White House administration tries to distance former campaign aides from president

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 Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, as a “volunteer of the campaign.” 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 onto 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 campaign’s top post in mid-August, amid an onslaught of negative press having to do with his past work for foreign governments, including pro-Russian Ukrainian leaders. Manafort issued a statement Monday defending himself against suggestions he played a part in Russia’s efforts to interfere with the U.S. presidential campaign. He said he had “no role or involvement” in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee.

Flynn 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 senior members of the administration about his contacts with Russia’s top diplomat to the U.S.