Manafort offers to talk to House about Russia
INVESTIGATION
• President Donald Trump’ s former campaign manager, a key figure in investigations into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, has volunteered to be questioned by lawmakers as part of a House probe of the Kremlin’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election.
Rep. Dev in Nunes, chairman of the House intelligence committee, told reporters on Friday that Paul Manafort’s lawyer contacted t he panel on Thursday to offer lawmakers the opportunity to interview him. It was not clear if Manafort had offered to testify under oath or in a public hearing, and Nunes said those details had not been determined. “Our lawyers, Republican sand Democrats, will work with his lawyers to see what exactly he wants to do,” Nunes said. “If he wants to come out in public and have a public hearing, he’s more than welcome to do that,” Nunes continued, adding that if Manafort preferred a closed setting that is “also fine.”
Manafort volunteered to be interviewed by the committee the same week that The Associated Press reported that a decade ago he worked for a Russian billionaire. Manafort wrote in a strategy memo obtained by the AP that he would work to “benefit the Putin Government.”
In a statement released Friday, Manafort’s spokesman, Jason Maloni, said the former Trump campaign chairman had agreed to specifically “provide information voluntarily regarding recent allegations about Russian interference in the election.”
When asked whether Manafort would agree to be interviewed about his past work as a political consultant in eastern Europe, Maloni said that the interview would be about Russian interference in the election.
Manafort, who was working as a political consultant for a pro- Russian political party in Ukraine at the time, pitched a wide- ranging political influence campaign to aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Manafort eventually signed a $ 10 million annual contract with Deripaska beginning in 2006, according to interviews with several people familiar with payments to Manafort and business records obtained by the AP.
The AP also reported Thursday t hat Treasury Department agents have recently obtained information about offshore financial transactions involving Manafort.