Felonies, the jury was hung on ten others. Manafort had been due for a second federal trial in the neighboring jurisdiction of washington d. C. On the eve of the second federal trial when manafort instead jumped. Tried this new course. He abandoned his not guilty plea and said he no longer wanted to go to trial. He started talking to prosecutors. Prosecutors agreed to drop all charges against him in d. C. Except for two felony conspiracy counts in exchange, they got not only his plead in guilty but got him to admit even to the admit that he was guilty even to the ten felony charges on which he had the hung jury in his First Federal trial in virginia and most importantly, he pledged to cooperate with prosecutors in the special counsels office. That was the deal manafort tried to make to save his own skin on the eve of what would have been his second federal trial. And that is what blew up. When prosecutors came back to the judge in d. C. To judge Amy Berman Jackson and told her, hey, judge, dont think of this guy as a cooperator. Do not give him any credit for accepting responsibility for his crimes, for providing meaningful assistance to prosecutors. Hes not doing that. Prosecutors came back to the judge after she approved this plea deal and prosecutors told her its off. Manafort has lied to us multiple times on multiple subjects. He cant do that. This week is when well see that come due. This federal judge who will sentence manafort on wednesday, shes the judge that took manaforts guilty pleading and signed off on the plea agreement he made with prosecutors. She ruled from the bench he broke the agreement because yes, she ruled in court he did intentionally lie to prosecutors on multiple occasions on material matters. This is the same judge that put manafort in jail in the first place. Last june. This was the judge that ruled he had violated his bail conditions by tampering with witnesses while he was out on bail awaiting trial. That order from Amy Berman Jackson in d. C. Put Paul Manafort into a federal cell as of last june where hes been ever since. Now we know thanks to last weeks sentence that he isnt getting out of prison for at least a few more years, but this week were about to find out just how many years he will have to serve in total depending on what judge jackson gives him on wednesday and now, as we head towards that wednesday ruling, that wednesday sentencing with that judge, a funny thing is now developing here ahead of this sentencing this week. And it is about manafort lying to prosecutors and breaching his plea deal and not cooperating. Last year, a reporter at cnbc named Christina Wilkie pulled off a neat trick. The news service reported last spring that muellers office had started looking into the Trump Organizations previous business dealings and attempted business deals and business trips to the former soviet union. So not just russia, but also places like georgia and kazakhstan dating back into the 90s and maybe beyond. In the wake of that reporting from mcclatchy, cnbc got a tip about somebody that played an Important Role in Trump Building efforts. The tip was that in georgia and kazakhstan and russia, the Trump Organization basically, they pitched big trump branded building projects with what amounted to a threepronged approach. One of those prongs was trump himself. They would bring trump over there himself to get press attention and do events with celebrities and talk up whatever it was they were doing. They bring the trump star power and then bring Michael Cohen to make connections and also bring an architect who would show off possible designs for these potential trump developments. That was basically their threepronged approach to making business pitches overseas in the former soviet union. So we know what happened to donald trump. He became president. We know what happened to Michael Cohen. Hes going to prison. What about the other guy . The architect who helped make these pitches for the Trump Organization, he himself has never been accused of wrongdoing that we know about. Nobody has alleged that he has done anything to get himself in trouble with any of this stuff but he was proximate to something that is reportedly of investigation and where the other people involved are very, very much at the center of on going investigations. If the Mueller Investigation started to investigate this part of trumps business past, what about this other guy . I mean, the architect who was involved in these pitches, is he now part of the investigation, too . So christina reporter at cnbc reached out to that architect. She got a tip he was involved in the projects and the projects are subject of interest to Robert Mueller and she reaches out and that is when she pull that rabbit out of the hate. This magic trick. She didnt like saw the guy in half but its the journalist equivalent. The architect did not respond to a call or email but eight hours later, meaning eight hours after we called and emailed, he announced he was closing after ten years in business. A few days later, he closed down the twitter account he used to announce he was closing down the architecture firm. By the end of the week, the content from his professional website including his entire International Architecture portfolio had been removed from the web entirely and gone any reference to the two overseas branchs to his Architect Firm he had opened in georgia and ukraine. Wow. One call from a cnbc reporter does that. I mean, im used to getting in commented. I have been no commented up the ying yang but this is no comment and also i no longer exist. Right . Like i live for that. Anyway, that really was something. At the time, you might remember us talking about this on the show. At time we had that reporter from cnbc on the show to figure out what happened there and she was bewildered as we were. Joining us is christina who spooked the architect. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. Do you have this effect on people more broadly . I do not. People love to call me back. That was last year in june. And its interesting about six weeks laterish, the architect in question did resurface but without his firm. He put up a statement on his website announcing quote this most recent transitional phase of my career but insisting i think with annoyance about the press conference, he said he neither vanished nor disappeared. Honestly, his firm did disappear. It is did poof. Now that same reporter at cnbc does appear to have done it again and this time it concerns one of the things that Paul Manafort lied to prosecutors about. This judge in d. C. That will sentence manafort rule that he deliberately lied on three different subjects and of them, the one that i at least found hardest to follow because of the redactions seemed to be about something related to a payment received in june 2017. This is after trumps been in office for half a year and before manafort gets indicted but at a time it was becoming very clear manafort was clearly the subject of multiple serious criminal investigations. His legal bills were starting to mount and in june 2017 manafort reached out to a pro trump super pac. To try to get from them some money to pay his mounting legal bills specifically asked for 125,000. The pac did not send that money but christina appears to have figured out what happens next. As have the special counsels office who have been pursuing the case against manafort in two federal courtrooms and specifically have litigated this point with the judge about why Paul Manafort lied about this payment. So the pac that manafort approached to pay the legal bills was the biggest pro trump pac. He would finance and wouldnt need to take in donations from anybody. This was the biggest one that took in over 24 million in donations. Again, not as part of the campaign but as a pro trump super pac. The biggest one. That was run by a very close associate of Paul Manafort. He basically set up that pac as soon as he was Trumps Campaign chair and green lit the creation and installed as the head of it a guy who he had done tons of work with before, a guy who say longstanding work colleague of manafort dating back decades and reportedly god father to one of Paul Manaforts daughters. What cnbc is reporting is that when manafort in june 2017 asked this protrump super pac this is after the campaign, campaign has been over and manafort goes to this pro trump super pac and wants 125,000. We now can tell basically the answer was yes but. Yes, paul, you can have the money but youre not going to get it from me exactly. Instead, you should get it to the other place, the other entity, this generic named fuzzy corporate entity which according to cnbc was secretly owned and controlled by a famous tony and in fact that little corporate fuzzy entity gave manafort the money. Now, do you care about Paul Manafort getting some of his legal fees paid for . Do you care . No. Not not on strakt none of us care about this but there is three sort of hair raising consequences of this little revelation. Number one, why would Paul Manafort lie about that over and over and over again to prosecutors when he was legally bound not to lie to them about anything and when the question of the freedom of the rest of his life is potentially on the line if he does lie, i mean, hes doing a plea deal which means he has to cooperate and he cant lie. With the plea deal he can get out of going to prison. With no plea deal, it will be some years at least. Prosecutors say that Paul Manafort not only lied about that 125,000 payment, he told three false stories in three different meetings. Put yourself in his shoes for a second he comes up with one false story. Maybe you misremembered and the prosecutors come back and ask you about it again. That might be a signal that maybe you screwed up the first time and ought to make sure you get it right now since youre legally bound not to lie to them. But then you lie to them again . Different lie. You tell them another lie. Then they come back a third time. Are you sure . The third time you try to snow them with another false story about it. Three different meetings with the prosecutor specifically on that payment. Three different lies. He tells a new lie every time. Who cares . Its okay for you to take the money from tony. Really, like that wasnt a bad thing. Youre going to go to prison for maybe like a decade for lying about that . Thats an okay thing for you to have done. What is the problem . So that is consequence one. Tony sending manafort 125,000 to help with the legal fees is not a crime as far as i can tell. Why manafort would go to such lengths to lie when that had such dire consequences for him is absolutely inexplicable. Thats one. Consequence two, despite manafort lying about it over and over again, the prosecutors know the truth from Court Filings, it appears part of the reason muellers office knows what really happened here is because they have spoken repeatedly with tony, with the guy that did pay Paul Manafort this money while Paul Manafort lied to them about it over and over and over again and in the course of figuring out the truth of that payment, muellers office also uncovered a little bit of a kickback scheme. Not particularly sophisticated system by which these guys were basically skimming off a bunch of money people donated at the super pac and keeping it for themselves. They discovered the truth of the payment and discover when getting to the truth of the payment there was a little scheme here, there was a kickback scheme and cash moving necessarily where it shouldnt have gone but hard to tell this stuff directly from Court Filings in the manafort case because of the redactions and written documents and in the transcripts but through basically doing the math and pairing and reading closely all these documents and reporting it all and calling people and tracking them down, christina appears to have basically figured out a way to get behind those black boxes in the redacted transcripts to actually understand what is going on here. And so it appears what muellers office has found and demonstrated to the court and cnbc can describe publicly for the first time, it appears that yeah, manafort got this payment from tony, the pollster, it also appears that the longtime manafort friend who Paul Manafort installed as the head of the super pac, that guy and tony, the other longtime Paul Manafort friend who manafort hired to be the pollster also appears that those two guys set up a scheme where the two of them took a 6 cash cut of every dollar he spent in the 2016 campaign. And again the pollster who appears to be caught up in this stuff, he has reportedly been talking to muellers investigators for a long time. He was seen leaving the special counsels office and cnn confirmed he had met with muellers prosecutors. Wilki reports fabrizio did at least one more interview so whatever was going on with Tony Fabrizio, that is all known to the special counsels office. Fabrizoi is the subject of a detailed document request from the House Judiciary Committee which he has to respond to by next week. But there is one more consequence. That wilki, pulled off the magic trick once again. Shes done it again this time and in addition to reporting out the role of Tony Fabrizio, this guy who was apparently part of this cash kick back scheme who is apparently part of this whole mysterious 125,000 payment that manafort is going to die on a hill lying about, i mean, the three players in the drama are Paul Manafort, Tony Fabrizio and this other guy who manafort put in charge of the pac. The god father of his friends daughter and worked with manafort back in the 80s and the lobbying firm with roger stone. And in addition to manafort installing him with the super pac kick back and key role in the trump inaugural randomly the guy that got put in charge of ticketing all the trump inaugural events even though he had no experience with that whatsoever. Okay. Hes of interest. What about him . About his role in this . This guy is a guy named lawrence gay. He appears to be at this point basically the beleaguered spotlight excuse me, spotlight at the center of a fiveway intersection of trump related scandals and criminal investigations. How does lawrence gay fit . Is he talking to prosecutors . If fabrizio is talking to investigators about this role of the skimming kick back and how it connected to getting cash to manafort, okay. We know about manaforts conversation with prosecutors and the problems there. We know this reporting about fabrizos conversation. Has lawrence gay told his side of the story, too . How does he fit into this and the special counsels investigation and inaugural investigation and queue christina at cnbc and her amazing journalistic powers. Cnbc attempted to reach lawrence gay several times but the phone at his connecticut Consulting Firm has been disconnected. Hello . Hello . This is not a fly by night guy who nobody heard of before, right . This guy had been in the Paul Manafort universe for 40 years. One call from cnbc about this and poof, hes gone. Disconnected . Joining us now is Christina WilkieWhite House Reporter. I know ive been embarrassing you. Thank you for being here. Its my such a great pleasure, rachel. You seem to have this ability to make people disappear, disconnect their phone and shut down their businesses and eliminate themselves from social media when you ask questions. I know there is a lot of different components here. That must have been a surprise to get no comment by lawrence gay but to have hill disappear. There is no way to tell when his phone was disconnected but it is in this day in age, its unusual to get an intense beep, beep, beep of a disconnected phone. This number is no long near service. In terms of lawrence gay and the super pac, i can imagine the things you wanted to ask about but it seems like what youre describing is not just you figured something out but believe mueller figured out something about the ruling of the payment to Paul Manafort but what appears to be a kick back in the prosuper pac, right . That is what appears to have happened and yeah, we have figured out that lawrence gay, Paul Manafort kind of installed this guy he trusted and to oversee 24 million that manafort suggested to gay that he hire Tony Fabrizio ad buying firm and that fabrizio and gay. One mans kick back scheme and they set up a secret commission split and essentially overcharged these donors and i heard from lawrence gays lawyer and he says his client has done nothing wrong. Hes a criminal defense attorney and so we will see. Gays voice is very absent from these court documents. You know, whereas they are often obvious references to manafort, interviews and obvious references Tony Fabrizios role. Hes the truth teller in this as manafort tells different stories. Fabrizio lays it out but the third man is really absent. You know and obviously thats not an accident. Let me ask you about the dynamic where fabrizio as far as we know has spoken with muellers office at least a couple times. Hes described in Court Filings i think we can now sort of see it the way weve given you this window. We can see him being described as the person that gave prosecutors what they believe to be true and corroborated information about that payment to Paul Manafort