President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort is officialy registering as a foreign agent, according to the Associated Press.
Manafort’s spokesman told the AP that Trump’s ex-staffer was in talks with the government about registering as a foreign agent before the 2016 election and is now “taking appropriate steps” after “formal guidance.”
A foreign agent is anyone who actively carries out the interests of a foreign country while they are located in the U.S. Typically, someone in a position such as Manafort’s would have registered as a foreign agent before working on a presidential campaign.
Russia is widely suspected to have meddled in the 2016 presidential election. But Manafort’s lobbying work was not conducted on behalf of the Russian government, according to his spokesman, and began before he started working with the Trump campaign.
Former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn also had to register as a foreign agent back in February for lobbying work he did with ties to Turkey. It’s not clear if Trump knew about Manafort’s foreign ties when he hired him to run his presidential campaign, but this makes two prominent former Trump officials who are now officially foreign agents.
Back in August, the AP reported that Manafort oversaw lobbying work that could have benefited the Ukrainian government. The lobbying was reportedly an attempt to promote a pro-Russian Ukrainian political party’s interests in Washington.
Manafort stepped down as chairman of the Trump campaign back in August, shortly after Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway were added to the staff.