Mueller Must Give Names of ‘Foreign Agents’ to Manafort

(Bloomberg) -- U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller must disclose to Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort the identities of former senior foreign politicians, and others, whom he is accused of causing to act as unregistered foreign agents in the U.S.

Mueller’s prosecutors have until June 15 to reveal the identities of individuals or entities referred to but not named in an indictment accusing Manafort of acting as an unregistered foreign agent of Ukraine and of laundering millions of dollars, a federal judge in Washington ruled Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson granted Manafort’s request for those names but denied his broader bid for a so-called bill of particulars, which would spell out the evidence in greater detail.

Jackson said she found that “the indictment is specific and, that with one minor exception, it suffices to put the defendant on notice of the nature of the charges against him,” Jackson wrote in a five-page ruling. Manafort must “prepare for a complex trial with a voluminous record within a relatively short period of time, and he should not have to be surprised at a later point by the addition of a new name or allegation.”

Manafort, 69, has pleaded not guilty to charges accusing him of secretly working on behalf of former Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych and other pro-Russia politicians. Prosecutors say that Manafort worked with lobbying and public-relations firms, as well as several European politicians known informally as the Hapsburg group, to improve Ukraine’s image.

While the former senior foreign politicians aren’t identified in filings, they have been identified in news reports as including Romano Prodi, former prime minister of Italy; Alfred Gusenbauer, former chancellor of Austria; and Aleksander Kwasniewski, former president of Poland.

Manafort faces a Sept. 17 trial in Washington after a separate trial in Alexandria, Virginia, on tax- and bank-fraud charges.

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