It’s the second high profile departure from the top of Trump’s campaign structure after campaign manager Corey Lewandowski left the operation earlier this summer.
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Leshchenko also said Manafort continued to work in Ukraine after Yanukovych fled and a new pro-European government stepped in and that Manafort consulted the Party of Regions for the 2014 parliamentary election and visited Ukraine previous year.
The campaign for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has spoken of “troubling connections between Donald Trump’s team and pro-Kremlin elements in Ukraine”. The billionaire called Manafort “a true professional”.
“I want to know what money he got from a pro-Russian organization in the Ukraine”, Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Tuesday.
In a statement issued as he arrived in Louisiana to tour the flood-ravaged state, Trump said Manafort offered his resignation Friday morning.
Manafort, as a 26-year-old Republican operative, helped manage the 1976 convention floor for Gerald Ford in his successful showdown with Ronald Reagan. The former party member, Vitaly A. Kalyuzhny, for a time chairman of the Ukraine Parliament’s International Relations Committee, had signed nine times for receipt of payments designated for the Trump campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, according to Serhiy A. Leshchenko, a member of Parliament who has studied the documents.
Manafort has at least one strong New Jersey tie.
There’s no certainty Trump’s shifting strategy can reverse that trend.
Trump initially recruited Manafort, who formerly advised Ukrainian ex-president Viktor Yanukovych and lobbied for foreign dictators, to head off in March what was then a potentially contested Republican convention. His was a vital though unpaid position that Manafort used to steer the campaign over the past several months.
The Trump/Putin love fest is going to continue to be an issue in the presidential campaign, especially because Donald Trump refuses to admit that he has business interests in Russian Federation and Ukraine.
“This morning Paul Manafort offered, and I accepted, his resignation from the campaign”.
Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort announced his resignation today (Friday).
Manafort resigned on Friday.
Some described the shake-up as a demotion for Manafort, though the campaign said he would remain in his role as chairman and chief strategist.
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On Thursday, Trump also took many by surprise in for the first time expressing “regret” for having said “the wrong thing” and causing “personal pain” – apparently alluding to recent missteps – at a campaign rally in Charlotte. “You know, Paul was fantastic”.
