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Trump Campaign Chair Directly Linked to Pro-Kremlin Lobbying Effort

Mr. Manafort’s work overseas has raised questions about whether he might be channeling into the Trump campaign some kind of influence from Russian Federation and Mr. Putin.

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On Aug. 16, the Trump campaign announced that it would be making two new dramatic hires: Breitbart News CEO Stephen Bannon as the campaign chief executive and GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway as campaign manager, The Washington Post reports.

He has become the public face of the most controversial U.S. presidential campaign in living memory: a professional spokesman who never strays off message as he bats aside allegations of a campaign in disarray or a candidate going off the rails.

The AP report casts a bright spotlight on Manafort, at a time when Donald Trump is under attack for his friendly overtures to Russian strongman and dictator, Vladimir Putin.

After being introduced to the lobbying firms, the European nonprofit paid the Podesta Group $1.13 million between June 2012 and April 2014 to lobby Congress, the White House National Security Council, the State Department and other federal agencies, according to USA lobbying records. Gates noted in the emails that the official, Ukraine’s foreign minister, did not want to use his own embassy in the United States to help coordinate the visits. The disclosure reports also provide more information about the underlying lobbying activities.

And Gates directed efforts to undercut sympathy for Yulia Tymoshenko, an imprisoned rival of then-President Viktor Yanukovych. The Ukrainian leader eventually fled the country in February 2014 during a popular revolt prompted in part by his government’s crackdown on protesters and close ties to Russian Federation.

One former Podesta employee, speaking on condition of anonymity because of a non-disclosure agreement, said Gates described the nonprofit’s role in an April, 2012 meeting as supplying a source of money that could not be traced to the Ukrainian politicians who were paying him and Manafort.

The series of transfers, totaling approximately $12.7 million, list Manafort as the recipient. Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau said, however, that it can not prove that Manafort actually received the money because other people including a prominent Party of the Regions deputy signed for him in those entries. But Vin Weber, a partner at Mercury LLC., told the AP that he and Podesta had a conference call with Manafort to discuss the massive lobbying outlay before the project kicked off.

Donald Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort reportedly helped route more than $1 million in secret from a pro-Russian group in Ukraine to a Washington D.C. lobbying firm co-founded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. “While I was in the Crimea I constantly saw evidence suggesting that Paul Manafort considered autonomy [from Ukraine] as a tool to enhance the reputation of Yanukovych and win over the local electorate”. McSherry did not respond to BuzzFeed News requests for comment.

Manafort has also been accused of accepting payments from the Yanukovych regime without disclosing them to the U.S. government, which would be illegal.

Podesta told the AP his firm worked closely with the nonprofit and with Gates simultaneously.

Neither the firms nor Manafort filed documents with the Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, despite the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine’s close ties to a foreign political leader and Manafort’s work for Yanukovych’s party.

Skirting this regulation could result in a prison sentence of up to five years and a $250,000 fine. His legal opinion, which was also used by the Podesta Group, was based on the Centre’s promise, in writing, that they were not backed by a foreign government or political leader. None of the firms, nor Manafort or Gates, disclosed their work to the Justice Department counterespionage division responsible for tracking the lobbying of foreign governments.

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The Podesta Group received $1.13 million of the European Centre’s $2.2 million outlay.

Trump campaign chief 'helped pro-Russians in Ukraine move money to US lobbying firms'