MANAFORT, PAUL

Former Trump-campaign manager

manafort was fired from the 2016 Trump campaign after the

Times discovered his name on a handwritten ledger recording millions of dollars in secret payments linking back to the corrupt former strongman ruler of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych. Getting canned didn’t prevent him from attempting to cash in on his ties to Trump. During the transition, Manafort tried to finagle the job of secretary of the Army for a banker who had given him an outsize (and allegedly illegally obtained) loan for his Brooklyn brownstone. (The banker didn’t get the job.)

Manafort is now serving house arrest on a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence for conspiracy against the United States, money laundering, fraud, and other crimes. But as late as 2018, while already under indictment, he was working on a poll to test a Russianbacked idea for carving up Ukraine. The plan, former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann says, would have entrenched Russian power in Eastern Ukraine and pleased Manafort’s former oligarch clients. The missing ingredient was an approving “wink” from Trump. It came to naught. After his guilty plea, Manafort promised to cooperate with prosecutors but then did not, all the while continuing to communicate with the White House (Trump praised Manafort as “a brave man!”). After Manafort’s sentencing, Attorney General William Barr’s top deputy personally saw to it that Manafort would stay in a more comfortable prison.