Sam Patten
BornJuly 22, 1971
Maine, U.S.
EducationGeorgetown University (BA)
OccupationPolitical consultant
Political partyRepublican[1]
Criminal statusPleaded guilty
Criminal chargeViolating the Foreign Agents Registration Act

W. Samuel Patten is an American political consultant and lobbyist who received international attention in spring 2018 in relation to the Special Counsel investigation led by former FBI director Robert Mueller. This was due to Patten's relationship with Konstantin Kilimnik, a subject of the investigation.[2] In summer 2018, attention intensified due to Patten's emergence as a subject of the investigation in his own right, followed by his guilty plea, after being charged in August 2018 with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act for failing to register as a foreign agent with the Justice Department when he represented the Opposition Bloc, a Ukrainian political party, from 2014 through 2018.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9]

Early life and family

Patten's father is Bill Patten Jr., whose mother was the Washington, D.C., socialite Susan Mary Alsop; Patten Jr.'s father was later alleged to have been the British politician Duff Cooper, with whom his mother had an affair while married to her first husband Bill Patten.[10][11][12] Patten Jr. moved to Maine, where he published a small-town weekly newspaper in Camden and became a prison minister.[10][12]

Patten grew up in Maine and went to school there. He graduated from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1993. While at Georgetown he became close to his famous grandmother Susan Mary Alsop, and was once wounded while defending her from muggers. He married in 2013.[12]

Career

Patten began his political career in Maine, as an intern for Senator William Cohen and as press secretary for Susan Collins during her campaigns for governor (1994) and senator (1996). In 1999 he moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked for Senators Collins and Olympia Snowe.[10] He was the Maine campaign director for the George W. Bush presidential campaign in 2000.[12] From 2001 to 2004 Patten headed the Moscow office of the International Republican Institute; while there he worked with Konstantin Kilimnik, who later moved to Kiev to work for Paul Manafort's consulting business in Ukraine.[10][5][2] Patten worked for the U.S. State Department in 2008.[3][12] In 2012, he advised Rob Sobhani on his U.S. Senate campaign in Maryland.[12]

In the mid-to-late 1990s, Patten did public affairs work for the Kazakhstan oil sector.[12] Around 2012, he was being paid $30,000 per month by Bidzina Ivanishvili and a firm related to Ivanishvili.[13][14] In 2014, Patten was receiving $20,000 per month from Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq and the Al-Arabiya Coalition, to support al-Mutlaq's run for prime minister.[15][14]

In 2014, Patten was a senior consultant for SCL Group, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, working at their Oregon office to help them fine-tune their models for the 2014 U.S. mid-term elections.[2][6] He also helped SCL Group with their work on the 2015 Nigeria elections, including hiring Israeli hackers to find kompromat on presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari.[2]

Patten and Kilimnik founded Begemot Ventures International (BVI) in February 2015.[1] Based in Washington, D.C.,[1] BVI is "a strategic and political advisory firm"[16] that Patten claims only has clients outside the United States.[2][1]

Guilty plea

Samuel Patten statement of the offense
Samuel Patten plea agreement

In August 2018, Patten was charged with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act for failing to register as a foreign agent with the Justice Department when he represented the Opposition Bloc, a Ukrainian political party, from 2014 through 2018.[3][4][6][7] In the statement of the offense, Kilimnik is identified as "Foreigner A", Begemot Ventures International as "Company A",[9] and Serhiy Lyovochkin as "Foreigner B".[5]

The prosecution against Patten was an outgrowth of work by the Special Counsel investigation,[17] which referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia and the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, which handled the prosecution.[18] Additionally, after Patten was interviewed by Senate Intelligence Committee staff, "the Committee made a criminal referral to the Department of Justice" because of "concerns about certain statements made by Mr. Patten."[19] In his subsequent guilty plea, Patten admitted to lying to the Intelligence Committee,[18] although the crime to which Patten admitted guilt did not relate directly to his statements to the committee.[19][8]

As part of his guilty plea, Patten admitted that he laundered a $50,000 contribution from Kilimnik to the Trump inauguration committee, by having the money transferred from a Cypriot bank to his company and from there to an unnamed American who sent it to the committee. According to the charge, Patten knew that it was illegal for a foreign national to give money to the committee. He also admitted that he lied to a Congressional committee about the inauguration donation and about his foreign lobbying work, and that he intentionally destroyed documents about that work.[18][19][17]

On April 12, 2019, Patten was sentenced to three years' probation, 500 hours of community service and a $5000 fine.[20]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Markay, Lachlan (April 4, 2018). "Accused Russian Intel Asset Teamed Up With GOP Operative". Daily Beast. Retrieved September 1, 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Bertrand, Natasha (April 6, 2018). "A Suspected Russian Spy, With Curious Ties to Washington". The Atlantic.
  3. 1 2 3 Prokop, Andrew (August 31, 2018). "Robert Mueller got another cooperator". vox.com. Archived from the original on August 31, 2018. Retrieved September 1, 2018.
  4. 1 2 Swaine, Jon (August 31, 2018). "Manafort associate paid Trump inauguration $50,000 in Ukrainian cash". The Guardian. Archived from the original on August 31, 2018. Retrieved September 1, 2018.
  5. 1 2 3 Harris, Andrew M.; Martin, Andrew; Schoenberg, Tom; Farrell, Greg; Baker, Stephanie; Larson, Erik; Wadhams, Nick; Allison, Bill (August 31, 2018). "Manafort Ally to Cooperate With U.S. After Guilty Plea". Bloomberg L.P. Archived from the original on August 31, 2018. Retrieved September 1, 2018.
  6. 1 2 3 Devine, Curt (August 31, 2018). "Who is Sam Patten?". CNN.
  7. 1 2 Mindock, Clark (August 31, 2018). "Paul Manafort associate who worked with Cambridge Analytica charged". The Independent.
  8. 1 2 Liu, Jessie K.; DiLorenzo, Michael C.; Claffee, Scott A. (August 31, 2018). "Samuel Patten plea agreement" (PDF). Retrieved August 31, 2018 – via Google Drive.
  9. 1 2 Liu, Jessie K.; DiLorenzo, Michael C.; Claffee, Scott A. (August 31, 2018). "United States of America v. Samuel Patten — Statement of the Offense" (PDF). Retrieved August 31, 2018 – via Politico.
  10. 1 2 3 4 Hsu, Spencer S.; Helderman, Rosalind S. (August 31, 2018). "In guilty plea, Maine native agrees he steered an illegal foreign donation to Trump's inauguration". The Washington Post. The Press-Herald. Retrieved September 3, 2018.
  11. ↑ Schillinger, Liesl (November 9, 2012). "Susan Mary Alsop: a Two-Continent Hostess". The New York Times. Retrieved September 1, 2018.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Leiby, Richard (April 28, 2014). "Can Washington campaign tactics translate in Iraq? Sam Patten and his candidate hope so". The Washington Post. Retrieved September 3, 2018.
  13. ↑ Rogin, Josh (January 30, 2012). "Inside the other Georgian lobbying effort in Washington". Foreign Policy. Retrieved August 31, 2018.
  14. 1 2 Gray, Rosie (January 27, 2014). "Iraqi Opposition Leader Hires Washington Lobbyist". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved August 31, 2018.
  15. ↑ Rieger, J. M.; Martin, Patrick (April 28, 2014). "Meet the American running an Iraqi's prime minister campaign". The Washington Post (video). Retrieved August 31, 2018.
  16. ↑ "About". Begemot Ventures International. Retrieved September 1, 2018.
  17. 1 2 Kenneth P. Vogel; LaFraniere, Sharon; Goldman, Adam; Sullivan, Eileen; Confessore, Nicholas (August 31, 2018). "Lobbyist Pleads Guilty to Steering Foreign Funds to Trump Inaugural". The New York Times. Retrieved August 31, 2018.
  18. 1 2 3 Rosalind S. Helderman & Spencer S. Hsu, "American political consultant admits foreign money was funneled to Trump inaugural", The Washington Post (September 1, 2018).
  19. 1 2 3 Polantz, Katelyn (August 31, 2018). "Lobbyist pleads guilty, says he helped steer foreign money to Trump inaugural and lied to Congress". CNN. Retrieved September 2, 2018.
  20. ↑ "Lobbyist sentenced to probation for funneling money to Trump inaugural from foreign nationals". NBC News. April 12, 2019.
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