Donald Trump’s USA presidential campaign sealed a major staff reshuffle with the resignation on Friday of its campaign chairman, and the Republican nominee tried to end weeks of upheaval to focus on beating Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
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Manafort had essentially taken control of Trump’s campaign in June, after a power struggle that led to the ouster of campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
Manafort’s resignation comes just two days after Trump hired Kellyanne Conway as his campaign manager and Steve Bannon as his campaign’s CEO. Please see our terms of service for more information.
“He does not like to be leaked about”. Yet his role grew to serve as Trump’s connection to the GOP establishment, telling Republican elders that their presidential nominee would run a traditional campaign that would not imperil down-ballot candidates.
Trump is trailing Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in polls nationally and in key swing states where his campaign lacks organization. Also Friday, Trump started airing his first ads of the general election after moving a day earlier to invest almost $5 million in battleground state advertising.
But Manafort also became a source of continuing controversy for the campaign in his own right.
Manafort’s departure followed a string of revelations about his work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.
Manafort’s consulting work for Yanukovych was already public. The payments totalled $12.7 million between 2007 and 2012. It said the ledgers were discovered by a Ukrainian anticorruption bureau as “part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials”. One such transaction, the newspaper reported, involved an $18-million cable television deal put together by Manafort. “In addition, as the article points out hesitantly, every government official interviewed states I have done nothing wrong, and there is no evidence of “cash payments” made to me by any official in Ukraine”.
Trump has come under fire from Democratic rival Hillary Clinton over his “absolute allegiance” to Russian policy aims saying it raised “national security issues”. Trump’s decision to tap Stephen Bannon, a combative conservative media executive, as his new campaign chief suggested to some that he might continue the divisive rhetoric that has angered minorities and alienated large swaths of the general election electorate. Those revelations included an Associated Press report from Thursday, which revealed Manafort’s firm orchestrated a covert US lobbying operation on the party’s behalf.
If it’s true, Manafort may have violated USA laws requiring lobbyists to register as “foreign agents” with the Justice Department if they work with other governments.
In a previous shake-up, Manafort, who first joined the team in March, took over the running of the campaign from Corey Lewandowski, who was sacked as campaign manager in June.
“You live in your poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed what the hell do you have to lose?” he said, adding a bold prediction: “At the end of four years, I will get over 95 percent of the African American vote”.
The Clinton campaign looked to use Manafort’s resignation to tie Trump and Vladimir Putin together.
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This article was originally published at 8:10 a.m.
