https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/23/paul-manafort-mueller-probe-washington-lobbying-ukraine-austria-423439

Former Austrian chancellor appears to have lobbied as part of Manafort scheme

By THEODORIC MEYER and JOSH GERSTEIN

02/23/2018 08:29 PM EST

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New filings made public by special counsel Robert Mueller on Friday shed fresh light on the Washington lobbying campaign orchestrated by Paul Manafort on behalf of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his allies.

Manafort “secretly retained” several former senior European politicians to covertly promote Ukrainian interests in Washington. “Although the former politicians would appear to be providing their independent assessments of Government of Ukraine actions, in fact they were paid lobbyists for Ukraine,” according to a superseding indictment of Manafort filed by Mueller’s team.

The coterie of Europeans was known as the Hapsburg Group, Andrew Weissman, one of Mueller’s prosecutors, said at a hearing on Friday. The group was led by a “former European chancellor” and was paid more than 2 million euros in 2012 and 2013, according to the court filings.

The former chancellor isn’t named in the court filings, but appears to be Alfred Gusenbauer, who served as chancellor of Austria between 2007 and 2008. Gusenbauer and two lobbyists involved in Manafort’s lobbying campaign met with members of Congress and staffers in 2013, according to Justice Department disclosures retroactively filed last year by the lobbying firm Mercury.

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Manafort called the Hapsburg Group’s lobbying effort “SUPER VIP” in an “EYES ONLY” memo cited in the new indictment. It would involve “a small group of high-level European highly influencial [sic] champions and politically credible friends who can act informally and without any visible relationship with the Government of Ukraine,” he said.

The retroactively filed disclosures show that Gusenbauer met with House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, Reps. Tom Marino (R-Pa.) and Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), House Foreign Affairs Committee staffers and others in Washington one week in 2013. He was accompanied by two Mercury lobbyists, Ed Kutler (who has since left the firm) and Mike McSherry. Kutler also accompanied Romano Prodi, a former Italian prime minister, to meetings with Royce and a staffer for House Majority Whip Eric Cantor months beforehand.

Gusenbauer and Prodi said their work was focused on bringing Ukraine and the European Union closer together and denied being paid by Yanukovych or Manafort.

"I was never involved in any activities for Mr. Yanukovych or the Party of Regions," Gusenbauer said in a statement to Austrian media on Saturday, referring to the former Ukrainian president's political party. "I pushed for the EU to seal an association agreement with the Ukraine at public events in Paris, Brussels and Berlin." (Such an agreement is often a first step toward applying for EU membership.)

Gusenbauer said he was paid for his efforts, but declined to say how much. He denied that was employed by Yanukovych or Manafort. He confirmed that he knew Manafort, however, having met him once in Washington and once in Europe. Those meetings were "only for coffee," Gusenbauer told the Austrian newspaper Presse am Sonntag.

Prodi told The New York Times on Saturday that he’d been paid by Gusenbauer as part of the “normal private relations I had with him” and they the money had not, to his knowledge, come from Manafort. He said he’d never heard of the Hapsburg Group.

“It was Gusenbauer heading the group; we did all our efforts to have peace in Ukraine,” Prodi said. The group, which consisted of “experts and former politicians,” broke up when it became clear that “a stronger relationship with the European Union was impossible,” he added.

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(contd)

The Hapsburg Group’s efforts were just one part of a larger lobbying campaign masterminded by Manafort on behalf of Yanukovych. It included two Washington lobbying firms, Mercury and the Podesta Group, that Manafort hired to lobby on behalf of the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, an ostensibly independent group that was really controlled by Yanukovych and his allies, according to Mueller.

Prosecutors have only charged Manafort and his protégé, Rick Gates, for taking part in the lobbying scheme. Manafort continues to maintain his innocence.

A Dutch attorney, Alex van der Zwaan, pleaded guilty earlier this week to lying to the FBI about an aspect of the broader Ukraine-focused lobbying effort. He also acknowledged erasing emails related to the work.

Gates admitted on Friday that he lied to Mueller’s team earlier this month about Mercury’s lobbying efforts and agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation.

Gates misled investigators about a March 2013 meeting between Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.); former Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.), who's now a lobbyist at Mercury; and Manafort, which took place a few months before Gusenbauer’s lobbying blitz of Capitol Hill. He told investigators that Manafort had told him there was no discussion of Ukraine at the meeting. But Weber and Manafort never said that, according to Mueller, and instead told Gates that the meeting went well. Gates later helped Manafort prepare a report on the meeting for the Ukrainians.

It’s unclear why Gates would lie to investigators — including FBI agents — about the meeting. Both Mercury and Manafort disclosed the meeting last year in retroactive filings detailing their foreign lobbying work.

In an interview with POLITICO last year, Rohrabacher said he and Manafort, who have known each other for decades, had dinner together in March 2013 at the Capitol Hill Club.

“In retrospect, I don’t remember him talking about specifically who it was who had given him a contract,” Rohrabacher said. “Frankly, I don’t remember if it was the Russians or the Ukrainians. … He certainly wasn’t trying to twist my arm on any policy issue.”

Rick Gates is pictured. | Getty Images

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Ken Grubbs, a Rohrabacher spokesman, confirmed that account on Friday. "Dana recollects the meeting as mostly about politics, old times," Grubbs said. (Rohrabacher and Weber served in Congress together, and the three men have known each other for decades.) "Ukraine came up in passing."

The new indictment also provides fresh details about the work that Mercury and the Podesta Group did on Manafort’s behalf. Staffers at the firms — identified only as Company A and Company B — “viewed the Centre as a fig leaf,” according to Mueller. “As a Company A employee noted to another employee: Gates was lobbying for the Centre ‘in name only. [Y]ou’ve gotta see through the nonsense of that[.]”

Neither Mercury nor the Podesta Group registered as foreign agents for their work on behalf of the Centre, as required by law for firms representing foreign governments or political parties in Washington, until last year.

Mike McKeon, a Mercury partner, said on Friday the firm had been misled by Manafort and Gates.

Gates “admitted that he didn’t tell the truth to the Government and didn’t tell the truth to our lawyers when he spoke to them about this project,” McKeon wrote in email to POLITICO. “While he and others involved with this matter may have acted criminally and tried to hide it, we have acted appropriately, following our counsel’s advice from the start. We will continue to cooperate with the Special Counsel because we are confident we acted appropriately throughout.”