First, The Associated Press reported that Manafort’s political consulting firm in Virginia had received at least $1.2 million of the $12.7 million in secret money apparently earmarked for him by the political party of deposed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in a so-called Black Ledger discovered after Yanukovych’s ouster. The money had been wired to Manafort’s firms in two installments, in 2007 and 2009, through shell companies in Belize. Manafort, who had previously maintained that the ledger was fake, defended the payments on Wednesday, saying they were legal because they were made through wire transfers not cash, as Ukrainian lawmakers had alleged.

Also on Wednesday, The New York Times reported that Manafort filed papers to create a new shell company, Summerbreeze LLC, on Aug. 19, 2016 — the same day he was pushed out of the Trump campaign — and soon filled it with $13 million in loans from firms with ties to Trump and Ukraine. One loan of $3.5 million came from the private lending arm of Spruce Capital, co-founded by sometime Trump hotel developer Joshua Crane; the other, for $9.5 million, came from Federal Savings Bank of Chicago, headed by Trump economic adviser Stephen Calk. Both loans were reportedly unusual for the lending firms.