Ex-Trump aide to testify
Manafort offers to be interviewed by lawmakers probing Russian meddling
WASHINGTON — U.S. 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. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., chairman of the House intelligence committee, told reporters on Friday that Paul Manafort’s counsel contacted the panel on Thursday to offer lawmakers the opportunity to interview him. He said the scope and setting of that questioning hasn’t yet been determined.
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 Associated Press that he would work to “benefit the Putin government.”
Nunes also announced that a previously scheduled public hearing with former Obama administration officials would not take place Tuesday as planned.
Nunes’ focus for people to interview was primarily current and former government officials with insight into the investigation. When asked about whether he would call Trump associates, he has said people can volunteer to be interviewed if they want to.
“We’re not going to get into a neo-McCarthyism era here where we just start bringing in Americans because they were mentioned in a press story,” Nunes said. “I’m highly concerned about that. Now, if people want to come in freely, we will do that.”
The top Democrat on the committee, Adam Schiff, said he disagreed with the chairman’s decision to cancel the public hearing. The former directors of national intelligence and the CIA and the former acting attorney general had agreed to testify publicly on March 28.
“I think this is a serious mistake,” Schiff said Friday.
He said the committee’s hearing on Monday demonstrates how important it is that these inquiries be conducted publicly. During that hearing, FBI Director James Comey confirmed there was an ongoing counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump associates co-ordinated with the Russians to influence the 2016 election.
“That, of course, is very significant information for the public,” Schiff said.
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.”
The statement left open whether Manafort will agree to discuss his previous work as an international political consultant in eastern Europe. Manafort, who was working as a political consultant for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine at the time, pitched a wideranging 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.
In a statement to the AP earlier this week, Manafort confirmed that he worked for Deripaska, but denied that the work had been to advance Russia’s interests.