Steve Benen is a producer for 'The Rachel Maddow Show,' the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of 'The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics.'
When Paul Manafort was brought up on federal criminal charges exactly seven years ago this week, Donald Trump did what he always does when someone close to him runs into trouble: He pretended to barely know Manafort. Indeed, the Trump White House at the time described him as a random staffer “who played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time” on the Republican’s 2016 campaign. It was, at the time, a difficult claim to take seriously.
He even served some time in federal prison — right up until Trump pardoned him shortly before Christmas 2020, rewarding his former aide for failing to cooperate with law enforcement. Just as notably, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that Manafort “represented a grave counterintelligence threat” in 2016 due to his relationship with a Russian intelligence officer.
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