White House tries to distance Trump from campaign aides Flynn, Manafort

WASHINGTON — The White House is distancing itself from two former senior members of Donald Trump’s team, amid an FBI investigation into possible connections between Trump “associates” and Russia.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Monday referred to former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, as a “volunteer of the campaign.” And he said Paul Manafort, who ran Trump’s campaign for months, “played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time.”

“And so to start to look at some individual that was there for a short period of time or, separately, individuals who really didn’t play any role in the campaign and to suggest that those are the basis for anything is a bit ridiculous,” he said.

Spicer wrongly claimed that Manafort was brought on to Trump’s campaign “sometime in June and by the middle of August he was no longer with the campaign.” In fact, Manafort was hired in late March as Trump’s convention manager, and was promoted to campaign chairman in May. He resigned from the top post in mid-August after his past work for foreign governments, including pro-Russia Ukrainians, was unveiled.

Flynn, meanwhile, was one of the president’s closest advisers throughout the campaign and the transition. He was named national security adviser, but resigned from the White House last month after he was found to have misled the administration about his contacts with Russia’s top diplomat to the U.S.

During a congressional hearing Monday examining Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible connections between Moscow and Trump’s aides, FBI Director James Comey was asked about various campaign advisers and staffers, including Carter Page, whom Trump once named as one of his foreign policy advisers.

Although he cast himself as a Trump Tower regular, Spicer described Page as a “hangers-oner on the campaign.”