Sam Patten, a U.S. political consultant who worked on the 2015 mayoral campaign of Vitalii Klitschko, pleaded guilty in federal court in Washington, D.C., today for failing to register as a foreign agent.
A statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia stated that Patten failed to register as a representative for Opposition Bloc, made up of many members of the former Party of Regions led by ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, from 2014 to 2017.
An Opposition Bloc spokeswoman did not immediately return a request for comment.
Prosecutors allege that Patten took $1 million from the political group, formed from the ashes of the now-defunct Party of Regions, and met with members of U.S. Congress and the executive branch.
Patten is a well-known figure in Kyiv political circles, having spent years in the region going back to the early 2000s. After leaving a position as Russia country director for the International Republican Institute in March 2004, he began to work as a political consultant in Kyiv.
By 2014, Patten had ended up with a wealth of experience in Ukrainian political campaigns, working both with former IRI staffer Konstantin Kilimnik and ex-Viktor Yanukovych adviser Paul Manafort.
“We’ve known each other for more than 15 years, and we periodically look for places we can work together,” Patten told The Atlantic in April.
Prosecutors accuse Patten of working with two unnamed foreigners – a Russian national and a “Ukrainian oligarch” – to lobby on behalf of Opposition Bloc in the U.S. capitol. D.C. federal prosecutors picked up the case on a referral from the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, tasked with investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
At one point in the charges, prosecutors write that Patten helped his “Ukrainian oligarch” client place an op-ed in a “national United States media outlet” in February 2017. The topic of the article addressed how Ukraine could work effectively with the then-new Trump Administration.
At that time, Opposition Bloc MP Serhiy Lovochkin published an op-ed in U.S. News and World Report titled “Ukraine can win in the Trump age.” Lovochkin, who financed much of Manafort’s work in Ukraine, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
A Lovochkin spokeswoman told the Kyiv Post, “‘let us assure you Mr.Lovochkin writes his op-eds himself.”
During his plea hearing, Patten said that he had arranged for an unnamed Ukrainian oligarch to funnel $50,000 to the Trump inauguration in exchange for a seat at the event.
“Mr.Lovochkin was indeed invited to the inauguration and had the honor to attend,” the spokeswoman said. “At the same time, he did not pay for that.”
