Breaking Manafort Scandals Reveal the Rot at the Heart of the Trump Campaign; Russia Wins
Nine months after Paul Manafort’s ouster as Donald Trump’s campaign chief and almost a half year after the elections, Kiev is once again the locus of accusations and suspicions in the evolving scandal over the Trump administration’s possible collusion with Russian authorities. A pair of newly minted and linked scandals involving Manafort broke out this week, exponentially compounding the Trump administration’s Russia-related problems and further complicating relations between Washington, Kiev, and Moscow. White House spokesman Sean Spicer was forced to deny that Manafort had ever done anything important or had much to do with Trump’s presidential campaign, which he headed in the run-up to the Republican National Convention.
On Friday, Manafort volunteered to be interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee’s inquiry into allegations of connections between members of the Trump campaign team and Russia. He was likely cornered into having done so by the threat of a subpoena, which would have compelled him to testify. His testimony will come in the wake of FBI Director James Comey’s submission to Congress that the FBI had found evidence of contacts between the Trump campaign and individuals linked to the Russian state. Comey has declined to specify whether Manafort was a target of the FBI’s investigation.