Daily Times

KIEV: The author of an article that US Special Counsel Robert Mueller believes Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort ghost-wrote in violation of a gag order said on Saturday he had sought input on the op-ed before publishing to avoid errors.

On Friday, Mueller unveiled evidence against Manafort to convince a judge that he wrote the article to improve his public image. Manafort is facing charges as part of an investigation into accusations of Russian meddling in the 2016 US election and possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

The op-ed was published on Thursday in the English-language Kyiv Post under the byline of Oleg Voloshyn, a former spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign affairs ministry.

In a telephone call with Reuters, Voloshyn said he wrote the article, but before publishing had shown it to Konstantin Kilimnik, a Ukrainian whom Mueller alluded to in a filing earlier this week as having ties to Russian intelligence.

Voloshyn said he had decided to write the article to correct misrepresentations of Manafort in the media without prejudicing the US trial and had consulted Kilimnik, who is close to Manafort, to make sure the text was accurate.

“I didn’t want to write any stupid things in it that would worsen his (Manafort’s) already difficult position,” Voloshyn said. “I sent the text to Kilimnik and it was Kilimnik’s idea to send it to Paul (Manafort) for a look.”

“He (Kilimnik) sent it back to me with some comments and suggestions. Whether these were his comments and suggestions or Paul’s suggestions is not a question I can answer,” he said.

Voloshyn said allegations of Kilimnik’s ties to Russia were groundless and that Kilimnik, whom Reuters has not been able to reach, did not want to talk to news media.

Voloshyn said he was prepared to testify that he had no direct contact with Manafort in the run-up to the publication of the article, which praised Manafort’s work promoting European Union-Ukraine relations and said he lobbied for pro-Western values, not Russian interests.

Published in Daily Times, December 11^th 2017.