Revealing emails turned over to investigators detail how President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort corresponded with an employee to see if he could deploy his role as Trump’s campaign manager to gain favor with a top Russian oligarch, also a close confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
According to emails obtained by The Atlantic, Manafort emailed Russian-Ukrainian political operative Konstantin Kilimnik to ask whether Russian oligarch Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska, a close ally of Putin and one of the richest men in Russia, had seen the news coverage of his hiring by Trump, American magazine reported on Monday.
“I assume you have shown our friends my media coverage, right?” Manafort wrote to Kilimnik in April 2016.
“Absolutely, every article,” responded Kilimnik, who had worked for Manafort for over a decade while Manafort did business in Ukraine and consulted for Ukraine’s pro-Russia ruling…