FBI investigation into Donald Trump adviser Paul Manafort now involves Dustin Hoffman of all people
The federal investigation into Donald Trump’s various associates continues to grow deeper and wider by the day, seemingly involving everyone in Trump’s orbit. That’s long included former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, whose finances have become a key focus. But it turns out the investigation into Manafort’s finances now involves actor Dustin Hoffman, who may have been a victim of an alleged Manafort family ponzi scheme.
That bizarre new revelation comes by way of a report from the New York Times (link), which has the FBI looking into a financial deal initiated Paul Manafort’s son-in-law Jeffrey Yohai. According to the story, Yohai took money from Paul Manafort, as well as millions of dollars from Dustin Hoffman and his son, and sank it into a real estate transaction which ended up going bankrupt.
There is nothing in the New York Times piece to suggest that Dustin Hoffman and his son are in any way suspects. Instead it sounds like they’re alleged victims, if their investment was purposely squandered by the Manafort family without their knowledge. It appears the transaction is being investigated because it involved Paul Manafort’s money, which can be traced back to tens of millions of dollars in payments that he took from a pro-Kremlin oligarch. Manafort still has yet to register as a paid foreign agent after having taken the payments.
Manafort’s daughter Andrea has accused Manafort’s son-in-law of running a “ponzi scheme” with his real estate transactions according to the NY Times report – something which the son-in-law strongly denies. But in any case, we’ve now reached the point where the Trump-Russia scandal and its related investigations have spread so far and wide that they now involve Dustin Hoffman of all people. This might be the most surreal twist yet in a scandal and investigation that’s already become one of the strangest of its kind to ever surface.
