PAUL MANAFORT: TRUMP’S PRO-RUSSIAN $12.7 MILLION (EX-)MAN CON-MAN
Paul Manafort “resigned” Friday (08/19/2016) from Donald J. Trump’s hardly presidential Presidential campaign amid a bit of swirling controversy.
What a surprise!
The word ‘controversy’ and Trump’s name appearing in the same simple sentence.
We are aghast.
About the now former campaign chairman Trump stated, “This morning Paul Manafort offered, and I accepted, his resignation from the campaign. I am very appreciative for his great work in helping to get us where we are today, and in particular his work guiding us through the delegate and convention process. Paul is a true professional and I wish him the greatest success.”
What a load of bull-twain!!!
Doesn’t even spin.
Contrary to Lowen Liu’s attempt to defame Trump when writing for amp.slate.com by asserting in an unflattering way that “…there is nobody like you [Donald]…and there never has been…”
I categorically and vehemently disagree.
As Billy Martin quipped about Reggie Jackson and George Steinbrenner back in the day, “one’s a born liar and the other’s convicted…”
Trump?
If he’s not both as I write, then just wait awhile.
Liars are a dime a dozen; he’s just one of the countless many and not deft at it. Daft, not deft.
And the wheels of justice turn very slowly.
But this is not to chronicle Trump’s propensity to lie or his inability to do so convincingly.
Rather, let’s look into Paul Manafort and the relationship between the two.
Paul John Manafort, Jr. is a 67-year-old American lobbyist and political consultant thought to be able to relate well to Trump because of his contacts, his influence and interestingly his age — The Donald is three years his senior, making them chronologic contemporaries, peers.
A life-long Republican with a J.D. (Georgetown University Law School, ’74) he was an adviser to the presidential campaigns of Ford, Reagan, George H.W. and Bob Dole but is perhaps more widely known for his lobbying efforts, particularly those made on behalf of Pro-Russian Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych.
He has also lobbied most notably for dictators Ferdinand Marcos and Mobutu Sese Seko and guerilla leader Jonas Savimbi.
He joined the Trump campaign in March 2016 ostensibly to focus on “delegate-corralling” pursuits and was swiftly promoted to chairman in the wake of campaign manager Corey Lewandowski’s April termination.
Overseeing daily operations including control over budget, hiring, advertising and media-strategy decisions essentially made him invaluable.
All of this preceded the national attention and subsequent fallout engendered by multiple credible reports that Manafort may have received illegally $12.7 million in off-the-book dough from Ukrainian President Yanukovych’s Party of Regions.
The campaign chairman and chief strategist with the wealth of experience and uncanny vision was on his way out the door.
New hires/re-assignees respectively, Stephen Bannon — named “Chief Executive” — and Kellyanne Conway — campaign manager — were no longer breathing down Manafort’s neck; they were taking his place in the Trump pecking order.
Manafort was another Trump casualty.
The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Martin reported on August 20th. that “weeks of sliding poll numbers and false starts had sapped Mr. Manafort’s credibility inside the campaign.
A cooling relationship with Mr. Trump — who had taken to calling Mr. Manafort “low energy,” the epithet he once used to mock a former rival, Jeb Bush — turned hot last weekend when the candidate erupted, blaming Mr. Manafort for a damaging newspaper article detailing the campaign’s inner travails, according to three people briefed on the episode.”
Manafort’s own alleged highly questionable “business dealings…with Russia-aligned leaders in Ukraine…[shining] a spotlight on a glaring vulnerability for Mr. Trump: his admiration for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia” sealed the deal.
Innocent until proven guilty of course but it is mildly curious that Manafort was shown the door not just on the basis of his alleged actions and the negative campaign impact their ramped-up coverage was starting to generate, but perhaps more so because of how it made Trump look — to Trump.
Polls continue to show how Trump looks to the people.
And let the record reflect that Manafort “did not go voluntarily.”
Eric Trump, son #2 explained that “my father just didn’t want to have the distraction looming over the campaign.”
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, not surprisingly an ally and counselor to The Donald, ever-so-bluntly put it this way: “The easiest way for Trump to sidestep the whole Ukraine story is for Manafort not to be there.”
And when an Associated Press report surfaced “citing emails [which] showed that Mr. Manafort’s firm had orchestrated a pro-Ukrainian lobbying campaign in Washington without registering as a foreign agent,” that was that.
Paul Manafort’s career pre-Trump was generally cast in a positive if not in some circles glowing light. His reputation in Washington and its political labyrinth was solid.
Fewer than 6 months in the inner sanctum with Trump has called the whole thing into question.
[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in August 2016.]
ADDENDUM:
Manafort was charged criminally with five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud, two counts of conspiracy, and one count of failing to disclose a hidden foreign bank account resulting from the Special Counsel investigation.
He was found guilty on eight counts and pleaded guilty to the two conspiracy counts.
In March of 2019 he was sentenced to a total of 7½ years in prison by Federal Judges T.S. Ellis III (Eastern District of Virginia) and Amy Berman Jackson (DC District Court).
On May 13, 2020 Manafort was released to home confinement due to concerns about the spread of the coronavirus in federal prisons.
