"Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign," tweeted Trump in October 2017. "But why aren't Crooked Hillary & the Democrats the focus????"
Which, until we got a look at the accidentally unredacted material on Tuesday, was true! While you could argue -- and many people have -- that Trump should have done his due diligence on Manafort, who had spent years advising foreign governments, before hiring him to run his campaign in the spring of 2016, it was hard to dispute Trump's main point that any and all wrongdoing by Manafort happened prior to his being involved with Trump.
Except, not now.
Manafort, according to the filings, had conversations with Kilimnik, who is suspected to be a member of the Russian intelligence organization, while he was serving as the head of Trump's campaign. (Manafort's official title was "campaign chairman" but functioned as campaign manager during his time with Trump.) Those conversations apparently came even as Russian officials were hacking into the email servers at the Democratic National Committee -- which led to a series of damaging leaks via the website WikiLeaks later in 2016. -
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/09/politics ... index.html
Let me guess, subs, none of this constitutes evidence for collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. Even though it was the campaign manager who did it. Ya, blame Manafort, and all the "best people" Trump seems to surround himself with.