Manafort’s role in the Trump campaign was marginalized earlier this week with the hiring of Brietbart News chairman Steve Bannon, who is now CEO of the campaign, and the promotion of Kellyanne Conway, who is now the campaign manager.
Advertisement
In a statement Friday morning, Trump said that Manafort offered his resignation.
Lewandowski could not immediately be reached for comment, but said on CNN that Manafort is “a true professional” and he wishes him the “absolute very best”.
The Associated Press also reported that Manafort “helped a pro-Russian governing party in Ukraine secretly route at least $2.2 million in payments to two prominent Washington lobbying firms in 2012, and did so in a way that effectively obscured the foreign political party’s efforts to influence USA policy”.
Ukrainian anti-corruption bureau head Artem Sytnyk said on Monday there’s no direct proof so far that Manafort received the money, which included repayment for expenses and payments for exit polls and foreign observers, and that the investigation is continuing.
In terms of what she’ll be doing on the campaign, reporters can probably expect to see a lot of Conway on the trail with Trump.
But the campaign message could be returning to the Corey Lewandowski school of “Let Trump be Trump”.
The New York businessman’s campaign reserved television ad space over the coming 10 days in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to Kantar Media’s political ad tracker. When Trump elevated Conway and Bannon, the campaign insisted that it was not a shake-up but a natural expansion in the final stretch of the election. But Manafort indicated he would remain in his post, writing in a staff memo that he remained “the Campaign Chairman and Chief Strategist, providing the big-picture, long-range campaign vision and working with all of you to implement our strategy that will guide us to victory in November”.
It had marked Manafort’s first return to top-level Republican politics in 20 years – having been reportedly passed over in 2008 by John McCain, who was allegedly alarmed in part over his ties to Yanukovych. And I do regret it, particularly where it may have caused personal pain. But Trump felt stifled and struggled under Manafort. The conservative Breitbart figure has been a cheerleader for Trump’s campaign for months and was critical of Republican leaders, including Ryan. Khizr Khan, the father of Army Capt. Humayun Khan, who died in Iraq in 2004, had criticized Trump at the Democratic National Convention last month. Trump also prolonged an endorsement of House Speaker Paul Ryan and praised his primary challenger.
Earlier this week, Trump brought in a new campaign chief executive and campaign manager following a disastrous stretch in which the New Yorker committed a series of errors and fell behind Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in both national and battleground state preference polls.
Trump’s son, Eric Trump, told Fox News in an interview that will air Sunday that his father anxious questions about Manafort’s past were taking attention away from the billionaire’s presidential bid.
Advertisement
“The riots and destruction that have taken place in Milwaukee is an assault on the right of all citizens to live in security and to live in peace”, he said.
