Is Paul Manafort About to Step Out On Stage Again?
Is Paul Manafort About to Step Out On Stage Again?
Matt Bernardini examines rumours that Donald Trump is seeking to bring back his former campaign manager.
In early 2020, Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins famously said that she would not vote to convict Trump during his first impeachment because the former President had “learned his lesson.”
Perhaps no single statement from ‘establishment Republicans’ more clearly illustrates their naivety about being able to control Donald Trump. Since then, Trump has helped lead an attempted overthrow of the Government to stay in power, been arrested several times, and faces a litany of financial penalties related to his previous business dealings. Yet he has the Republican nomination all but locked up, and looks poised to have a decent chance to win the next election. Not only has he not learned his lesson, but he is set to run for president again with the same band of crooks that got him there the first time.
The Washington Post reported that Trump was seeking to bring back Paul Manafort as a campaign advisor for the 2024 election. The report stated that Trump was hoping that Manafort could help out with fundraising. Given his mounting legal fees, Trump will be looking to get money from anywhere, and Manafort provides global connections which he could tap into.
As I have previously written, Manafort has made a living on the gravy train of Russian oligarchs and their pro-Russian Ukrainian counterparts.
Going back 20 years, he has worked closely with Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska and other oligarchs in Ukraine to do public relations work for Yanukovych. According to the US Senate Intelligence Committee, these PR approaches led to Russia shifting “its focus from direct and overt interference in Ukrainian politics toward a more subtler approach”.
Manafort’s electoral strategy succeeded and he received more than $60 million for his Yanukoyvch-related activity, mostly from Serhiy Lyovochkin and Rinat Akhmetkov.
Trump has reportedly praised Manafort’s loyalty, something would-be despots like Trump crave. If he does decide to bring back Manafort, it would represent a staggering middle finger to the law enforcement agencies that worked so hard to prosecute Manafort after Trump won the election in 2016.
Prior to that election, Manafort was named the Trump campaign chairman. Over the course of the campaign, he met repeatedly with Konstantin Kilimnik – whom the US has asserted is a Russian intelligence agent, handing over internal campaign polling data.
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