contain classified and sensitive law enforcement information, prosecutors said. However, those portions appear to identify various subjects and topics Mueller was authorized to investigate at the outset of the investigation.
Prosecutors also said Rosenstein — who has sometimes been the focus of Trump’s ire — gave a specific go-ahead for Manafort’s indictment and Mueller’s other critical moves in the probe.
“Every key step in this case — including the investigative path and the Indictment itself — has been authorized by the Acting Attorney General through ongoing consultation,” Mueller’s team wrote in a brief opposing Manafort’s bid to throw out the D.C. case. READ MORE:
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