Manafort to start new gig in ‘general business consulting’

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort said he would be working in “general business consulting,” more than a year after he was pardoned by former President Trump.

Manafort, who spoke to Politico reporter Daniel Lippman, did not provide additional information regarding where he would be working or what the job would entail. It will reportedly not include foreign lobbying or “Washington influence-peddling,” as Politico Playbook described it.

“When you’re as old as I am, you have a lot of breadth and depth and are able to help people with strategic advice to solve their problems or give them comfort,” the former Trump aide told Lippman.

Manafort also called on the United States and its European allies to provide more lethal weapons to Ukraine, telling Lippman he had “no doubt” that if the country had adequate weapons, it would not “lose a battle on the ground.”

“… I also worry that Putin’s strategy will be to win through negotiations what he cannot win on the battlefield, and the Europeans and Americans would put pressure on the Ukrainians to concede on things that they should not concede on, like ceding any territory to Russia or committing that they would not be part of NATO in the future,” said Manafort, who once worked for former pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Manafort’s remarks come more than a year since Trump pardoned him following former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, in connection with which Manafort was convicted for a slew of tax and bank fraud charges. He was sentenced to serve more than seven years in prison.

The former top campaign aide also has published a book with Simon & Schuster, expected to be released in August, called “Political Prisoner.”