Prosecutors said the unauthorized move was a breach of trust that leads them to oppose an $11 million bail agreement that it had previously reached with Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo Prosecutors: Manafort tried to write op-ed with Russian operative while under house arrest

Paul Manafort and a long-time Russia-based colleague with ties to Russian intelligence were caught last week ghost-writing an op-ed about his work in Ukraine, federal prosecutors working for special Russia counsel Robert Mueller said in a Monday court filing.

Mueller’s office argued that by working on the article, which was never published, Manafort violated a gag order imposed on his case. President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman has pleaded not guilty to multiple charges including fraud and money laundering.


Prosecutors said the unauthorized move was a breach of trust that leads them to oppose an $11 million bail agreement that it had previously reached with Manafort.

“Even if the ghostwritten op-ed were entirely accurate, fair, and balanced, it would be a violation of this Court’s November 8 Order if it had been published,” Andrew Weissmann, the lead prosecutor on the Manafort case, wrote in a four-page memo submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

“The editorial clearly was undertaken to influence the public’s opinion of defendant Manafort, or else there would be no reason to seek its publication (much less for Manafort and his long-time associate to ghostwrite it in another’s name). It compounds the problem that the proposed piece is not a dispassionate recitation of the facts,” Weissmann added.

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Mueller’s office said it learned late last week about the draft Manafort op-ed, which was being ghostwritten in English as late as Nov. 30 with a “long-time Russian colleague of Manafort’s, who is currently based in Russia and assessed to have ties to a Russian intelligence service.”

The special counsel’s office said it alerted defense lawyers “and were assured that steps would be taken to make sure it was no longer going to be published.” In a separate motion, Mueller asked to submit evidence about the draft op-ed under seal that keeps it from becoming public, and the court quickly granted the request.

Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni declined comment on the allegations in Mueller’s brief to the court. Manafort’s attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a brief last week, Manafort’s defense attorneys revealed “an agreed-upon bail package” that involved the pledging of four properties: Manafort's Alexandria, Virginia, condominium where he’s been under home detention; his Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, home; a condo in Manhattan; and another property in Bridgehampton, New York. They said the properties are worth more than $11 million, after existing mortgages are deducted.

Mueller’s office, which had asked the court for a delay until Monday to weigh in on the bail agreement, said it now opposes it.

“Because Manafort has now taken actions that reflect an intention to violate or circumvent the Court’s existing Orders, at a time one would expect particularly scrupulous adherence, the government submits that the proposed bail package is insufficient reasonably to assure his appearance as required,” Weissmann wrote.

Even without the new information about the op-ed, Mueller’s office said it had planned to seek changes to the bail package because it does not provide a guarantee from someone who is not a close family member. It also doesn’t require GPS monitoring or a fully secured bond for unencumbered real estate. And the Bridgehampton property, the largest of Manafort’s assets in the proposed bail package, “is already subject to forfeiture in the indictment” and there’s a pending legal action already filed against it.

The Manafort bail package needs to be approved by U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who issued the gag order in early November limiting comments to the media and public from lawyers, defendants and witnesses in the case.

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect that the special counsel’s office wants Manafort to obtain a bail guarantee from someone who is not a family member, rather than from someone who is.