The Rise and Fall of Manafort

Source: Time Magazine:

October 31, 2017 at 11:10

President Trump likes to improvise his way out of a mess, but three past improvisations came to a head with Paul Manafort's indictment: His naming of George Papadopoulos as an adviser, his hiring of Manafort as campaign chief and his firing of James Comey

When he is backed into a corner, Donald Trump reflexively tries to improvise his way out of the mess. That may have worked in the rough and tumble world of New York real estate, and it certainly helped him become the first political neophyte to lead a presidential ticket since Dwight D. Eisenhower. But on Monday, a trio of past impromptus resulted in a trifecta of legal worries for the White House.

It started back during the dark days of the presidential campaign. When asked in the spring of 2016 whose voices he was heeding on foreign policy, Trump responded lamely that he listened to himself; to get out of that embarrassing pickle he unveiled a roster of advisers who had undergone only the most basic vetting. A few months later, when his nomination seemed in peril, Trump turned to a longtime acquaintance, Paul Manafort, who owned a condo in Trump Tower and had a political pedigree that peaked in the 1970s and ‘80s, despite Manafort's reputation for representing foreign autocrats. Finally, when Trump was faced with the closing-in federal investigation of potential ties between his campaign and Russians in May 2017, the President fired the FBI director, James Comey.

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