Manafort tied to undisclosed foreign lobbying

His ties with the former Ukrainian leader are under scrutiny as Mr Trump defends Russian President Vladimir Putin as a strong leader and calls for a reset in ties with Moscow.

Paul Manafort is becoming an outsized liability within the #Donald Trump campaign for president, as more news leaks out in drips.

The AP report suggests that the lobbyists may have violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a federal law which requires American firms working on behalf of entities controlled by foreign governments to register with the Justice Department.

Skirting this regulation could result in a prison sentence of up to five years and a $250,000 fine.

Trump’s campaign on Wednesday announced a staff shake-up replacing Manafort as campaign manager after just two months. Manafort, who took over the campaign chairman position following the departure of Corey Lewandowski in June, will maintain his current title. Not that the Trump campaign doesn’t have its share of liabilities.

The money came from the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, a nonprofit “governed by a board that initially included parliament members” from the ruling Party of Regions, according to AP.

The group paid at least $2.2 million to the Washington firms to push positions favorable to the party from 2012 until 2014, when Yanukovych was ousted and fled to Russian Federation, the AP said, citing sources.

The lobbying firms continued the work until shortly after Yanukovych fled the country in February 2014, during a popular revolt prompted in part by his government’s crackdown on protesters and close ties to Russian Federation.

An anonymous former employee of the Podesta Group alleged that Gates himself had explained in April 2012 that the nonprofit was a means of dispersing money in lobbying efforts for the Yanukovych government without accountability.

Gates, who also works for the Trump campaign, told the AP his actions were lawful.

Representatives for Trump and Mercury did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Clinton’s campaign has said Manafort’s associations are a troubling sign of ties between Trump’s campaign team and pro-Kremlin elements in Ukraine. “It paints a very disturbing picture and I think the voters need to pay a lot of attention to that”.

The campaign of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, slammed the Trump campaign’s perceived cozying up to Russian Federation in a conference call Wednesday. The head of Mercury, Vin Weber, is an influential Republican, former congressman and former special policy adviser to Mitt Romney.

After being introduced to the lobbying firms, the European nonprofit paid the Podesta Group $1.13 million between June 2012 and April 2014 to lobby Congress, the White House National Security Council, the State Department and other federal agencies, according to USA lobbying records.

In a 40-year career he advised the Republican presidential campaigns of Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole; he or his firms, such as the now defunct Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly, have been paid millions to lobby for or burnish the reputations of foreign clients.

Mr Manafort’s Ukraine connections were highlighted at last month’s Republican convention, when the platform committee weakened language that would have called for United States military support of Ukraine.

The Times of London reported on a memo that was said to reveal Paul Manafort’s involvement in the campaign to win support for the eventual annexation of the Crimean peninsula, which happened in 2014. Podesta, who said the project was vetted by his firm’s counsel, said he was unaware of any such disagreements.

Podesta told the AP his firm worked closely with the nonprofit and with Gates simultaneously.

The memo from the prosecutor said: “It was his political effort to raise the prestige of Yanukovych and his party – the confrontation and division of society on ethnic and linguistic grounds is his trick from the time of the elections in Angola and the Philippines”. John Podesta has not been with the firm for several years, but his brother is its chairman. “Our assumption was that he was working for the Centre, as we were hired to do”.

Both Mercury and the Podesta Group told the AP that their work with the European Centre was legal. She said she had met with Manafort twice but said neither Manafort nor Gates played a role in its lobbying activities.

However, they were told by lawyers that disclosure to the Justice Department was not required because they had been assured by the centre that it had no links to Ukraine’s government or political parties.

Lobbying records filed in the U.S. Senate, in contrast, such as the ones describing payments to the Podesta Group and Mercury by the European Centre, are far less detailed.