It has not been a good week for the Trump administration or Paul Manafort.
The Washington Post has published an AP report that a Ukrainian documents show Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman "laundered payments from the party of a disgraced ex-leader of Ukraine using offshore accounts in Belize and Kyrgyzstan."
Today, the AP reports that Paul Manafort, who constantly claimed he never worked for the interests of the Russian government, "secretly worked for a Russian billionaire to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin a decade ago and proposed an ambitious political strategy to undermine anti-Russian opposition across former Soviet republics."
The White House has refused comment:
NBC's Peter Alexander recapped the article on The Today Show this morning and said, "The Associated Press is reporting president Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, secretly worked for Russia billionaire to advance the interests of Russian president Vladimir Putin about a decade ago."
Peter continued, "The report appears to contradict assertions from the Trump administration - I spoke to press secretary Sean Spicer. He told me, quote, 'it would be inappropriate to comment on a person who is not a White House official.'
Wow. On Monday, after James Comey testified to the House Intel Committee, Spicer tried to downplay the important role Manafort had with Trump for about 5 months and claimed that Paul "played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time," which created a very testy exchange with ABC's Jonathan Karl.
Now, Spicer is clamming up completely.
I imagine Trump will task Rep. Nunes to investigate all those leaks coming out of the Ukraine and Russia!