See, Yanukovych had been overthrown by then, and the new Ukrainian government was investigating the payments to Skadden for that Very Serious Report. And what a coincidence that Van der Zwaan failed to produce an email from Kilimnik dated September 12, 2016, in which the Ukrainian asks “to exchange a few words via WhatsApp or Telegram,” i.e. asked for an off-the-record conversation.
This seems BAD, huh?
Yeah, it does!
You’ve got Manafort and Gates knowingly doing business with a member of the Russian intelligence GRU during the campaign around the time the RNC mysteriously changed its stance on Russian intervention in Ukraine. You’ve got a record of “additional payments” that may well bolster the money-laundering case against Paul Manafort. And you’ve got a lawyer who knew goddamn well that lying to the FBI was a crime, and now he’d like to avoid jail time, please, because he came clean eventually.