Former President Donald Trump is expected to bring Paul Manafort, 74, back into the fold, as a campaign adviser later this year.
The Washigton Post reported Monday on the presumptive Republican nominee’s plans, citing four sources close to the former president.
Manafort was Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016 but left in August before the general election after his ties to Russian-backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych exposed Trump’s pro-Russian vulnerabilities.
He was later charged with tax evasion, bank fraud and hiding foreign bank accounts over money he raised working for Yanukovych, which he and his deputy Rick Gates tried to hide from authorities.
Manafort was sentenced to seven years in prison, but was put on house arrest during the COVID-19 pandemic, and then pardoned by Trump in December 2020, when the Republican had less than a month left in office.
Paul Manafort, seen in a January 2022 interview on Fox News Channel, is expected to be hired by former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign into a possible fundraising role
Manafort, Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, was sentenced to seven years in prison over financial crimes discovered as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. Trump pardoned Manafort in 2020, after he had been released on house arrest due to the pandemic
The Post reported that Trump is determined to rehire Manafort due to the ex-aide’s loyalty to the former president – and because Manafort served actual jail time.
Discussions have centered around the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and a potential fundraising role for the campaign.
Trump’s campaign spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment from DailyMail.com.
Bringing Manafort back will renew questions about Trump’s coziness with Russia.
Over the weekend, Trump made headlines when he appeared skeptical that Russian President Vladimir Putin was responsible for the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
‘I don’t know,’ the ex-president said to journalist Howard Kurtz on Fox News’ MediaBuzz. ‘Perhaps. I mean, possibly, I could say probably. I don’t know. He’s a young man, so statistically, he’d be alive for a long time. You go by the insurance numbers, he’d be alive for another 40 years.’
‘Something happened that was unusual,’ Trump added.
When Kurtz pointed out that Navalny had previously been poisoned, Trump also wouldn’t answer in the definitive.
‘I don’t know. You certainly can’t say for sure,’ Trump said.
Those comments were just the latest that showed Trump reluctant to criticize the authoritarian Russian leader.
Manafort’s financial crimes were uncovered during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and whether there was any coordination with the Trump campaign.
The final report found that the Trump campaign welcomed Russian interference ane expected to benefit from it but that there was insufficient evidence on whether there had been collusion.
Trump was never charged with any crimes related to the Mueller report – though his plans to pardon Manafort were included in the section detailing possible examples of obstruction of justice.
Democrats reacted to The Post’s report with glee on Monday.
‘Convicted felon Paul Manafort will fit right in with the C-Team of election deniers, conspiracy theorists, and absolute weirdos that make up Donald Trump’s MAGA takeover of the GOP,’ said the Democratic National Committee’s Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd in a statement.
‘This latest report just confirms that Trump’s soft-on-crime approach for the violent insurrections who stormed the Capitol on January 6 extends to tax cheats and fraudsters as well,’ Floyd continued. ‘Given the RNC’s desperate financial state, we can’t imagine what could go wrong with hiring a convicted con man like Manafort to help run a multimillion-dollar convention.’