Manafort has come under scrutiny over his work with pro-Russian political groups in Ukraine.
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Trump’s newly hired campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said the decision was mutual.
The Associated Press reported Thursday that Manafort’s firm orchestrated a covert Washington lobbying operation on behalf of Ukraine’s then-ruling political party. “You can get rid of Manafort, but that doesn’t end the odd bromance Trump has with Putin”.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
“Paul Manafort’s resignation is a clear admission that the disturbing connections between Donald Trump’s team and pro-Kremlin elements in Russian Federation and Ukraine are untenable”, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said in a statement.
“Manafort’s resignation is a clear admission that the disturbing connections between Donald Trump’s team and pro-Kremlin elements in Russian Federation and Ukraine are untenable”, Robby Mook, campaign manager of Clinton Campaign, said on Friday.
Trump’s son Eric, meanwhile, told Fox News that Manafort “was unbelievable”, but his father didn’t want to be “distracted by whatever things Paul was dealing with”.
In recent days, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had been searching for someone to join the campaign whom both he and Trump could agree was trustworthy, according to a campaign source.
Manafort installed many of his associates in the upper echelons of the campaign, signaled his support for an allied super PAC and crushed attempts to embarrass Trump at the Republican convention in Cleveland.
After the staff change, The New York Times reported that Manafort wrote in an internal staff memo: “This is an exciting day for Team Trump”. The alleged payments, which Manafort denied, were noted in a ledger kept by former Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych’s political party.
News reports indicate that Trump was very angry when he heard of the allegations against Manafort.
Trump said Thursday night that, if elected, he will ask senior officials in his administration not to accept speaking fees, for five years after leaving office, from corporations that lobby “or from any entity tied to a foreign government”.
Although the hiring of Bannon was taken as a signal that Trump would not hold back in his aggressive, unorthodox campaign manner, Trump offered rare words of regret on Thursday for causing offense with his take-no-prisoners style. If the Trump campaign thought that pushing Manafort out the door, which is what they did, would solve their problems, they are badly mistaken.
Although Manafort was credited with a small string of victories and helped guide Trump through the end of a long primary, he was unable to rein in the mercurial and outspoken Republican candidate during two months that saw Trump lose his post-convention polling bump and sink in the polls behind his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.
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Manafort and Gates have previously said they were not doing work that required them to register.
