later discovered, Manafort owned an ostrich-skin jacket worth $15,000, as well as a separate ostrich-skin vest worth $9,500. He further owned a python-skin jacket worth $18,500. See Ashley Hoffman, “The Internet Can’t Stop Plucking at Paul Manafort’s $15,000 Ostrich Jacket,” Time, August 3, 2018.
3. Darmon Richter, “Occupy Mezhyhirya: Squatting the Mansion of Ukraine’s Ex-President,” Ex Utopia, July 29, 2020.
4. Julia Ioffe, “Of Course the Ousted President of Ukraine Commissioned a Nude Portrait of Himself,” New Republic, April 30, 2014.
5. “Monument to Corruption: Ukraine’s Most-Wanted Man Built $75M Home on a $25G Salary,” Fox News, December 5, 2015.
6. Franklin Foer, “Paul Manafort, American Hustler,” The Atlantic, March 2018.
7. Michael Kranish and Tom Hamburger, “Paul Manafort’s ‘Lavish Lifestyle’ Highlighted in Indictment,” Washington Post, October 30, 2017.
8. Shortly thereafter, I sat with a friend in a Marquis de Sade–themed café in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. On the televisions—which were draped by lace stockings, high heels, and whips—played Tymoshenko’s prosecution and perp walk on loop. It remains one of the strangest, most surreal meals of my life.
9. It didn’t hurt that, around the same time, U.S. attorneys also become key tools in transnational money-laundering networks, providing attorney-client privilege for kleptocratic clients looking to inject their wealth into the American economy. See Alexander Cooley and Casey Michel, “U.S. Lawyers Are Foreign Kleptocrats’ Best Friends,” Foreign Policy, March 23, 2021. As elsewhere, all lobbying-related filings are located in the FARA digital database, such as Baker McKenzie’s filing to lobby on behalf of the regime in the Democratic Republic of Congo: https://efile.fara.gov/docs/6821-Exhibit-AB-20200508-1.pdf.
10. Casey Michel and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, “The Dictator-Run Bank That Tells the Story of America’s Foreign Corruption,” Foreign Policy, July 7, 2020.
11. All filings regarding Skadden’s work in Ukraine are located in the FARA digital database, including https://efile.fara.gov/docs/6617-Exhibit-AB-20190118-1.pdf.
12. Sharon LaFraniere, “Trial of High-Powered Lawyer Gregory Craig Exposes Seamy Side of Washington’s Elite,” New York Times, August 26, 2019.
13. Craig initially connected with Manafort because of another bipartisan link. Doug Schoen, a leading Democratic pollster, had offered to help Manafort in Ukraine—and personally recruited Craig to Yanukovych’s cause. See ibid.
14. FARA filing regarding Skadden’s work in Ukraine: https://efile.fara.gov/docs/6617-Exhibit-AB-20190118-1.pdf.
15. Greg Farrell and Christian Berthelsen, “Skadden Settlement for Manafort Work Suggests Ex-Partner’s Peril,” Bloomberg, January 17, 2019.
16. U.S. Department of Justice, “Prominent Global Law Firm Agrees to Register as an Agent of a Foreign Principal,” press release, January 17, 2019. For the most detailed examination of Skadden’s work for Yanukovych, see the Skadden settlement agreement, January 15, 2019, at https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1124381/download.
17. The entire Skadden report on the Tymoshenko trial can be found at https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/538591/tymoshenko.pdf.
18. U.S. v. Gregory B. Craig, Grand Jury Indictment, April 11, 2019, www.justice.gov/usao-dc/press-release/file/1153646/download.
19. U.S. v. Gregory B. Craig, Memorandum Opinion and Order, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Crim. Action No. 19-0125 (ABJ), August 6, 2019, https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000016c-686c-da83-a96c-fafd98ff0000.
20. Skadden’s intimate relationship with Manafort didn’t end just in Ukraine; around the same time, Skadden hired Manafort’s daughter, placing her in the “same bureau housing the attorneys who had produced the Tymoshenko report.” See Ken Silverstein and Adam Weinstein, “How Trump Aide Paul Manafort Got Ridiculously Wealthy While Aiding a Ukrainian Strongman,” Fusion, August 17, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20160820050122/http://fusion.net/story/337482/trump-manafort-ukraine-mansions-movies-mobsters/. Craig initially helped Manafort’s daughter land interviews, and said he was “pissed” when she was initially turned down. See LaFraniere, “Trial of High-Powered Lawyer Gregory Craig.”
21. Skadden settlement agreement, January 15, 2019, https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1124381/download.
22. U.S. v. Gregory B. Craig, Notice of Intent to File Motion In Limine to Exclude Hearsay Testimony from Richard Gates and Jonathan Hawker, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Case No. 1:19-cr-0125 (ABJ), June 24, 2019, https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.206162/gov.uscourts.dcd.206162.45.0.pdf.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid. A separate filing said that Craig did not find Sanger at home, and instead “left the document behind Sanger’s storm door.” Josh Gerstein, “Mueller Fallout Continues as Greg Craig Trial Opens,” Politico, August 12, 2019.
25. David M. Herszenhorn and David E. Sanger, “Failings Found in Trial of Ukrainian Ex-Premier,” New York Times, December 12, 2012.
26. Gerstein, “Mueller Fallout Continues.”
27. Robert Waldeck, The Black Ledger: How Trump Brought Putin’s Disinformation War to America (New York: Cobra y Craneo, 2020).
28. Another company that worked on Yanukovych’s behalf was the behemoth American consulting company McKinsey. The organization didn’t work for Manafort, but instead served in parallel to Manafort’s efforts, helping “polish [Yanukovych’s] battered image” and working toward “resurrecting Mr. Yanukovych’s career.” Like Manafort, McKinsey connected with Yanukovych via oligarch Rinat Akhmetov. Yanukovych’s government was but one of a series of loathsome regimes that McKinsey worked closely with, from China to Saudi Arabia. McKinsey has never disclosed how much money it made from its arrangement with Yanukovych. See Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe, “How McKinsey Has Helped Raise the Stature of Authoritarian Governments,” New York Times, December 15, 2018.
29. Pinchuk’s American lobbyist? The aforementioned Schoen, who had worked as Bill Clinton’s political consultant before joining Pinchuk—and, later, Manafort. See Kevin Bogardus, “Ukrainian Billionaire Hires Clinton Pollster,” The Hill, October 29, 2011.
30. Amy Chozick and Steve Eder, “Foundation Ties Bedevil Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign,” New York Times, August 20, 2016.
31. Maximilian Hess, “Wooing the West: Who Is Ukraine’s Viktor Pinchuk?,” Eurasianet, February 26, 2020.
32. Katya Soldak, “Ukraine’s Victor Pinchuk: The Oligarch in the Middle of the Crisis,” Forbes, March 3, 2014.
33. LaFraniere, “Trial of High-Powered Lawyer Gregory Craig.”
34. “Skadden Stink,” editorial, Kyiv Post, September 13, 2019.
35. Josh Gerstein, “Democratic Pollster Divulges Details to Jurors About Greg Craig’s Ukraine Work,” Politico, August 16, 2019.
36. Skadden registration statement, January 18, 2019, https://efile.fara.gov/docs/6617-Registration-Statement-20190118-1.pdf.
37. LaFraniere, “Trial of High-Powered Lawyer Gregory Craig.”
38. The entire financing for Skadden’s operations in Ukraine was rife with odd, alarming behavior. As The New York Times reported: “Publicly, Ukraine’s financially strapped government said [Skadden] would be paid only the legal limit for outside contracts of $12,000. In an August 2012 editorial with the headline, ‘Skadden Stink,’ The Kyiv Post called that assertion
