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Why Further Revelations on Trump's Russian Connections Might Fail to Bring Him Down

Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was heavily involved in working for a Russian oligarch, and for the government of Vladimir Putin
about ten years ago, according to an Associated Press report that was released on Wednesday. The report details how Manafort received $10 million from Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska who is also a close ally of Vladimir Putin's. Now, in exchange, Manafort is said to have helped Deripaska obtain visas to the U.S. and worked on a plan to promote Russian interests in the former So,viet republics. White House spokesperson Sean Spicer responded to the AP report by saying that Manafort's links to Russia are decades old and have nothing to do with his brief service as Trump's campaign manager. Joining us to talk about this latest development is James Henry. James is a leading economist, attorney and investigative journalist who has been investigating Donald Trump's economic ties to Russian oligarchs. James, we appreciate you joining us. Thank you so much for being here. JAMES HENRY: Good to be with you. KIM BROWN: What is the significance of this latest AP report because we already knew that Manafort was tied to the former pro-Russian government of the Ukraine, which is why he was removed as Trump's campaign manager, so what is new about this latest report from AP? JAMES HENRY: Well, here we have the second one of two campaign managers... I mean, Manafort was Trump's campaign manager and he was a significant player, not just a minor figure in the Trump campaign up until his dismissal last summer. And then his business partner, Rick Davis, was John McCain's campaign manager back in 2008. So, here we have two Republican presidential campaign managers in a row here, that, except for Romney, that were, turns out, both of them were on the take from not just a Ukrainian oligarch that nobody's ever heard of, or president of the Ukraine, but someone who was very close to President Putin, very wealthy Russian oligarch. Deripaska is his name. And this is a fellow that Paul Manafort was reportedly taking $10 million per year from 2006 to 2009, after having proposed in June of 2005 to help Russia really combat its bad image around the planet. And, you know, proposing really, to help run a PR campaign effectively on behalf of President Putin. So, I think, you know, the FBI is going to have to examine this fellow very closely. But what I know about Deripaska is from another case that I've studied, which is that involving Bobby Levinson who has disappeared in Iran about ten years ago. It turns out that when the FBI was looking for him, they turned to Deripaska to try to find him. And Deripaska is a very well connected guy in the sense of lots of Mafia-type connections, and he actually turned to some Canadian business associates and was working for a while with the FBI in order to get these visas that Manafort apparently was involved in getting for him. He was trying to locate Bobby Levinson in Iran based on his connections in Iran. So, what I want to know from Manafort is were you involved in basically the search for Bobby Levinson? And, by the way, why do the FBI turn to someone with such peculiar connections when we know that Levinson was one of the leading experts in the United States on Russian organized crime, and none of the people around Deripaska or Putin would've had any love lost for Bobby Levinson.
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