Ex-Trump advisers under the microscope

KYIV, Ukraine — A Ukrainian lawmaker released new financial documents Tuesday allegedly showing that a former campaign chairman for President Donald Trump laundered payments from the party of a disgraced ex-leader of Ukraine using offshore accounts in Belize and Kyrgyzstan.

The documents stem from business ties between Paul Manafort and the party of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, who enjoyed Moscow’s backing while in power.

Manafort, who worked for Yanukovych’s Party of Regions for nearly a decade, resigned from Trump’s campaign in August after his name surfaced in connection with secret payments totalling $12.7 million by Yanukovych’s party. Manafort has denied receiving those, listed in the party’s “black ledger.”

Serhiy Leshchenko published Tuesday a 2009 invoice purportedly signed by Manafort that shows a $750,000 payment for 501 computers to a company called Davis Manafort.

On the same day, Manafort’s name is listed next to a $750,000 entry in the “black ledger,” which was considered a party slush fund. Leshchenko alleges that Manafort falsified an invoice to legitimize the $750,000 payment to himself.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer made a point Monday to suggest that Manafort was not really a top adviser.

In the same briefing Monday, Spicer dismissed longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone as a “hanger-on.” The Trump campaign did part ways with Stone in August 2015, and the two certainly have had an odd relationship.

But that relationship dates back decades, and Stone is widely still considered a Trump associate.