White House: President Trump wasn’t aware of Manafort’s work for Russian billionaire,
WASHINGTON — Before signing up with Donald Trump, former campaign manager Paul Manafort secretly worked for a Russian billionaire with a plan to “greatly benefit the Putin Government,” the Associated Press has learned. The White House attempted to brush the report aside Wednesday, but it quickly raised fresh alarms in Congress about Russian links to Trump associates.
Manafort proposed in a confidential strategy plan as early as June 2005 that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and the former Soviet republics to benefit the Putin government, even as U.S.-Russia relations under Republican President George W. Bush grew worse.
Manafort pitched the plans to Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, a close Putin ally with whom Manafort eventually signed a $10 million annual contract beginning in 2006, according to interviews with several people familiar with payments to Manafort and business records obtained by the AP. Manafort and Deripaska maintained a business relationship until at least 2009, according to one person familiar with the work.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer indicated Wednesday that Trump had not been aware of Manafort’s work on behalf of Deripaska.
“To suggest that the president knew who his clients were from 10 years ago is a bit insane,” Spicer said.
Manafort’s plans were laid out in detailed documents obtained by the AP that included strategy memorandums and records showing international wire transfers for millions of dollars. How much work Manafort performed under the contract was unclear. The work appears to contradict assertions by the Trump administration and Manafort himself that he never worked for Russian interests.
Manafort confirmed again Wednesday in a statement that he had worked for Deripaska but denied his work had been pro-Russian in nature.
An official representative of Deripaska said simply in a statement Wednesday: “There was an agreement between Mr. Deripaska and Mr. Manafort to provide investment consulting services related to business interests of Mr. Deripaska which now is subject to legal claims.”
The disclosures come as Trump campaign advisers are the subject of an FBI probe and two congressional investigations, and they appear to guarantee that Manafort will be sought as a key witness.
Investigators are reviewing whether the Trump campaign and its associates coordinated with Moscow to meddle in the 2016 campaign. Manafort has dismissed the investigations as politically motivated and misguided. The documents obtained by AP show Manafort’s ties to Russia were closer than previously revealed.
Sen. John McCain, RAriz., called the disclosures “serious stuff” and more evidence that an independent congressional committee should investigate the Trump administration.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a frequent Trump critic, said of Manafort: “Clearly, if he’s getting millions of dollars from a billionaire close to Putin, to basically undermine democratic movements, that’s something I’d want to know about. I doubt if Trump knew about it.”
Manafort has been a leading focus of the U.S. intelligence investigation of Trump’s associates and Russia, according to a U.S. official. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the investigation are confidential. Federal criminal prosecutors are said to have become interested in Manafort’s activities years ago as part of a probe to recover stolen Ukraine assets after the 2014 ouster of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. No U.S. criminal charges have ever been filed in the case.