MANAFORT QUITS TRUMP CAMPAIGN
• Paul Manafort, the controversial campaign chairman for Donald Trump, resigned Friday after a slew of damaging accusations about his ties to Russia and a high- profile reshuffle of Trump’s campaign team.
Manafort handed in his resignation three days after Trump sidelined him by bringing in two new people to head the team and the same day once- secret accounting documents of Ukraine’s pro-Kremlin party were released, showing payments of US$ 12.7- million earmarked for Manafort.
“Paul Manafort offered, and I accepted, his resignation from the campaign,” said Trump in a statement as he toured flood-ravaged Louisiana. “I am very appreciative for his work in helping to get us where we are today, and in particular his work guiding us through the delegate and convention process.”
Members of Trump’s family praised Manafort but made clear that controversies around him played a role in his decision to leave.
“I think my father didn’t want to be, you know, distracted ( with) whatever things” Manafort was dealing with, said Trump’s son Eric to Fox News. “My father just didn’t want to have the distraction looming over the campaign and quite frankly looming over all the issues that Hillary is facing right now.”
Trump’s reshuffle had kept Manafort as chairman, but brought in Steve Bannon, once described as “the most dangerous political operative in America,” as his campaign chief executive. Trump also appointed Kellyanne Conway as his campaign manager.
Friends of Manafort said Friday they believed he was undone by the combination of revelations about his work on behalf of those pro- Russian forces and the elevation of Conway and Bannon to Trump’s inner circle.
“If you had had one of t hese t hings happen, it would have been survivable. But you had two of these things in concert,” one strategist said. “One thing I don’t think Trump will tolerate is the focus being on someone else rather than himself.”
Manafort, 66, was a divisive figure on the campaign team. Hired at the end of March to shore up Trump’s primary team, he eventually replaced Corey Lewandowski as campaign manager.
But Manafort’s background caught up with him. Associates of Manafort said Friday that it was clear that he was taking a calculated risk by joining Trump’s campaign.
Said one, “He knows he’s been doing this stuff. It was going to become an issue. He wasn’t prepared to tamp it down. When he decided to re- enter high- profile American politics, and he ratcheted it up with lots of Sunday shows and TV appearances, he had to know he was putting himself out there as a target.”
On Thursday, The Associated Press reported that confidential emails from his firm contradicted his claims that he had never lobbied on behalf of Ukrainian political figures in the U.S.
Manafort and his campaign deputy, Rick Gates, never disclosed their work as foreign agents as required under U.S. law.
The AP found that Manafort helped Ukraine’s Party of Regions secretly route at least US$ 2.2 million to two Washington lobbying firms. Manafort told Yahoo News that the AP’s account was wrong.
Ukraine’s National AntiCorruption Bureau, which was set up in 2014 to deal with high- profile corruption cases, is studying the so-called black ledgers of the Party of Regions which investigators believe are essentially logs of under-the-table cash payments that the party made to various individuals.
The bureau on Friday released 19 pages of the logs which contain 22 line- item entries where Manafort is listed as the ultimate recipient of funds totalling US$12.7 million. The bureau said, however, that it cannot prove that Manafort actually received the money because other people including a prominent Party of the Regions deputy signed for him in those entries.
Handwritten notes in a column describe what the payments were used for with entries such as: “Payment for Manafort’s services,” “contract payment to Manafort” dated between November 2011 and October 2012.
Gates is not joining Manafort on the sidelines. Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller announced on Twitter that Gates would take on a new role as liaison to the Republican National Committee, which has had a turbulent relationship with its nominee this year.
Trump’s trip to Louisiana comes a day after he made a rare expression of remorse. In a highly uncharacteristic move at a rally in North Carolina on Thursday night, Trump said for the first time that he regrets some of the caustic comments he’s made in “the heat of debate.”
“Sometimes in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don’t choose the right words or you say the wrong thing. I have done that,” the GOP nominee said, reading from prepared text. “And believe it or not, I regret it — and I do regret it — particularly where it may have caused personal pain.”
It was a rare admission for a man who has said that he prefers “not to regret anything” and it underscored the dire situation Trump finds himself in. With just 80 days left until the election, Trump is trailing Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in preference polls of most key battleground states.
HE WASN’T PREPARED TO TAMP (HIS ACTIVITY) DOWN.