Former president Donald Trump is expected to enlist Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager he pardoned, as a campaign adviser later this year, according to four people familiar with the talks.
The job discussions have largely centered around the 2024 Republican convention in Milwaukee in July and could include Manafort playing a role in fundraising for the presumptive GOP nominee’s campaign, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations. While no formal decision has been made, the four people described the hiring as expected and said Trump was determined to bring Manafort back into the fold.
Manafort worked for Trump in 2016 before being ousted and later convicted of tax and bank fraud felonies as part of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. He served time in prison before receiving a pardon in the final days of Trump’s time in office.
A Trump campaign spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment. Manafort also did not respond to a request for comment.
The hiring of Manafort would likely revive discussion of Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election, which Mueller concluded was “sweeping and systemic.” Mueller also found that Manafort shared internal Trump campaign polling data with a longtime associate who the FBI assessed had ties to Russian intelligence.
A bipartisan Senate committee that investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election concluded that Manafort’s receptivity to Russian outreach was a “grave counterintelligence threat” that had made the 2016 campaign susceptible to “malign Russian influence.”
Read more here from The Washington Post.
