The following is according to a New York Times article that claims 2016 is the first time Donald Trump and Paul Manafort were ever close. It wasn’t. The primary source for the article is Jason Maloni, Manafort’s spokesperson. He likely provided many other misleading details, as well.
Maggie Haberman, a close friend of Manafort associate Roger Stone, also contributed to the reporting. The end result is a dysfunctional report. Trump File can’t guarantee the authenticity of this timeline of events but will update when more information turns up in our research.
Sometime in mid-February, Trump/Epstein friend Tom Barrack and Putin-sponsored political chaos agent Paul Manafort are having “coffee and snacks” in Beverly Hills when Barrack says the Trump campaign is in some trouble.
The primaries are looking like a win for Donald Trump, but the candidate is “deeply worried about an establishment-strikes-back scenario” in which his luck would end at the Republican convention. Barrack thinks Manafort might be able to help.
In the two weeks that follow, Manafort sends Barrack two memos as a pitch for Donald Trump. They tout his overseas work (which included installing Putin’s candidate in Ukraine) as proof that he’s not a Washington establishment elite like the campaign officials others candidates rely on. The biggest selling point, though, is that Manafort doesn’t want any pay for his work on the campaign.
Barrack forwards the documents to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, and he adds a cover letter in which he describes Manafort as “the most experienced and lethal of managers” and “a killer.” Ivanka prints the documents and brings them to her father.
It is unclear if Donald Trump receives the letter and memos before February 29. If so, the following details from the New York Times are in regards to an in-person pitch from Manafort on that day. If not, the following details are more information about the memos.
Mr. Manafort made a good first impression. Mr. Trump, several aides said, reacted favorably to Mr. Manafort’s initial pitch and his experience, and he also remarked on Mr. Manafort’s tanned, no-hair-out-of-place appearance — telling staffers that his new associate looked much younger than a man in his late 60s.
In five single-spaced pages of punchy talking points, Mr. Manafort showed how as a onetime lobbyist he had adeptly won over rich and powerful business and political leaders, many of them oligarchs or dictators, in Russia, Ukraine, the Philippines and Pakistan.
He began by telling the candidate he lived on an upper floor of Trump Tower. This was no trivial point: It signaled his wealth and a willingness to work 15-hour days in a building that housed both his lavish apartment and Mr. Trump’s bare-bones campaign. It also meant Mr. Manafort had already put his money — in the form of an apartment purchase — into Mr. Trump’s brand, which meant a lot to the candidate, a transactional developer and politician, aides said….
Regarding politics, Mr. Manafort cast himself as a onetime insider who had turned on the establishment — and a tough guy who would go after Mr. Trump’s harshest critics among the Republican elite.
Mr. Manafort also cast himself as a warrior against the party’s conservatives, even at a time when Mr. Trump was reaching out to the right wing and courting evangelical Christians. Speaking of his previous experience as a convention manager for several Republican presidential candidates, Mr. Manafort wrote, “I have had to confront the Extreme Right, Tea Party, Rush Limbaughs etc.”
The New York Times
External Sources
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