Sometime in January, an outreach consultant for the Democratic National Committee warns the DNC that, if her suspicions of Russian influence in the Trump campaign are true, they’ll be hearing the name “Paul Manafort” soon.
In 2014, Alexandra Chalupa was researching the Ukrainian crisis for a client when she first heard about Paul Manafort and his involvement in the events in Ukraine, including ties to the Russian oligarch’s that funded his boss’s political takeover.
In 2015, she began to notice similarities to her research within the Trump campaign. In her free time, she started researching Trump’s ties to Russia. While she wasn’t sharing her research or her contacts with the DNC, she occasionally mentioned things that felt concerning.
Which brings us to January 2016.
Chalupa told a senior DNC official that, when it came to Trump’s campaign, “I felt there was a Russia connection,” Chalupa recalled. “And that, if there was, that we can expect Paul Manafort to be involved in this election,” said Chalupa, who at the time also was warning leaders in the Ukrainian-American community that Manafort was “Putin’s political brain for manipulating U.S. foreign policy and elections.”
Politico
Two months later, Paul Manafort officially joins the Trump campaign.
Additional Info: Chalupa’s role as a DNC contractor and former staffer was focused on mobilizing ethnic communities. She received less than $35,000 on average each year for her DNC work between 2004 and 2012.
Source
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446
Photo: Gage Skidmore
