Paul Manafort’s daughter is ditching her family name. Can you blame her?
Following the indictments that culminated in her father’s very public criminal conviction last month, Jessica Manafort, 36, filed paperwork in Manhattan Supreme Court on Friday to change her surname to Bond, according to the The New York Post.
“I would like my new name to be Jessica Anne Bond, in place of my present name,” she said in the legal filing.
For Bond, it’s a way to “to separate myself and my work from a public perception that has nothing to do with the person that I am,” she told the Post.
Jessica, an independent filmmaker, listed her name as Jess Bond in her latest flick, “Rosy,” which came out in July, a little more than a week before Paul Manafort was set to go to trial in federal court in Alexandria, Va.
Explaining the decision to The Los Angeles Times at the time of the film release, Bond said it was about standing by her views and being her own person.
“I am a passionate liberal and a registered Democrat and this has been difficult for me. Although I am ‘the daughter of,’ I am very much my own person and hopefully people can realize that,” Bond said.
Until last year, Jessica was married to Jeffrey Yohai, a real estate developer who went bankrupt in 2016. Along with her parents, Jessica Manafort, also invested in Yohai’s real estate business, injecting $4.7 million into the projects, which were never completed. In May, Yohai pleaded guilty to two charges related to his real estate and financial dealings as part of an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice that requires him to cooperate with other criminal cases. That means it is possible that he could be asked to help in the prosecution of his former father-in-law.
The newly officially named Jess Bond said she planned to change her name “not to hide, but to separate myself from everything going on because it has nothing to do with me or my work.”
I would want to distance myself as much as possible too if I were her…
And no such hope for Ivanka to do the same, I assume.
You can follow me on Twitter@maymepolitizoom
