• Special counsel Robert Mueller slapped Paul Manafort, US President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, with numerous charges Monday.
• Manafort’s wife Kathleen is a lawyer who has largely stayed out of the public eye.
Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort surrendered to the FBI Monday after being indicted on 12 counts, including conspiracy against the United States, Business Insider reported.
The indictment accuses Manafort of laundering $ 18 million from 2006 to 2016 to keep up his “lavish lifestyle.”
While the investigation into the political operative’s dealings has dominated the headlines for months, his wife Kathleen Bond Manafort has largely stayed out of the news cycle.
But she’s very much been a presence during the investigation.
The couple was in bed together when FBI agents conducted a pre-dawn raid of their Alexandria, Virginia house in July. CNN reported the experience was a “jarring event” for the couple, and that Kathleen was even searched for weapons, as per standard FBI procedure.
Reports indicate the couple was married on August 12, 1978, according to Heavy.com. It’s unclear how they first met.
Kathleen is a lawyer who graduated from George Washington University in 1979, the year after she reportedly married her husband. She has given money to her alma mater over the years, and is listed as a donor in the school’s president’s report for the years of 1986, 1990, and 1992, according to Archive.org.
In 1984, the couple attended a state dinner for Dominican Republic President Salvador Jorge Blanco, the Washington Post reported. Manafort was a partner in the DC lobbying firm Black, Manafort and Stone at the time. The Manaforts have two daughters — Jessica, who was born in 1982 and Andrea, who was born in 1985.
Kathleen subsequently earned her J.D. from Georgetown in 1988, and passed the Virginia bar the same year, according to The Washington Post. Kathleen was also admitted to the DC bar in 1991. Her various degrees are listed in online legal databases like LegalDirectories.com and Lawyers.com.
Over the years, Kathleen had a hand in some of the couple’s major purchases.
The Manaforts have bought numerous in Florida, Virginia, New York, according to NBC, including a Trump Tower apartment together in 2006 and a horse farm in Wellington, Florida.
In 2003, San Diego — one of the horses owned by the couple — was stolen, according to “A Sunday Horse: Inside the Grand Prix Show Jumping Circuit” by Vicky Moon. The Manaforts — in partnership with the Wellington Equestrian Alliance — put up a $ 10,000 reward for information about the case. San Diego was found after several weeks and ex-veterinarian Cathy Crighton was charged with stealing the horse, the Sun Sentinel reported.
The Manaforts sold the Wellington, Florida property in 2004, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Bloomberg reported Kathleen bought a $ 400,000 lot in Southhampton in 1992. The subsequent $ 5.6 million house included a pool and a tennis court. In 2002, she received a $ 150,000 mortgage on the home from a bank run by Jared Kushner’s dad. Two years later, Thomas Barrack Jr. — a close friend of Trump’s — gave her a $ 1.76 million mortgage for the house.
In 2007, Kathleen Manafort appears during the May 17, 2007 minutes of the Town of Southampton’s zoning board, when she requested relief from certain “residential district dimensional regulations” for the property.
And NBC reported the deed for the home was transferred to Paul Manafort’s Summberbreeze LLC in 2016.
The indictment indicated Paul Manafort used offshore accounts to spend money on “personal items,” including a total of $ 6,090,293 on a home improvement company and a landscaper in the Hamptons, Business Insider reported. According to Curbed, Paul Manafort was subpoenaed for a $ 3.5 million mortgage on the home.
Beyond public records about property purchases, not much is known about the relationship between Kathleen and Paul Manafort.
However, during the investigation, tabloids attacked the couple’s marriage, Heavy.com reported. The National Enquirer — which is owned by American Media CEO David Pecker, a friend of Trump’s — has printed stories alleging Paul Manafort was having an affair with a much-younger woman.
And in March, allegedly hacked text messages between the Manaforts’ two daughters Andrea and Jessica indicated that their parents’ marriage was in trouble.
Business Insider reported Andrea appeared to to say her parents couldn’t go through a “public divorce” because it would unearth “too many skeletons.”
NOW WATCH: Watch Paul Manafort — Trump’s former campaign chairman — surrender to the FBI
