The Dark Arts of Foreign Influence-Peddling

These days, it’s never good news for Paul Manafort. On Friday, Special Counsel Robert Mueller released his latest indictment against President Donald Trump’s onetime campaign chairman. It charged that Manafort “secretly retained” a small group of former European leaders to “act informally and without any visible relationship with the Government of Ukraine.” Called the Hapsburg Group, this coterie of paid lobbyists allegedly worked to advance the interests of the corrupt regime of former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych in both Europe and the United States.

The group as a whole reportedly received at least $2 million for its services. It was led by “a former European chancellor,” a person the indictment doesn’t name but who has since been identified in numerous press as Alfredthat he lobbied not on behalf of Yanukovych, but only for the cause of bringing Ukraine closer to the rest of Europe. He has that he was paid for his services by a U.S. company. Reports have also alleged that another of Manafort’s secretly paid lobbyists Romano Prodi, the former prime minister of Italy and European Union Commission president. In a , Prodi acknowledged working to bring the EU closer to Ukraine, an effort that involved “numerous meetings and public speeches (some of them regularly paid), which took place in a variety of European capitals.” In his statement, he denied “both to have played a role in any lobbying effort and to be part of a secret lobby,” and added that he “did not receive any money for these activities.”