Posted on 04/21/2016 11:39:17 AM PDT by conservativejoy
New convention chief Paul Manafort has recruited veterans of his lobbying firm to help Trump's effort.
Donald Trump’s new chief campaign strategist, Paul Manafort, is bringing on some close associates for key spots on Trump's presidential campaign, including several whose lobbying histories seem to epitomize the special-interest influence against which the candidate rails.
Among the influence industry veterans who have been helping the campaign in recent weeks, according to sources close to the Trump campaign, are Laurance Gay, who worked with Manafort on an effort to obtain a federal grant that one congressman called a “very smelly, sleazy business,” and Doug Davenport, whose firm’s lobbying for an oppressive Southeast Asian regime became a liability for John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.
The pair join another former Manafort lobbying partner named Rick Gates, who was identified as an agent of a Ukrainian oligarch in a 2011 racketeering lawsuit that also named Manafort. And Manafort this week met with Marc Palazzo, a former lobbyist for a Koch Industries subsidiary who used to work as a communications staffer for GTECH Corp., the controversial lottery operator, to which Gay, Davenport, Gates and Manafort all have ties.
It's not clear whether the people who recently started advising the campaign are working as staff, consultants or volunteers. But what unites almost all of them is a professional connection to Manafort, 67, a veteran GOP operative who was hired by Trump late last month to professionalize his campaign.
For the first 10 months of his candidacy, the billionaire real estate showman relied on a relatively inexperienced skeleton staff that helped elevate him from quirky political sideshow to a candidate on the verge of the GOP presidential nomination. But that core team, led by campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, was seen as unable to take Trump all the way, so the candidate handed the keys to Manafort, who has moved quickly to consolidate power on the campaign.
Manafort has made a decades-long career drifting between GOP presidential politics and lucrative lobbying and consulting work. The firm he helped found developed a niche representing a roster of controversial international clients that has been described as “the torturers’ lobby.” Clients included Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko, Angolan guerrilla Jonas Savimbi, a group accused of being a front for Pakistani intelligence, and — most recently — ousted Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. In fact, the last time Manafort was intricately involved in a presidential campaign was Bob Dole’s unsuccessful 1996 bid, and he has been largely absent from GOP politics and Washington for years.
Manafort’s recent additions to the Trump campaign have prompted incredulous reactions among Lewandowski’s loyalists on the campaign, who have privately questioned whether Manafort understands modern presidential politics, said one operative who works with the Trump campaign.
“They said that they were going to bring in a new campaign team, but Manafort has been out of the game for so long,” said the operative. “He doesn’t have any current connections, so he’s just bringing in all his old lobbyist friends.”
It's an odd fit for a campaign based in large part on Trump's broadsides against Washington special interests and their lobbying corps, which Trump alleges have skewed the political process against the interests of regular people. Those lobbyists, he argues, are backing his opponents out of self-interest.
Two months after launching his campaign last year, Trump boasted on CBS’ "Face the Nation": "I don't want lobbyists. I don't want special interests,” adding that he "turned down $5 million last week from a very important lobbyist, because there are total strings attached to a thing like that. He's going to come to me in a year or two years and he's going to want something for a country that he represents or for a company that he represents.”
Manafort did not respond to questions about whether his own lobbying background or those of his new advisers would undermine Trump’s message, or whether his new team had the experience to run a presidential campaign in 2016.
Palazzo, who worked with Manafort on one of Ed DiPrete’s successful Rhode Island gubernatorial campaigns in the 1980s, rejected the idea that bringing on lobbyists without recent presidential campaign experience would hurt more than help.
“I’ve known Paul Manafort for many, many years. I have great respect for him, and am confident in his ability to help Mr. Trump win the nomination,” said Palazzo, 56. He met with Manafort at the campaign’s Manhattan headquarters this week to talk about the campaign but said he is “not going to assume an official role with the campaign.”
Gay, 63, Davenport, 44, and Gates, 43, did not respond to messages seeking comment about their roles with the campaign or their lobbying work.
It’s not immediately evident whether Gay, who is based in Connecticut, has worked on a presidential campaign in recent decades. But he has been on the ground in California and has met with Trump’s state director Tim Clark, according to the operative who works with the Trump campaign. The operative said that Gay has had discussions about the campaign’s plans to spend heavily in the run-up to California's primary on June 7 — the last day of voting — which in all likelihood will determine whether Trump reaches the 1,237-delegate threshold necessary to secure the GOP nomination before the convention.
Gates, who boasts in an online bio that he “has worked on several US presidential campaigns and has participated in many international political campaigns in Europe and Africa,” took over some of the duties of Lewandowski's deputy Michael Glassner, according to multiple campaign sources.
“He was coordinating nuts and bolts kind of stuff with the staff on the ground, trying to make sure we had the right people in place, and interviewing potential hires,” said a campaign insider. The insider said that some of those operational duties were inherited by Rick Wiley, who Manafort hired to be national political director. Wiley appears to be the only Manafort hire so far with recent high-level presidential campaign experience, though Wiley’s stewardship of Scott Walker’s underperforming presidential campaign was widely panned. The Wisconsin governor entered the race as an establishment favorite and was the beneficiary of $32 million in campaign and super PAC cash, but his campaign was seen as poorly managed, and he dropped out after plummeting in the polls.
Multiple campaign sources said that Davenport, who first worked with Manafort many years ago, is helping lead the campaign’s strategy for courting individual delegates, assembling what’s known as the delegate “book.” That will be a critical job, since those individual delegates could decide the GOP nomination at the party’s July convention if Trump fails to reach 1,237 delegates on or by June 7.
While Davenport has been involved in past conventions, his role was at least partly that of a lobbyist planning corporate events. His last high-level presidential campaign experience appears to have come in 2008, when he was a regional campaign manager for McCain. He stepped aside after it was revealed that the lobbying and public relations firm for which he worked, DCI Group, had previously been on retainer for the repressive military regime in Myanmar, then known as Burma.
Davenport is currently lobbying for DCI on behalf of hedge funds that hold Puerto Rico’s debt and don’t want Congress to approve a restructuring plan, according to lobbying disclosure records. The investors’ aggressive tactics — running attack ads in lawmakers’ home districts — have rankled some Congress members and other bondholders. He also lobbied for forcing Argentina to pay back U.S. investors in its own recent debt dispute. At least one of the hedge funds hounding Argentina is also involved in Puerto Rico.
And Davenport has lobbied since at least 2001 for GTECH, which dominated the state lottery equipment business but also came under legal scrutiny for its business practices. Its founder, Guy Snowden, resigned in 1998 after a London jury convicted him of attempted bribery, and GTECH last year was absorbed by slot machine maker IGT.
Gates and Gay also lobbied and worked for GTECH, which was represented by Manafort’s lobbying firm in the late 1990s — around the time Palazzo served as GTECH’s director of communications. He called Davenport and Gay “good friends and talented professionals.”
Gay led the company’s government relations and sales between 1994 and 1998. After leaving the company with a reported $4.5 million golden parachute, Gay registered to lobby in Connecticut for the casino-owning Mashantucket Pequot Indians and mall developer Westfield.
Gay and Gates also worked together at Gay’s Hartford, Connecticut-based firm Business Strategies and Insight LLC. In the early '00s, they registered to lobby Congress on behalf of Xavier Chemical Co., a Georgia firm that was locked in a dispute with the U.S. Army about a federal contract to operate a former ammunition plant.
More recently, Gates represented the American Stock Exchange and VILF Consultants, a Virgin Islands company lobbying on the territory’s infrastructure. Gates was named in a racketeering lawsuit brought in U.S. federal court by former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko against Manafort and his associates for their work for pro-Russian strongman Yanukovych. The complaint, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, describes Gates as an agent of Ukrainian gas oligarch Dmytro Firtash, who Tymoshenko accuses of improperly shielding profits. (A judge dismissed the suit, ruling it fell outside U.S. jurisdiction.)
Gay also found himself in the hot seat over his work with Manafort after joining his firm in the 1980s from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where he had been an official.
Manafort had been a partner in a venture to redevelop a housing project in New Jersey, and he paid his own lobbying firm to help win $31 million in HUD subsidies. Gay was the go-between between the firm, Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, and HUD. A congressional investigation found the facilities lacked laundry machines, gutters or downspouts, and the HUD official who Gay had lobbied was later convicted of conspiracy to defraud the government.
While Manafort and Gay were never charged, Manafort was called to testify about the matter in the late 1980s before the House Government Operations Subcommittee on Employment and Housing.
"The technical term for what we do — and law firms, associations and professional groups do — is lobby," Manafort told the committee at the time. "For the purposes of today, I will stipulate that, in a narrow sense, some people may term it influence-peddling."
So according to you, Cruz never contributed to the Senate fund?
Cruz didn’t lift a finger to help McDaniel during the runoff. That is a fact.
I already told you my terms. If McConnell’s PAC gives a huge donation to Trump, and if Trump’s bundlers climb into bed with McConnell’s PAC, I will withdraw my support.
Are you a troll? Otherwise, why are you ignoring what I post? How many times do I have to lay out these terms? For rational people, once would be enough. For trolls a thousand times wouldn’t suffice.
The RNC and many of the state GOPe are Cruz’s ground game. Trump has to pay for his because the GOPe is actively working against him and for Cruz.
Get back to me when Ryan, Priebus and McConnell start helping Trump, or at least allow him a level playing field, instead of actively working for Cruz against Trump.
Difference with Trump is he pays the lobbyists the lobbyist are not paying him!!!! YUGE difference!!!!
I don't know if Cruz contributed to the fund - but it was not his decision who received the funds from it, and unlike Trump, he never donated directly to McConnell.
Cruz didn’t lift a finger to help McDaniel during the runoff.
Well, apparently McDaniel doesn't agree with your assessment:
"Speaking on the back of a pickup truck at Connie's Fried Chicken on Tuesday morning, the Mississippi firebrand heaped praise on Cruz as the one of the few Republican senators to help him when establishment Republicans defeated him just a year ago.
"When you're running against Thad Cochran, you're running against the entire establishment," McDaniel told CNN. "So to have one come out and defend me, it meant a lot to me."
Dude, With 95% or more of the libtard media hammering him and Cruz, Kasich and some 200 Soros supported hit teams trying to kill him off, I’m surprised that Trump hasn’t called in the Marines, most of whom are supporting him.
And here’s the element you’ve conveniently overlooked: These folks WORK FOR TRUMP and he SIGNS THEIR CHECKS, unlike the other guy who, I strongly suspect, is getting IN-KIND, GRATIS SERVICES and DOUGH to keep him in their Wall Street, oligarch control freak pockets for those all-important post election “favors”.
Special interests will no longer have to try to MERELY INFLUENCE positions/actions taken by Trump & his staff/campaign members — the SPECIAL INTERESTS have BURROWED IN AND BECOME INTEGRAL/ORGANIC MEMBERS OF THE TRUMP ORGANIZATION.
Doesn’t it get tiring to keep having to move the goalposts for Trump???
Ouch! I think that caused some butthurt on this thread. lol
Cruz has this disgusting, slimy, revolting, dishonest, sleazy MO that he uses again and again. He waits until the actual fight, whatever it is, is over, and then he rushes in and tries to score points.
In Mississippi, Cruz was MIA ***until*** Cochran’s victory was secure. Then he rushed in and championed McDaniel’s (already lost) cause. As dozens of Cruz supporters ADMIT, Cruz did squat when it mattered/might have helped. Afterward, he called on the corrupt state to investigate itself. Proud Cruz supporters are very proud of this call to action! Although I’ve asked dozens of times what the result of this ‘investigation’ was, the answer is always the same.
Crickets.
Cruz pulled the exact same sleazeball stunt when Brat was working his butt off to unseat Cantor. Cruz stayed primly on the sidelines doing NOTHING. Then, after Brat’s victory was a done deal, Cruz sent out a tweet in which he attempted to share and bask in Brat’s success.
Cruz acts the part of a bottomfeeder.
Do some research on how the Council on Foreign Relations surrounded Ronald Reagan. Reagan wasn’t independently wealthy, so he had to work very hard to put things over on them.
Remember when Donald Trump said he consulted himself on foreign policy and everyone got so upset about that? Now he is bringing in the people he will need to do things from day one.
I know you would rather have the CFR and Goldman-Sacks running things directly, but they are going to have to really work at it this time. ;-)
So we should take you word on the subject over McDaniel’s... Sorry, I don’t thin so.
“Lobbyists, abortion issue, okay with transgenders - what party is he running in?”
The one he proposes because the people in Washington “are stupid”. /s
There are no outsiders in the political consultants club. It would defeat the purpose. All candidates hire from the same pool.
Nice source that Washington Post, I mean, Politico. They can’t take down Trump so now they go after the guy that’s going to win him the nomination on the floor.
Good luck with that.
I have wrangled this issue with DOZENS of Cruz supporters. When pushed hard enough, they ADMIT Cruz did nothing to help McDaniel when it might have made a difference.
Want to know why?
Probably not, since it reflects poorly on your guy. But whatever.
Cruz VOWED to his fellow senators that he would not intervene in their primary races to help defeat them. This was the same time frame he was making nice with McConnell. He was trying to smooth over hard feelings.
So when I used to argue with Cruz supporters on this subject, guess
what they said? They said it was right and honorable for Ted to refrain from helping McDaniel When It Mattered,because Cruz was merely honoring his vow. SMH.
You have clearly never vetted your own candidate. That, or you’re very dishonest. You should know these things, and not have to learn them at such a late date.
Btw, McDaniel was thanking Cruz for his support After The Fact. I.e.: Cruz did support McDaniel after Cochran’s victory was secure. No one should fault McDaniel for that.
“Sen. Ted Cruz has told Republican colleagues he won’t intervene in their primary fights next year or do any fundraising to help the Senate Conservatives Fund defeat them.’
http://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/534130
Since you have no idea exactly what Cruz did or didn't do for McDaniel, and since the only person who DOES know (McDaniel) completely disagrees with your premise, what you think or say about the issue is irrelevant.
Cruz did nothing to help McDaniel during the primary or the runoff. This was per Ted’s promise to his fellow senators. Sorry you find this so disillusioning. Perhaps it’s the first inkling of your awakening to the real Cruz. It’s an unsavory realization.
Take it up with McDaniel...
I’ve addressed McDaniel’s comment twice, and you’re back in your troll routine. An honest person would acknowledge that the issue has been addressed, and offer something productive to the exchange. All you do is play the troll game.
You: I’ve gotten this person to address McDaniel’s comments twice—let’s see if we can make it thrice!
Uh...no.
What’s far more interesting, however, is your insistence that Cruz is not a trustworthy individual/man of his word. I gave you a link that quotes Ted’s promise to his fellow senators not to interfere in their elections. Yet again and again you insist that Cruz broke that promise in Cochran’s case.
Can it be that even Cruz supporters know their candidate lies and goes back on his word? I’m beginning to suspect they do. They just hate Trump so much that they’ll support Cruz no matter how many times he tells.
How else to explain your insistence that Cruz lied bald faced to his Senate colleagues?
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