Paul Manafort

Sean Spicer Is Mocked By Social Media For #verylimitedrole Comments About Paul Manafort

... hashtag #Very Limited Role when he said that Paul Manafort played “a very limited role for a very limited amount of time” in Donald Trump’s election campaign. Social media was quick to mock that comment because Manafort was the campaign chairman from April through August of 2016. Spicer’s comments came as he sought to downplay the roles of Trump’s associates who might have had contacts with Russian officials during the campaign. The Trump administration is currently at the center of a high-profile congressional hearing on Russia’s role in the 2016 election. Spicer said Paul Manafort played a “very limited role” in Trump’s campaign. (He was campaign chairman.) __link__/ug On VJq Qm L. — Amanda Wills (@Amanda Wills) March 20, 2017. Spicer told reporters that some of those who are under investigation for their connections to Russia did not have prominent roles on the Trump campaign. Russia is believed to have interfered in the 2016 election to attempt to swing it in Trump’s favor. “At some point, people that got thrown around at the beginning of this hearing, some of those names, the greatest ...

Former Campaign Chair Paul Manafort Played A 'very Limited Role

... he said, before referring to Carter Page and Roger Stone: “I was noting some other folks that Jonathan pointed out.”. Earlier in the briefing, Spicer responded to a question about the FBI’s investigation of Trump associates by saying that some of them, such as Page and Stone, were “hangers-on” who had no substantive involvement with the campaign. “With respect to Paul, though, I believe, and again, I’m not looking to re-litigate the election, but I believe Paul was brought on sometime in June, and by the middle of August, he was no longer with the campaign,” Spicer said. “Meaning that for the entire final stretch of the general election, he was not involved. So to look at some individual that was there for a short period of time, or separately, individuals who didn’t really play any role in the campaign, and to suggest that those are the basis for anything, is a bit ridiculous.”. Spicer later said he was not aware of contacts between Manafort and operatives, or suspected operatives, of the Russian government. Manafort, who at one point advised the pro-Putin Ukrainian strongman Viktor Yanukovych, resigned in August, days after the ...

Associated Press Investigation Says Paul Manafort Worked With Russian Billionaire

... we think is actually working could actually work for the Putin government. And he was pitching this to this Russian oligarch, whose name is Oleg Deripaska, who is a close Putin ally. MARTIN: So what we're learning that's new here - we had already known that Manafort had connections to a Ukrainian former president who had connections to Putin. But what your report shows is that there is a more direct connection between Manafort and Vladimir Putin himself. DAY: Well, what we're finding is that, you know, this is a Russian oligarch who had very close ties with Vladimir Putin and actually, according to some Wiki Leaks cables that were released, is known as being one of the top two or three oligarchs that are very close to him. And that what we know is that - from these documents - that Paul Manafort was willing and actually pitching actively to promote Russian interests. He was open to doing that, particularly at a time - this is 2005, 2006 - whenever the U. S.-Russia relations had kind of soured. MARTIN: Why does any of this matter? Is any of that activity illegal? I mean, it also happened a long time ago. DAY: Well, we're still trying to learn a lot more about ...

Former Trump Campaign Chief Paul Manafort Wanted For Questioning In Ukraine Corruption Case

... relations strategy that included hiring Skadden to review the Tymoshenko case and show the conviction had a sound legal basis. But a spokeswoman for the US State Department in 2012 said the report Skadden eventually came out with "was incomplete and doesn't give an accurate picture.". Prosecutors told CNN that Ukraine's Justice Ministry had signed an agreement with Skadden to provide legal services for the equivalent of only $12,000, the legal limit above which it would have been necessary to hold a public competition to award a government contracting job. Prosecutors provided CNN with the details of a bank transfer that took place on May 30, 2013 to a Citibank account allegedly belonging to Skadden from a Justice Ministry bank account. The document shows the ministry wired Skadden more than $1 million - $1,075,381.41. It is this payment that prosecutors charge was a misappropriation of government funds. "We believe they wanted to avoid the time consuming competition they would have had to organize to hire the law firm legally, so they drew up the ...

Paul Manafort’s Long, Murky History Of Political Interventions

... between Deripaska and Sen. John Mc Cain (R-Ariz.). The two would meet again in August. July 2006. Deripaska’s American visa is revoked. 2007. A secret ledger kept by the Party of Regions indicates that Manafort began receiving under-the-table payments at this point — nearly two dozen of them totaling nearly $13 million. Manafort denies the allegation. December 2007. Yanukovych is ousted as prime minister after parliamentary elections. Yulia Tymoshenko takes the position, becoming the first woman to do so. 2008. After the presidential election — Davis served as Mc Cain’s campaign manager, creating some bad press for the candidate because of his business relationships — Davis Manafort is disbanded. 2009. Manafort’s business relationship with Deripaska continued until at least this point. It’s not clear when it ended again, according to the AP. February 2010. Yanukovych wins the presidency with Manafort’s help. Beforehand, Manafort warns that he’s concerned about voter fraud working against his client, echoing concerns raised by his next prominent client. ...

Ex-trump Campaign Chair Accused In Ukraine Money Laundering Scandal

... The $750,000 amount is officially listed as sale of computers, according to an invoice that Leshchenko dropped on Monday night. He says the invoice came from Manafort’s old office in the Ukranian capital of Kiev. Leshchenko even gave a news conference on the matter. Leshchenko alleges that Manafort falsified an invoice to the Belize company to legitimize the $750,000 payment to himself. “I have found during this investigation that [Manafort] used offshore jurisdictions and falsified invoices to get money from the corrupt Ukrainian leader,” Leshchenko said during a news conference in downtown Kiev, where he provided a copy of the invoice to journalists. The dollar amount also corresponds to one of 20+ entries that finger Manafort in the aforementioned secret ledger. The entries reportedly total $12.7 million paid (over the course of a decade) on behalf of pro-Russian political organizations within the Ukraine. And after Manafort was given his walking papers (thanks to Ukranian anticorruption authorities), he somehow wound up ...

Former Trump Campaign Chair Paul Manafort Secretly Worked To Benefit Putin

... President Vladimir Putin, according to a new report released early Wednesday morning by the Associated Press. This news, as the AP reports, seems to contradict statements by both Manafort and President Donald Trump's administration that Manafort had never worked to aid the Russian government. Manafort had said in the past that, despite known connections to Russian billionaires believed to be close to Putin, he had "never had a relationship with the Russian government," as NBC News reported in August. But the new AP report reveals that, despite Manafort's claims, records show that, beginning around June 2005, Manafort worked with Russian billionaire and close Putin ally Oleg Deripaska to consult on strategies to benefit Russian political interests in the U. S. and around the world. RELATED: Key players in ...

Ex-associates Stone, Manafort Back In Limelight

... narrow sense, some people may term it influence-peddling.”. Manafort responded to questions from the House Government Operations’ housing subcommittee, then exploring how well-connected Republicans worked the levers of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. For dramatic effect, none other than Chuck Schumer, then a congressman from Brooklyn, waved an advertisement published in connection with a HUD-funded New Jersey construction project in which Manafort was involved. Schumer, now the Senate minority leader, told Manafort then: “You could have cut out all this language and written one sentence: The fix is in.”. Tweets from @Newsday/newsday-staff. For his part, Stone is said to have known Trump longer than anyone in politics. By the end of the 2016 campaign, he was deemed an informal adviser. They reportedly met back in the day through New York City lawyer and power broker Roy Cohn. And yet, the longtime relationship between Stone and the president, for whom he was an occasional lobbyist, seems to have had its ups and downs. In a 2008 profile of Stone in the New Yorker magazine, Trump is quoted as saying: “Roger is a stone-cold loser. He always ...

Trump's Former Campaign Manager 'tried To Hide $750,000 Payment

... — a building which also houses several of the offshore companies named in the Panama Papers. The building's owner, however, told CNN the company never held a physical office in the building. Take a look at how the White House is now trying to minimize the role that former campaign chairman Paul Manafort played in the campaign __link__/shyf 9 JBef H. — Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) March 21, 2017. In a press conference on Monday, Mr Leshchenko accused Mr Manafort of fabricating the invoice to create a legal basis for the payment from Mr Yanukovych. “I have found during this investigation that [Manafort] used offshore jurisdictions and falsified invoices to get money from the corrupt Ukrainian leader,” Mr Leshchenko said. Inside Gov | Graphiq. A spokesperson for Mr Manafort told CNN he did not recognise the document and that the signature was not his. Questions about Mr Manafort’s involvement with Mr Yanukovych have swirled since August, ...

Manafort Denies Links To Russia After Fbi Director's Testimony

... to release hacked emails or sought to undermine the interests of the United States is false,” he said in a statement. Fmr. Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort releases statement following House Intel Committee hearing on possible Trump team-Russia ties. __link__/z DLu Bt 739 S. — This Week (@This Week ABC) March 20, 2017. The former top Trump campaign aide broke a period of silence after FBI James Comey made the explosive revelation about the Russia inquiry earlier Monday while testifying before the House Intelligence Committee. The bureau is trying to determine whether Trump allies colluded with Russia in its election meddling. U. S. intelligence agencies say Russia was attempting boost Trump’s campaign and damage Clinton, but thus far have said there is no proof of collusion. "Despite the constant scrutiny and innuendo, there are no facts or evidence supporting these allegations, nor will there be," Manafort said, calling the story a "blatant attempt to discredit me and the legitimacy of the election of Donald Trump. Donald Trump Perez, Ellison start multistate ‘turnaround tour’ for Dems Overnight Cybersecurity: House Intel chair says ...