The Podesta Group, a Democratic lobbying firm co-founded by Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, appears to play a central role in the indictments of former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort.
From 2006 to 2014, Manafort and Richard Gates “engaged in a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign in the United States at the direction of [former Ukrainian President Victor] Yanukovych, the Party of Regions, and the government of Ukraine,” according to the indictment. The Party of Regions is a pro-Russia Ukrainian political party whose leader, Yanukovych, served as president from 2010 to 2014.
Manafort and Gates chose two companies, identified as Company A and Company B in the indictment, to lobby on behalf of the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, a European nonprofit that officials say was created as a mouthpiece for the Party of Regions. Previous news reports have indicated that the two companies are the Podesta Group and Mercury LLC.
The head of the Podesta Group, Tony Podesta, resigned from the group on Monday amid increasing attention from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian influence operations. Tony’s brother, John Podesta, served as Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair during the 2016 election.
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