In response to reporting that Donald Trump is planning to bring on convicted felon Paul Manafort for the Republican National Convention, DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd released the following statement: 

“Convicted felon Paul Manafort will fit right in with the C-Team of election deniers, conspiracy theorists, and absolute weirdos that make up Donald Trump’s MAGA takeover of the GOP. This latest report just confirms that Trump’s soft on crime approach for the violent insurrections who stormed the Capitol on January 6 extends to tax cheats and fraudsters as well. Given the RNC’s desperate financial state, we can’t imagine what could go wrong with hiring a convicted con man like Manafort to help run a multimillion-dollar convention.”

Despite Manafort’s multiple convictions for fraud, Donald Trump is pushing to bring him on to help run the Republican convention. 

New York Times: “Paul Manafort, a top adviser to Donald J. Trump’s 2016 campaign who was pardoned by the former president at the end of his White House term, is in discussions to return to help with the Republican National Convention, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.”

“Mr. Manafort was found guilty in late August 2018 of a range of financial crimes, including tax and bank fraud.

“In September 2018, Mr. Manafort pleaded guilty to additional charges brought by Mr. Mueller and agreed to cooperate. But as the case proceeded, Mr. Mueller said that Mr. Manafort had not been truthful in his cooperation, breaching that plea deal.”

Washington Post: “Former president Donald Trump is expected to enlist Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager he pardoned, as a campaign adviser later this year, according to four people familiar with the talks.

“The job discussions have largely centered around the 2024 Republican convention in Milwaukee in July and could include Manafort playing a role in fundraising for the presumptive GOP nominee’s campaign, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations. While no formal decision has been made, the four people described the hiring as expected and said Trump was determined to bring Manafort back into the fold.”

Manafort would join recent GOP hires like Scott Presler – a far-right MAGA extremist who has peddled QAnon-fueled conspiracy theories and lies about the 2020 election – and Christina Bobb, a self-described “conspiracy theorist” who had a role in the fake electors scheme.

WCCO: “Presler, a Virginia native, planned several ‘stop the steal’ rallies in addition to being on the Capitol grounds the day of the insurrection. Presler also described the siege on the Capitol as ‘the largest civil rights protest in American history.’”

Pennsylvania Capital-Star: “The Trump rally was organized by Scott Presler, formerly a paid organizer for the Virginia Republican Party, and a speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference this year. He called for an audit of the election results.”

“Attendees, including Presler, repeated false claims of voter fraud in Michigan, stemming from a typo in results from a small county, according to the New York Times. Presler could not cite any examples of voter fraud in Pennsylvania.

‘Be assured, if I have to set up my own independent commission, I will be looking through votes to make sure there is no fraudulent, illegal activity,’ Presler said.”

Media Matters: “Media Matters previously documented that Presler promoted QAnon in dozens of instances on his Instagram account. Presler has also worked for the anti-Muslim group Act for America, which, The Associated Press wrote, ‘is identified by the Anti-Defamation League as the largest anti-Muslim group in America.’”

CNN: “[Bobb] also played a key role in the Trump campaign’s fake electors scheme after he lost the 2020 election, working closely with Trump advisers to organize the plan in seven battleground states. The scheme formed the basis of parts of Smith’s election subversion indictment against the former president, which says Trump and his allies created ‘fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding’ in Congress on January 6, 2021, and ‘disenfranchise millions of voters.’”

CNN: “Bobb was also a correspondent during the 2020 election for the fringe pro-Trump network OAN, where she promoted false claims that the election was rigged. The voting technology company Dominion sued Bobb and OAN for defamation in 2021. Some of her on-air segments were also referenced in a separate defamation case against OAN filed by Smartmatic, another aggrieved voting company. OAN and Bobb have denied wrongdoing in these civil cases.”

New York Times: “A self-described conspiracy theorist and election denier, Ms. Bobb will take on a role overseeing Republican election integrity efforts — after years of aggressively promoting false claims about the 2020 election. Her appointment reflects the ascendant role of election deniers in Republican leadership and in Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.”

As the RNC merges with the Trump campaign and continues their extreme MAGA rebrand, the roster of MAGA extremists and conspiracy theorists among their leadership only continues to grow. 

New York Times: “Mr. Trump likes Mr. Whatley for one overwhelming reason, according to people who have discussed him with the former president: He is ‘a stop the steal guy,’ as one of the people described him. He endorses Mr. Trump’s false claims about mass voter fraud … Mr. Whatley has baselessly claimed that election security efforts from Republicans in North Carolina stopped Democrats from cheating.”

CNN: “Likely frontrunner for RNC chair parroted Trump’s 2020 election lies”

“Michael Whatley, the chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, shared false claims that Republican observers were prevented from accessing polling locations and repeatedly said Democratic cities in swing states were engaged in ‘massive fraud.’”