Trump's Former Campaign Manager Paul Manafort To Register As Foreign Agent

Days after he was essentially replaced by Steve Bannon last August, Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort stepped down amid reports that he failed to properly disclose his his work for former Ukranian president Viktor Yanukovych to the us government, which is illegal.

Manafort is the second Trump campaign adviser to have to register as a foreign agent since the election. The spokesperson also implied that the Manafort's lobbying efforts were not at the behest of the Russian government and that those efforts took place before his involvement with the Trump campaign.

For almost a decade, Manafort advised Yanukovych, who was elected president in 2010 but fled to Moscow four years later after demonstrations demanding his ouster.

And the Podesta Group, a Washington lobbying firm that worked with Manafort, filed paperwork Wednesday to register as a foreign agent, acknowledging that work Manafort reportedly oversaw could have benefitted the Ukrainian government.

Manafort resigned as campaign manager in August 2016 amid a shakeup in the campaign staff of Donald Trump, who won the United States presidency three months later.

UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST: Donald Trump's campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, is out of a job. One of his major clients in recent years had been the Russia-friendly Ukrainian political party whose ouster from power set off the Russian invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine. The lobbying firm, run by the brother of Hillary Clinton presidential campaign chairman John Podesta, reported in its filing that it was paid more than $1.2 million for its efforts. He will register with the Justice Department as a foreign agent for his Ukraine work. It also underscores the legal pressure on Manafort, who faces FBI, Justice Department and Treasury Department investigations, sources have told McClatchy.

They also shine a light on the rich real estate portfolio that Mr. Manafort acquired during and after the years he worked in Ukraine.

"Mr. Manafort received formal guidance recently from the authorities and he is taking appropriate steps in response to the guidance", the statement said. But in a statement to the AP Manfort said that "any wire transactions received by my company are legitimate payments for political consulting work" and that these were paid "via wire transfer" rather than the cash payments suggested in the ledger. "On the face of his own words, the payments were not "cash" and were not 'illegal'". Meanwhile former Trump adviser Carter Page has denied he himself served as a foreign agent, following reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation obtained a warrant to monitor him during the campaign. Manafort declined to comment to NPR, saying only that he hopes Ukrainian investigators will look into an apparent attempt to blackmail him with compromising material.