Trump Blames FBI for Not Warning Him About Paul Manafort

“[W]e should have been told that Comey and the boys were doing a number on him.”

Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Newscom via ZUMA

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President Donald Trump has been known to boast about only hiring the best people, but in hindsight says he could’ve used some help. On Sunday, Trump complained that the FBI didn’t inform him that his own campaign chairman was under investigation during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump downplayed the role of Paul Manafort, who has been indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller on multiple counts of money laundering, fraud, and conspiracy against the United States, and said “we should have been told that Comey and the boys were doing a number on him.” 

If only there had been some way for the Trump campaign to know that Manafort, a resident of Trump Tower—who’d made his fortune as a political consultant to dictators and had largely been absent from Republican politics for two decades—was involved in some shady business. Like, say, Google.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

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