An Associated Press investigation finds that Donald Trump’s campaign chairman helped a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine secretly route at least $2.2 million to two prominent Washington lobbying firms. The prosecutor, Artem Sytnyk, said that didn’t mean that Mr. Manafort necessarily received any money.
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The Trump campaign also worked to weaken language in the GOP platform on aid to Ukraine’s post-Yanukovych government.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook has weighed on the matter by calling for Donald Trump’s disclosure on his relationship with pro-Russian entities, seeing that many of his associates have received payments from them and Trump often refers to Vladimir Putin as an ally.
“The suggestion that I accepted cash payments is unfounded, silly, and nonsensical”, Manafort said in a statement to NBC News, adding that any political payments directed to him “were for my entire political team: campaign staff (local and international), polling and research, election integrity and television advertising”. Investigators say the money was part of an illegal, undisclosed payment system, the Times reports.
Addressing the allegations, made by The New York Times, Mr Manafort said: “The simplest answer is the truth – I am a campaign professional”.
It is a fact that former president Yanukovych hired Manafort’s firm to improve his offshore relationships with the USA and to safely steer his stance towards Russian Federation, which in the end resulted in the annexation of the Crimean peninsula.
The campaign of Trump’s rival, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, has appeared eager to portray Manafort’s background as evidence of Trump’s pro-Russia ties.
The Republican presidential nominee has made several comments about Russian Federation in recent months that have raised eyebrows. Republicans are no longer so much criticizing the Manafort-led campaign as concluding that there is no presidential campaign, just a series of rallies in front of true believers. More recently, Trump called on Russian Federation to hack Clinton’s emails, a comment he later dismissed as a joke.
Paul Manafort appears on stage ahead of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, June 22, 2016, in NY.
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Trump aired his suspicion last month when he said he would deliberate on recognizing Russia’s appropriation of Crimea.
