Trump ex-aide ‘offered to help Putin’

Manafort worked with a Russian billionaire to ‘influence politics, news, business deals’

President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, secretly worked for a Russian billionaire to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin a decade ago and proposed an ambitious political strategy to undermine anti-Russian opposition across former Soviet republics, The Associated Press has learned. The work appears to contradict assertions by the Trump administration and Mr Manafort himself that he never worked for Russian interests.

Mr 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 US-Russia relations under Republican President George W. Bush grew worse. Mr Manafort pitched the plans to Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, a close Putin ally with whom Mr Manafort eventually signed a $10 million annual contract beginning in 2006, according to interviews with several people familiar with payments to Mr Manafort and business records obtained by the AP. Mr Manafort and Mr Deripaska maintained a business relationship until at least 2009, according to one person familiar with the work.

“We are now of the belief that this model can greatly benefit the Putin government if employed at the correct levels with the appropriate commitment to success,” Mr Manafort wrote in the 2005 memo to Mr Deripaska. The effort, Mr Manafort wrote, “will be offering a great service that can re-focus, both internally and externally, the policies of the Putin government.”

Mr Manafort’s plans were laid out in documents obtained by the AP that included strategy memoranda and records showing international wire transfers for millions of dollars. How much work Manafort performed under the contract was unclear.

The disclosure comes as Trump campaign advisers are the subject of an FBI probe and two congressional investigations. 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, and said he never worked for Russian interests. The documents obtained by AP show Manafort’s ties to Russia were closer than previously revealed.

In a statement to the AP, Mr Manafort confirmed he worked for Mr Deripaska in various countries but said the work was being unfairly cast as “inappropriate or nefarious” as part of a “smear campaign.”

“I worked with Oleg Deripaska almost a decade ago representing him on business and personal matters in countries where he had investments,” he said. “My work for Mr Deripaska did not involve representing Russia’s political interests.”

Mr Deripaska became one of Russia’s wealthiest men under Mr Putin, buying assets abroad in ways widely perceived to benefit the Kremlin’s interests. US diplomatic cables from 2006 described Mr Deripaska as “among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis” and “a more-or-less permanent fixture on Mr Putin’s trips abroad.” In response to questions about Mr Manafort’s consulting firm, a spokesman for Mr Deripaska in 2008 — at least three years after they began working together — said Mr Deripaska had never hired the firm. Another spokesman in Moscow last week declined to answer AP’s questions.

Mr Manafort worked as Mr Trump’s unpaid campaign chairman from March until August 2016. Mr Trump asked him to resign after AP revealed Mr Manafort had orchestrated a covert Washington lobbying operation until 2014 on behalf of Ukraine’s ruling pro-Russian political party. — AP