Paul Manafort (1 April 1949-) was the national chairman of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and an adviser to the campaigns of Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bob Dole. During his long career in politics, he also worked as an adviser to Ukrainian dictator Viktor Yanukovych, UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.
Biography[]
Paul Manafort was born on 1 April 1949 in New Britain, Connecticut, United States, the son of the former Mayor of New Britain and former US Army soldier and a mother of Italian descent. From 1977 to 1980, he practiced law in Washington DC after attending Georgetown University, and he became a political activist for the US Republican Party around the same time. He worked on the campaigns of Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bob Dole as an adviser, and he also worked overseas, being paid $700,000 by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence for a disinformation campaign against India and promoting Viktor Yanukovych's Party of Regions in Ukraine. In 2016, he became the national chairman of the Donald Trump campaign, a controversial move due to his association with the Ukrainian dictator. On 19 August 2016, he resigned as campaign chairman after several disasters for Trump's public relations, including his encouragement of gun violence against Hilary Clinton and/or Supreme Court justices and his insistence that Barack Obama was literally "the founder of ISIS" (refusing to reword it, even when asked by conservative commentators about what he meant). It was later discovered that he had played a role in working with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, and he surrendered to the FBI on 30 October 2017 during the FBI's investigation into conspiracy, money laundering, and failure to register as foreign agents. Manafort and Rick Gates were both investigated by special prosecutor Robert Mueller for their roles in assisting Russian interference in the American democratic process.