Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
PAUL MANAFORT RESIGNED as Donald Trump’s campaign chairman during the week.
He had earlier been thrust into the headlines in connection with a Ukrainian corruption investigation.
On Friday, Trump said in a statement: “This morning Paul Manafort offered, and I accepted, his resignation from the campaign.
“Paul is a true professional and I wish him the greatest success.”
Manafort is a formidable Republican strategist who spent years lobbying for rogues and dictators.
The smooth-talking, sharply-dressed 67-year-old had become the public face of the most controversial US presidential campaign in living memory. A professional spokesman who never strayed off message as he batted aside allegations of a campaign in disarray or a candidate going off the rails.
On Wednesday, Trump announced a shake-up of his team as he tanks in the polls. Some people saw the hiring of Breitbart News executive chairman Stephen Bannon as CEO and Kellyanne Conway being promoted to campaign manager as a demotion for Manafort.
In a 40-year career, he has advised the Republican presidential campaigns of Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush and Bob Dole; he or his firms, such as the now defunct Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly, have been paid millions to lobby for or boost the reputations of foreign clients.
“Name a corrupt despot, and [Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly] will name the account: Ferdinand Marcos, $900,000 (€800,000) a year; the now deposed Somalian dictatorship, $450,000 (€400,000); the drug-linked Bahamian government $800,000 (€710,000),” Spy magazine wrote in a 1992 article.
Ukraine
But the client who landed the Trump campaign in hot water is Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Kremlin former president of Ukraine whom Manafort helped rebrand until the leader fell from power during a popular uprising in 2014.
Others were Angolan warlord Jonas Savimbi, whose rebel group got $250 million (about €220 million) under Reagan and Bush in its war against Angola’s socialist government, the Philippines president Marcos and the late Zaire dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
His name also appears in connection with a French political scandal known as the Karachi affair, in which arms contracts that France signed with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in 1994 are believed to have resulted in kickbacks to finance the presidential campaign of France’s Edouard Balladur.
In 2013, Manafort admitted being paid by a Lebanese-born intermediary for advising Balladur on his ultimately unsuccessful bid.
Another client was the Kashmiri American Council, named in 2011 by prosecutors as a front organisation for Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency. Yahoo News says the Council paid Manafort’s firm $700,000 (about €620,000) between 1990 and 1995.
Riva Levinson, who worked under Manafort from 1985 to 1995, likened it in her memoir to “playing one big game of Stratego: building armies and scheming to take over the world … In fact, at times, that is exactly what was going on”.
Denies wrongdoing
Originally from Connecticut, Manafort’s father was a Republican mayor in the largely Democrat town of New Britain. His grandfather emigrated from Italy and in 1919 founded what became a successful construction company.
Manafort graduated from Georgetown University with degrees in business administration and law. Besides working on Republican campaigns, he was a founding partner in two lobbying and consulting firms: Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly founded in 1980 and Davis Manafort, both now disbanded.
Manafort defended his client roster in an interview with Fox News in April.
Savimbi, he said, was America’s man and working against a “Soviet dictatorship that was put up in Angola”.
Manafort said in the Philippines he helped a “transition” and in Kiev worked to bring Ukraine into Europe. “And we did,” he told Fox.
Manafort helped Yanukovych fine tune his image by softening his pro-Russia rhetoric, albeit while being accused of creeping authoritarianism and as Ukraine dropped in global ratings for press freedom.
He was credited with persuading Yanukovych to make more effort to win votes in the Ukrainian-speaking west, away from his traditional Russian-leaning heartland, and give speeches in Ukrainian instead of Russian.
Yet his ties with the former Ukrainian president, today exiled in Russia, have come under the microscope as Trump defends Russian President Vladimir Putin as a strong leader and calls for a reset in relations with Moscow.
The head of Ukraine’s newly-formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau, Artem Sytnyk, this week said that more than $12 million (about €10.6 million) was earmarked for payment to Manafort from 2007 to 2012, although it was not clear if he received the money.
Manafort denies any wrongdoing, saying he had “never received a single ‘off-the books cash payment’”, or worked for the governments of Ukraine or Russia.
His position on team Trump marked his return to Republican presidential politics after 20 years — he was reportedly considered but rejected in 2008 by John McCain, allegedly alarmed in part over his Yanukovych ties.
Manafort is married, and reportedly divides his time between Virginia, Florida and New York, where he has an apartment in Trump Tower.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Anything on hillary at all?? This is really an unbelievably 1sided campaign by the media
Not all of us are Irish times Guardian and RTE listeners
Do you have to just follow the editorial line of those
We all know Trump is evil and bad does not matter we can’t vote for him
do you think they have a duty to provide equal coverage of foreign politicians?
Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman’s company (The Podesta Group) also implicated in this same investigation, no mention in the journals report.
That’s his brothers company actually, he never worked there
I don’t see what any of it has to do with the Donald? He’s unemployed now.
Paul Manafort was, until last week, Donald Trump’s campaign manager.
These allegations date back to long before Trump was running for president. No connection to Trump.
And Trump hired him even so?
Mr Trump’s cozying up to Mr Putin? (Mr Yanukovych’s former patron and current landlord)
Somehow I’d imagine he’s still involved with Trump’s campaign albeit in a much smaller capacity he still holds a apartment in Trump Towers
Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt person to ever run for office and here we have an article about Trump’s ex campaign manager
No she isn’t.
Tricky Dicky…?
She’s not even the most corrupt person to ever run for that office
A sickening attempt to continue to blame the Donald Trump team when the player in question has already been replaced.
The press has overplayed its hand this way and will be unable to regain any objectivity. Consequently voters will now switch to Donald Trump.
If Donald Trump is able to withstand this kind of pressure he is eminently suited to be POTUS. He doesn’t need to be protected by everybody like What-difference-does-it-make-now Hillary Clinton/MB-connected Huma Abedin.
But what does it say about Trump’s judgment that he hired this guy, is the point.
@Larry Doyle- It says that he can readily dispense with those who may be less than flawless.
Wheras Hillary/Huma Abedin is deeper into a prolongued relationship with a Muslim Brotherhood-connected agent provocateur whose advice on ME policies Hillary sought and received while Sec.of State and everyone knows the result of those policies.
But Manafort’s flaw was known before he was chosen
The democrats have set traps for Trump which he fell into. But Trump is setting a bigger trap for Hillary. Note the word climate change or renewable energy has never been mentioned so far in the speeches. But Trump is promising to create well paid jobs by aggressive use of America’s fuel reserves. This would reverse Obama’s climate action which Hillary has promised to intensify. Hillarys obvious response is to play the climate card. She would have to endorse solar panels and wind energy, which do not work. However about 50% of Americans still believe they do work. If the subject gets aired in the debates, voters will not want their dollars spent on it and worse still, more and more people will realize they have been conned. The climate change bubble could burst. Its cost is equal to the cost of all internet sales world wide. Trump’s new man “Bannon” is fully aware of the climate issue and is likely to exploit this. Meanwhile keep an eye out for mention of climate change in the upcoming campaigns
They had a full day dedicated to it at the DNC
have your say