Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s controversial former campaign chairman, just can’t seem to stay out of the headlines.
For example, there was the recent story about Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigating possible money laundering by Paul Manafort, which came on the heels of coverage of Manafort’s bank accounts in the secretive tax haven of Cyprus, which followed reports on Manafort filing reports with the Justice Department showing that “his lobbying firm earned nearly $17 million for two years of work for a Ukrainian political party with links to the Kremlin.”
There was also the infamous meeting at Trump Tower last summer with a Kremlin-linked lawyer offering campaign assistance from the Russian government — a chat Manafort participated in.
Oh, and then there’s the FBI raiding Manafort’s DC-area home.
FBI agents raided the Alexandria home of President Trump’s former campaign chairman late last month, using a search warrant to seize documents and other materials, according to people familiar with the special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
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Federal agents appeared at Paul Manafort’s home without advance warning in the predawn hours of July 26, the day after he met voluntarily with the staff for the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The Washington Post‘s report on the raid added that the FBI agents, acting on a wide-ranging search warrant, were working with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and “departed the home with various records.”
What’s more, the Post‘s scoop follows a separate story, which Rachel highlighted last night, from Bloomberg Politics, which added:
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, his son Donald Trump Jr. and former campaign manager Paul Manafort have started turning over documents to the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of the panel’s expanded investigation of Russian election-meddling.
The Trump campaign turned over about 20,000 pages of documents on Aug. 2, committee spokesman George Hartmann said Tuesday. Manafort provided about 400 pages on Aug. 2, including his foreign-advocacy filing, while Trump Jr. gave about 250 pages on Aug. 4, Hartmann said. The committee had asked them last month to start producing the documents by Aug. 2.
I have a hunch you’ll be hearing more about these developments on tonight’s show.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
