The Rise and Fall of Manafort

It started back during the dark days of the presidential campaign. When asked in the spring of 2016 whose voices he was heeding on foreign policy, Trump responded lamely that he listened to himself; to get out of that embarrassing pickle he unveiled a roster of advisers who had undergone only the most basic vetting. A few months later, when his nomination seemed in peril, Trump turned to a longtime acquaintance, Paul Manafort, who owned a condo in Trump Tower and had a political pedigree that peaked in the 1970s and ‘80s, despite Manafort's reputation for representing foreign autocrats. Finally, when Trump was faced with the closing-in federal investigation of potential ties between his campaign and Russians in May 2017, the President fired the FBI director, James Comey.

Read More (...)