Donald Trump’s new campaign CEO, who is registered to vote at an empty house in Florida, may be as scandal-plagued as his predecessors.
.. But voting experts point out that there are virtually no documented cases of in-person voter fraud, where someone shows up and votes in someone else’s name. More common are cases where someone is registered at an address where they don’t live—just like Bannon. It’s not altogether uncommon for people to have failed to update old registrations, but it’s particularly embarrassing for Bannon, since he is running a presidential campaign, no less one that is warning about widespread fraud.
.. Not only is the whiff of voter fraud an embarrassing disclosure for a campaign that has railed against it, but the domestic-violence charges make Bannon the latest figure on the Trump campaign embroiled in misogyny and violence.
.. his ex-wife Ivana even alleged marital rape, though she has since withdrawn the claim.
.. Manafort, in turn, was hired as a counterweight to and later a replacement for Corey Lewandowski
.. But Lewandowski was pushed aside and later fired, beset by the campaign’s struggles at winning delegates but also by Lewandowski’s repeated physical altercations on the trail. In the most high-profile case, Lewandowski grabbed then-Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields at a rally in Florida, then denied he had done so. Although a prosecutor declined to bring charges, video evidence showed Lewandowski had lied about the encounter.
Manafort’s man in Kiev
The Trump campaign chairman’s closeness to a Russian Army-trained linguist turned Ukrainian political operative is raising questions, concerns.
In an effort to collect previously undisclosed millions of dollars he’s owed by an oligarch-backed Ukrainian political party, Donald Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been relying on a trusted protégé whose links to Russia and its Ukrainian allies have prompted concerns among Manafort associates, according to people who worked with both men.
.. The protégé, Konstantin Kilimnik, has had conversations with fellow operatives in Kiev about collecting unpaid fees owed to Manafort’s company by a Russia-friendly political party called Opposition Bloc
.. A Russian Army-trained linguist who has told a previous employer of a background with Russian intelligence, Kilimnik started working for Manafort in 2005 when Manafort was representing Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, a gig that morphed into a long-term contract with Viktor Yanukovych, the Kremlin-aligned hard-liner who became president of Ukraine.
.. Trump has demonstrated more interest in Russia’s affairs than in perhaps any other area of foreign policy.
.. It soon became an article of faith in IRI circles that Kilimnik had been in the intelligence service, according to five people who worked in and around the group in Moscow, who said Kilimnik never sought to correct that impression.
.. “It was like ‘Kostya, the guy from the GRU’ — that’s how we talked about him,”
.. The lifestyle was sort of a JV version of the jet-setting existence of his boss, Manafort.
.. A former trucking official who had been convicted and incarcerated as a teenager for serious crimes, Yanukovych had become a popular symbol of the corruption that plagues Ukraine after his team tried to rig the 2004 presidential election.
.. the “Party of Regions is working to change its image from that of a haven for mobsters into that of a legitimate political party. Tapping the deep pockets of [Akhmetov], Regions has hired veteran K Street political help for its ‘extreme makeover’ effort … [Manafort’s firm] is among the political consultants that have been hired to do the nipping and tucking.”
.. “And because Paul doesn’t speak Russian or Ukrainian, he always had to have someone like that with him in meetings, so KK was with him all the time. He was very close to Paul and very trusted.”
.. And, in a Cayman Islands legal filing to recoup Deripaska’s cash, lawyers named Kilimnik as one of seven “key individuals” involved in the partnership along with Manafort, Gates, and a handful of then-associates.
.. Manafort entered into other ventures with other oligarchs, as well. And the operative who worked with Manafort’s team said, “These guys had a lot of stuff going on outside the campaign context, and KK was involved in all of that as well.”
.. Ukraine’s anti-corruption agency obtained documents showing that from 2007 through 2012, Yanukovych’s party had earmarked $12.7 million in off-books cash payments for Manafort, The New York Times revealed this week.
Manafort, who’s been criticized by some former colleagues for prioritizing cash over principles, rejected the report. He asserted in a statement that “the suggestion that I accepted cash payments is unfounded, silly, and nonsensical.”
.. when Manafort traveled to Kiev in 2015 to try to secure the cash he was owed, he was “ambushed” in the lobby of the city’s Hyatt hotel by the landlord for his office demanding back rent.
.. “I always understood that he was in the Russian Army intelligence for a couple years,” said an international political consultant, who has worked with Kilimnik, and who stressed that, at the time, all Russian men were required to serve in the military. But the consultant added, “I don’t think it was as big a deal as people made it out to be.”
.. It’s not like you can say, ‘I used to work for [Russian intelligence].’ It’s a permanent affiliation. There is no such thing as a former [Russian intelligence] officer.”
Inside the fall of Paul Manafort
a string of self-inflicted controversies that were starting to resonate in polls showing him slipping further behind Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, and Manafort warned his boss that things were about to get worse.
.. The stories, Manafort argued to Trump, were being coordinated by Clinton’s allies, and they were going to continue for the remainder of the election cycle as long as Manafort remained at the helm.
.. That’s despite what the associates characterize as Manafort’s growing frustration with Trump’s unwillingness to embrace advice for a more scripted, measured tone and a greater reliance on more traditional campaign tactics.
.. his longtime deputy Rick Gates (who had followed Manafort onto the Trump campaign) had in 2012 secretly steered $2.2 million to a pair of Washington lobbying firms to boost Yanukovych’s pro-Kremlin government in a manner intended to circumvent disclosure requirements.
.. working with a former Russian army linguist allegedly linked to the country’s intelligence service — had continued through late last year to advise the Russia-friendly Ukrainian party that arose from the ashes of Yanukovych’s government.
.. They had pushed to elevate Conway to campaign manager, in part, because Ivanka Trump believed the campaign was too much of an all-boys club to begin with, sources said. Also, she liked the way Conway was able to manage her father.
.. “Kellyanne is not a campaign manager in the traditional sense of the word. She got the title as part of combat pay,” said one source involved with the discussions. “She’s the candidate manager, which considering how tough it is to manage someone like Donald — who has the temperament of a 12-year-old who always gets what he wants — is a far harder job.
.. Family members also were unhappy about changes made to a GOP platform provision that were seen as slighting Ukraine to Russia’s benefit
.. Manafort supporters suggested that they would work to prove that the stories were being fed by Clinton confidant Sid Blumenthal, and allege that the documents released by Ukrainian investigators were fabricated.
.. mainstream Republicans who back Trump’s campaign worry that Manafort’s departure will hurt the nominee with the GOP donor class.
.. Trump has no intention of getting rid of Gates. “Donald accepted Paul’s resignation. He had to. But Donald isn’t stupid. Rick gets shit done,” said the person. “Nobody else gets it done like Rick.”
Paul Manafort Quits Donald Trump’s Campaign After Tumultuous Run
Mr. Manafort was also dogged by reports about secretive efforts he made to help the former pro-Russian government in Ukraine, where he has worked on and off over several years. Those news reports were blotting out much of the press coverage of the candidate this week. And they contributed to Mr. Manafort becoming viewed with trepidation by Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and a major force within the campaign
.. When he joined the campaign, he was seen as a peer to Mr. Trump, 70, and someone whose advice Mr. Trump might heed. In fact, Mr. Manafort had pushed for the selection of Mike Pence, the Republican governor of Indiana, as Mr. Trump’s running mate.
.. Aides have tried a range of efforts to reign in his impulses, including adding different travel companions.
.. After he was hired by Mr. Trump, Mr. Manafort helped quash uprisings among Republican delegates that, even if they wouldn’t imperil Mr. Trump’s ability to get the nomination, would have been an embarrassing distraction at the convention.