Hacked text messages allegedly sent by Paul Manafort's daughter discuss 'blood money' and killings, and a Ukrainian lawyer wants him to explain
On February 20, 2014, Ukrainian riot police opened fire on thousands of demonstrators who had gathered in central Kiev. They were protesting President Viktor Yanukovych's last-minute decision to back out of a deal with the European Union that would have distanced Ukraine from Russia and fostered closer ties with the West.
A human-rights lawyer representing the victims of the mass police shootings, Eugenia Zakrevska, now wants to know who was advising or influencing Yanukovych when he ordered Ukrainian security forces to crush the protests with force.
One familiar name that has emerged in recent weeks is Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager who advised Yanukovych for nearly a decade.
Late last month, hackers broke into Manafort's daughter's iPhone and published four years' worth of purported text messages — roughly 300,000 messages — on the dark web, an encrypted network that can be accessed only with a special browser.
Now, Zakrevska is calling on Manafort "to clarify the allegations contained in the text messages and to contact us with any information he may have" about the events that occurred in central Kiev between February 18 and 20, 2014, she told CNN earlier this month.
Reached for comment on Friday, Zakrevska told Business Insider that there was still "no answer to my request, and I don't expect it so quickly."
Manafort did not respond to request for comment from Business Insider. He confirmed to Politico late last month that his daughter Andrea had been hacked, and he corroborated some exchanges while declining to comment on others.
'That money we have is blood money'
In a series of texts reviewed by Business Insider that appear to have been sent by Andrea to her sister, Jessica, in March 2015, Andrea said their father had "no moral or legal compass."
"Don't fool yourself," Andrea wrote to her sister, according to the texts. "That money we have is blood money."
"You know he has killed people in Ukraine? Knowingly," she continued, according to the reviewed texts. "As a tactic to outrage the world and get focus on Ukraine. Remember when there were all those deaths taking place. A while back. About a year ago. Revolts and what not. Do you know whose strategy that was to cause that, to send those people out and get them slaughtered."
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